The following thesis examines Georges Perec's unfinished project Lieux. It has as a main goal to define the project-and, to that end, construct its history- and, in turn, to interrogate the project from-and for-the field of architecture. Since over the twelve years it remained in progress Lieux was formulated and reformulated, named and renamed, and enacted and adjusted, the thesis proposes to inscribe the project within four different trajectories. Each of these corresponds to a major project reformulation, as well as to one of the four modes of interrogation that Perec identified at play in his work: what he termed, the autobiographical, the sociological, the ludic, and the fictive. In addition, the thesis addresses each of these trajectories as a distinct urban- and spatial-practice. In other words, the thesis attempts to define Lieux, firstly, as a project of remembering through the city, secondly, as a project of recording the city, thirdly, as a project of wandering the city, and, lastly, as a project of fictionalizing through the city. As the thesis ultimately argues, Lieux implied a turning point for all four modes of interrogation, and a realignment in Perec's use of self-imposed constraints towards what Raymond Queneau- and Perec after him-defined as scaffolding. This suggests a number of concepts regarding the use of constraints in the field of architecture. In fact, the thesis has as its ultimate goal to instrumentalize Lieux (or, rather, its findings) as the starting point for a potential theory of self-imposed constraints in architecture.

On n'en prend pas souvent la mesure, Albert Camus c'est à la fois une œuvre et une conduite. Dans la construction de l'identité de l'écrivain-polygraphe, la scène du périodique a été une expérience matricielle. Loin de se réduire au double paradigme de l'absurde et de la révolte, on voit ainsi poindre la figure d'un intellectuel écrivant, ancré dans la bataille des idées de son époque, et dont le jeu spéculaire postule un « agir par le dire.» Notre étude, charpentée en trois phases, tente d'abord de cerner les modèles auctoriaux qui nourrissent son engagement civique ainsi que ses chevaux de bataille au cœur du XX ème siècle en crise. Elle tente ensuite d'éclairer les modulations, les stratégies énonciatives par lesquelles se structure la poétique d'une écriture de combat intimement liée aux urgences du contexte, et en constant ajustement avec les contraintes génériques ; se profile ainsi en filigrane la manière dont l'écrivain-journaliste gère la tension constitutive à tout discours journalistique engagé : informer avec objectivité/impossibilité de dire sans prendre parti. Enfin, l'analyse s'attache à examiner par quelle scénographie auctoriale le journaliste-rhéteur, dont la parole, en prise sur un auditoire à la fois situé et virtuel, postule une efficacité rhétorique, trouve sa voie dans la polyphonie discursive du cotexte. En redécouvrant un auteur canonique par-delà le cadre contraint du « champ littéraire et intellectuel » des « années noires », on mesure non seulement ce que l'écrivain doit au journaliste, mais surtout en quoi son expérience du périodique concentre toute l’œuvre sous la plume, et éclaire du même coup la posture hétérodoxe et singulière d'un des derniers héritiers du « temps des prophètes ». / Ones does not take often measurement of it, Albert Camus is at the same time a work and a control. In the construction of the identity of the writer-polygraph, the scene of the periodical was a matric experiment. Far from being reduced to the double paradigm absurdity and revolt, one sees stinging the figure of a writing intellectual, anchored in the battle of the ideas of his time, and whose specular game applies one “to act by saying it.” Our study, constructed in three phases, initially tries to determine the auctorial models which nourish its civic commitment like its hobby horses in the middle of the XX ème century in crisis. Secondly tries to clarify the modulations, the enunciative strategies by which structure the poetic one of a writing of combat closely related to the urgencies of the context, and in constant adjustment with the generic constraints; is profiled who makes in filigree of it, the way in which the writer-journalist manages the constitutive tension with any committed journalistic speech: to inform with objectivity/impossibility of saying without coming out. Lastly, the analysis attempts to examine by which scenography auctorial the journalist-rhetor, whose word, in catch on an audience at the same time located and virtual, applies a rhetoric effectiveness, finds its way in the discursive polyphony of the cotexte. By rediscovering a canonical author beyond the constrained framework of the “literary and intellectual field” of the “black years”, one measures not only what the writer owes to the journalist, but especially in what its experiment of the periodical concentrates all work under the feather, and clarifies at the same time the heterodox and singular posture of one of the last heirs to the “time of the prophets”.