The following thesis is a 38,400 word document of a part-time PhD by project undertaken at the painting department of The Royal College of Art between October 2002 and September 2008. The purpose of this research has been to reflect on how an expansive interpretation of the architectural model operates as a mode of fragmentary thought for dwelling. I extend critical / theoretical approaches to the use of the model within my art practice, and its equivalent, 'the essay form,' in the written component of the thesis. I begin by deflning the use of the model within a speciflc work I made early in the project, and also discuss the model's ability to operate between more rigidly deflned disciplines of knowledge. I use Benjamin's notion of immanent critique to reflect on the poeticised potential of the model form to unfold information, by probing the rapport between materials and motifs, groupings and spacings and the made and the found. I also show how the process of thought through the material development of the work, informed an equivalent fragmentary approach to writing. In the four main chapters, I attend to a critical pairing four Bruegel paintings and four particular buildings to understand how both painting and building can be revealed as a thought model for dwelling. The chapters in the following order read Bruegel's Fall of Icarus in relation to Casa Malaparte, Procession to Calvary with Melnikov's Cylindical House Studio, The Tower of Babel with Kiesler's unbuilt notion of The Endless House, and flnally the two dwellings initiated by Wittgenstein with Hunters in the Snow. I conclude by returning briefly to a recent piece of my own work to consider how the model of thought for dwelling has developed within my current practice.

L’objet de cette étude est la représentation de l’architecture dans la peinture (ou architectura picta), en Égypte ancienne, à travers une étude de cas : la tombe comme motif iconographique au Nouvel Empire et au début de la Troisième Période intermédiaire.Après une mise au point sur les principes de représentation égyptiens et l’image architecturale en Égypte, dans toute sa diversité, l’étude porte sur l’évocation de la nécropole et des abords de la tombe dans l’iconographie. Une part importante de l’analyse est consacrée à la montagne en tant qu’objet figuré, notamment sa genèse à la XVIIIe dynastie, et aborde la question de la « représentation paysagère » en Égypte ancienne.L’architecture funéraire fait l’objet d’une mise en image à partir de la XVIIIe dynastie, dans le cadre de la représentation de rites funéraires sur les parois des tombes. Si les premières représentations sont conventionnelles et renvoient à l’architecture sacrée, elles intègrent au cours de la XVIIIe dynastie des éléments du réel, prenant pour modèle les tombes telles que se présentent au Nouvel Empire, c'est-à-dire des tombes pourvues d’une structure pyramidale. Cette image de la tombe à pyramide devient un motif du répertoire iconographique égyptien et perdure sur les cercueils et les papyri funéraires à la Troisième Période intermédiaire, après que les tombes à pyramide cessent elles-même d’exister. L’étude pose donc la question, en filigrane, du rapport au réel dans la peinture égyptienne, mais aussi de la fonction d’une telle image. / The study examines the representation of architecture in painting (or architectura picta) in ancient Egypt, through a case study of the tomb as an iconographical motif during the New Kingdom and the early Third Intermediate Period.After an overview of the principles of Egyptian representation and the architectural images in ancient Egypt, in all their diversity, the study focuses on the iconographical evocation of the necropolis and the tomb’s surroundings. An important part of this study concerns the mountain as an object of representation and in particular, its origins during the XVIIIth Dynasty, as well as dealing with landscape depictions in ancient Egypt.The funerary architecture is put in painting during the XVIIIth Dynasty, within depictions of funerary rites in private tombs. If the first tomb depictions refer to sacred architecture, according to representational conventions ; they show realistic elements in the course of the XVIIIth Dynasty, being modeled after the tomb architecture as it is during the New Kingdom, which is to say a pyramid-topped tomb. This tomb motif is integrated into the Egyptian iconographical repertoire and remains on coffins and funerary papyri, after the pyramid tomb itself disappeared from architecture in the Third Intermediate Period.The underlying question in this study is the relation to reality in Egyptian painting, but also the function of the tomb image.