Texte remanié de: Diss.--Freiburg im Breisgau, 1987. / Bibliogr. p. 373-375.

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This thesis considers relationships between occupants and their places of occupation. Of relationships between the bodies of occupation and the stones occupied in the speck instance where the places of occupation have been designed by one of the occupants. The late eighteenth/early nineteenth century architect Sir John Soane has been selected as the architect/occupant. This selection was made because of his gift to the nation of a house in Lincoln 's Inn Field designed for his family, offered complete with an extensive collection of representations of occupation. This archive material, contained in letters, journals, account books, home made books, descriptions of the places of occupation, watercolours and architectural drawings, has been used extensively in the fabric of the thesis. It is this material, contained within the house, that is under consideration: the project uses the matter collected/contained both as a means of considering the logic of the house/home and as matter to be analysed, or subjected to that logic. As the material under examination includes textual matter, interrelationships between this form of material, the bodies of writing and the stones of the places of writing are analysed. The houses/villas under examination are Pitzhanger Manor House, a villa at Ealing; No. 12 & 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, two adjoining London town houses and the Clerk of the Works' official residence at Chelsea. They are considered exclusively in terms of representation, not as built or physical form. Views of the houses/villas from contexts beyond the framework of the archive are not engaged with; they are not located within a street, city, or world perspective. The material contained within the archive is used to consider the construction and destruction of the houses/villas designed by the architect/owner. It is also used to examine what might be deemed the construction and destruction of the family of 3 occupation and the formation of another form of family of occupation. In so doing, the thesis does not attempt to build a portrait of the occupiers, or a history of'the place off occupation. It is neither a biography nor an architectural history but something in between; akin to an analysis of the place of occupation from the logic of the material collected and contained.

Sir John Soane (1753--1837) is an intriguing character. This architect has transformed his London House into a Museum. The only thing we have left of him is the House and three Descriptions of it. I will not try to put apart what Sir John Soane has done in his House but see what he has done. Soane invites us in the House, lets you visit it and be lost. Once you have dived, accepted the invitation, you have found a house full of art objects gathered to teach architecture. Art and architecture meet. The experience is haunting. Through it the architect rediscovers the story of objects to identify, the everyday story he builds. The experience of the House is a mirroring of Soane's mind. The House which makes the architect understand his projection upon others. The amplitude and generosity of his vision becomes history.

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This study considers the relationship between landscape and the Arcadian funereal imagination in the context of eighteenth century Britain, arguing that the Arcadian landscapes imagined by the British elite were instruments of rituals facilitating the reformation and transformation of socioeconomic, political, and moral structures of the British empire. Drawing upon texts and landscape practices, three case studies are examined: Alexander Pope’s (1688-1744) Twickenham grotto and his descriptive letter to Edward Blount; Sir William Chambers’ (1723-1796) Dissertation on oriental gardening and his design for Kew gardens, Sir John Soane’s (1753-1837) manuscript Crude hints towards an history of my house in LIF and his house-museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London. The landscape itinerary of Pope’s Twickenham villa, in relation to his letter to Blount, suggests that it was structured analogous to the initiatory route of the Eleusinian mysteries as accounted in Pope’s translation of the Odyssey. Noting Pope’s engagement with Freemasonry, associated with the Opposition party, I suggest this implied Odyssean journey not only metaphorically anticipates the restitution of the Stuart dynasty and the reassertion of a political order founded upon aristocratic land ownership, but is also a means by which the ‘initiates’ contest the Enlightenment ideal of a mind of autonomy. In relation to the Burkean sublime, Chambers’ Dissertation, an imaginary travel narrative, is read as a city landscaping theory which aims to shape the morals of British citizens exposed to the erosion of commercial society. Whilst the scenes of luxury in the Chinese gardens imply a double effect of commercial society, the funereal imagery of ‘the surprising,’ built upon the Burkean sublime-effect, is intended as a cure of moral corruption associated with luxury. Stimulated by geological notions (e.g. stratigraphy and catastrophism), Soane’s ruinous text of Crude hints, a mirror of the house-museum as well as the earth, illustrates a parallel between the ‘first principles’ of the movement of the earth and that of the mind, i.e. imagination and signification. The funereal imagination in the text, which itself represents simultaneous creation and destruction, is revealed to be the architect’s construction of an ideal language that can express the being of the nation and the self. This thesis ends with a theoretical discussion of the role of the funereal imagination in eighteenth century landscape and architecture, i.e. how British imperial identity was forged, transmitted, negotiated, and reconstructed constantly within the temporally and spatially extended discursive realm of Arcadian mythology.

This thesis uses the lens of building technology to examine cultural exchange and its relationship to the building crafts. By focusing on masonry vaulting in India, my research brings together two worlds – one that shines light on the variety of innovative masonry shell construction techniques that exist in the county and another that seeks to evaluate the scope of tile vaulting, an over 600-year old Mediterranean building technique, within India’s evolving building crafts culture. This thesis is organized in three parts: PART ONE Tile Vaulting and Relevance Today | A Brief History of Masonry Shells in India Part one introduces tile vaulting’s unique principles compared to other vaulting traditions while contextualizing its relevance to present day India. A survey of varied masonry vaulting techniques and modules, endemic and imported, practiced across India is presented against the backdrop of what is a predominantly reinforced concrete-based construction industry. PART TWO Modules, Methods and Motivations The second part of this research comprises case studies that include some of India’s most iconic buildings such as the Villa Sarabhai by Le Corbusier, the National Institute of Design by Gautam Sarabhai and Sangath by B.V. Doshi, each of which employed innovative construction techniques for its vaults. The production and use of the enigmatic ceramic fuses in India is examined for the first time alongside their indigenous cousins: burnt clay tubes. Together with Muzaffarnagar vaulting, the case studies reveal cultural motivations for architectural expression and production in postcolonial India. PART THREE Prototypes | Comparatives | Limitations & Extension of Research Part three presents five tile vaulting prototypes in India constructed with local artisans to gain understanding of its cultural reception, assess effective transfer of skills and potential internalisation. Recommendations for tile vaulting’s potential uptake into mainstream architectural production is evaluated by comparing findings against prevalent building methods and by contextualizing current architectural trends and social policy. Limitations and scope for extension of research are also discussed.