“De ces cartes on verra surgir les lois de la distribution des styles d’Architecture.” Mapping the History of Architecture in the Nineteenth Century (II):Viollet-le-Duc, Auguste Choisy and the Comparison and Overlapping of Thematic Maps as a Method

Abstract

The history of architecture is a discipline that was shaped throughout the nineteenth century by the merging of methods and ideas from many different origins. In the process of its construction, drawing played a major role. Mainly by helping researchers to cope with two of the dimensions this inquiry had to deal with. On one hand they had to develop graphic strategies to apprehend the “historical time” of architecture: they had to know how to extract the historically relevant elements from the buildings, show them chronologically and give visibility to their successive transformations. On the other, they had to grasp the architectural “historical space”. They had to discover ways of mapping the architecture of the past and its disemination in order to investigate why significant changes emerged in some places in preference to others. The history of this cartograpical effort is yet to be made. This article aims to point out some of its milestones, focusing on some French authors. It will be published in two parts. In the first one I will explore Arcisse de Caumont attempt of introducing a pasigraphic system in the archaeological maps (probably inspired by Humbold’s ideas) In the second part I will takle with the appearance of the superimposition of thematic maps as a method allowing to discriminate the incidence of diverse factors (geological, political, commercial) in the two great stages of the medieval architecture, focusing into the contributions of Eugène Viollet-Le Duc and Auguste Choisy.