Prosthetic Fantasies of the First Machine Age: Viollet-le-Duc's Iron Architecture

Author(s): Martin Bressani

Source: AA Files , 2014, No. 68 (2014), pp. 43-49
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23781454

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 Prosthetic Fantasies
of the First Machine Age
Viollet-le-Duc's Iron Architecture

Martin Bressani

Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,

medieval bowl helmet with movable visor,
Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier, vol v, 1874

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Amid the remorseless exploration of a techno- yp 'Prosthetic technology alternated between
logical unconscious that defines the landscape K \ IIA, M / /il producing substitutes for the body parts
of Sigfried Giedion's Mechanisation Takes NA - y - Vy that military weapons had destroyed and
Command, we find a number of peculiar / | producing these very weapons. All weap
outcrops-pieces of'patent furniture'manufac- are prosthetic.'8
tured by American inventors in the latter half * ^ Construction historian Tom F Peters has
of the nineteenth century.1 These movable and Yi \ I noted that during the nineteenth century
adaptable chairs, sofas or'bed-machines' ^ engineers also began to incorporate military
-which he collectively labelled'furniture of the ' procedures -'strategy and its branches, tactics
engineer'- were presented as radically distinct VaJSIí and logistics, the rationale
from'the ruling taste'of heavily upholstered jD and critical-path thinking'- int
furnishings typical of the era: not least because f-f'/ / A¡kVt0 builclinS- Accordingly, th
the sense of comfort offered by such mecha- / / / / ¡dfl < i i '. \ ^' }, \\{ \ fell into step with the logic
nised contraptions was, he wrote,'actively •' •' 1 ! ■ ■ '■ i '• '> * '■ '> '• \\ wherein mechanical force
wrested by adaptation to the body' as opposed do work following certain determinate
to 'passively derived from sinking back into Nemo, in flight from organised humanity, vectors and motions,
cushions' in a swollen divan. Rather than proclaims of the Nautilus: 'I love it as if it were Giedion's most
serving as an inert receptacle, this engineer's part of myself' (a bonding of human and furniture and the iron
furniture acted to assist and even take charge mechanical described by Rosalind Williams as 'machine-structur
of a deficient body - a point Giedion clarified 'the most emotionally intense relationship in 'war-building' - th
with reference to the development of nine- the drama').6 In one of his lesser-known novels, a term that, for
teenth-century prosthetics: 'Not by accident did The Steam House (1880), Verne later presented a vital function t
the problem of mechanically operated artificial a mobile house-machine as if it were a huge iron formal, compos
limbs draw so strong an interest at this time'.8 animal, built to resist bullets and controlled European architec
For Giedion, such prosthetic logic, though an from a central turret - a premonition of the Architecture
undercurrent, represented a historical urge that army tank.7 In this sense, Verne's mechanised breeding ground
marked the 'moving process of life' during the animal relates to the industrialisation not only gut such a couplin
first machine age.3 of the factory floor but also of military conflict, concretely. To be sure
One could take Giedion's claim as some which began with the American Civil War and house, with all its fer
grand Zeitgeist forced upon the nineteenth accelerated during the Franco-Prussian War of could be metaphori
century and leave it at that. But one could also 1870-71, particularly in the development of pound creature' -
choose to believe him, and explore further the armoured trains mounted with guns. The extension graft
idea of the prosthetic as an underlying theme theme of prosthesis is indeed inseparable from body. Equally, t
in modern design culture. In The Enlightenment machines of war. As Mark Wigley once put it, of a structural i

Cyborg, Allison Muri has recently mapped out ¡mj M\ masonry skin might ind
continuities between the mechanistic philoso- y /gy Jr /fëwÊkthe artificial and the
phy espoused during the seventeenth and A 'fo //¿A photographs of the Cryst
eighteenth centuries and our contemporary « illustrate. But these examples are merely
engagement with the bio-technological.4 üjftKff&m suggestive. Though nin
The linkage between bodies and machines is architectural discourse may have been invested
even more explicit in the nineteenth century, in the organic and the machinic, it did not
tied not only to the repercussions of the factory consciously recast the Vitruvian body analogy
assembly line, but to the history of gestures mx,.^ in terms of prosthetic technology,
and postures of a first industrial age when the rzjéËùSfMl There is, however, one notable exceptio
machine progressively took over the human \ Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879),
habitus. One could further append to this Sm/Gë? the celebrated French neo-gothic architect and
technological reshaping of bodily posture SSNl/ theoretician - and author of instructive chil
late-nineteenth-century trends to reform or dren's books. In his last novella, The Story of
restore the human body through hygienics ^a Young Designer, or Learning H
and eugenics.5 Seen through this history, the MMlMHFrrnmTT illustrated a mechanised a
theme of the prosthesis appears to run deep ,f4ljr£'¡Mñ Bp how the workings of muscle
within the century, reflecting the desire to animals can be applied to mechanical devices,
imagine a new ego that could withstand the This striking image served as the conclusion to
shocks of both the modern industrial and the [I&Km' • '^irilBrli an anatomylesson feat
mass-political worlds. Tj^apSjHraKÈylflF^ \«wEk^B8BI6 protagonists-the industria
A whole body (or appendage) of literature 4''¿fry.jn^lVfcTrill young protégé peí/t Jean
from this period also reflected on the intimate anatomy, explains Majorin, one can gain a new
alliance between flesh and machine - and not IV appreciation of machines in factories, 'for
always from an optimistic perspective. Emile man, in the arts of mechanisation, seldom does
Zola, Jules Verne, Villiers de l'lsle-Adam and H G „ . „. , more than apply these anatomical elements'.
Top: variety
variety couch
couchor
orinvalid
invalidchair,
chair, 1838,
1838, from
from Sigfried ,
Sigfried
Wells all explored the consequences of techno- Giedion,
GiedioniMechanisation
Mechanisation Takes
Takes Command,
Command, 1948 1948 He adds that °ne COuld wnte a whole treatlS
logical self-alienation. For instance, in Twenty Bottom:
Bottom: view
view of the
of the Eiffel
Eiffel Tower,Tower, 1889,Gaston
1889, from from Gaston 'in mechanics, taking as the sole subject th
Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Captain Tissandier,
Tissandier, LaLa Tour
Tour Eiffel
Eiffel demètres,
de 300 300 mètres,
1889 1889 curvature of the bones', and goes on to lamen

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that man will never be able to achieve the meant you had to interrogate your surroundings fundamental basis of the prosthetic attitude:
ultimate goal of producing a creature with the in order to rebuild them from the ground up - the development of new organs, in this
same level of autonomy as a living being.10 By a fact he ventriloquises through Majorin's case visual, adapted to the needs of a world in
tending towards the organic, machines become instruction to his young pupil: 'When you see constant revolution.
prolongations of human organs in motion. As any thing, a piece of furniture, a tool or a house, Moreover, it is a self that Viollet-le-Duc not
Viollet-le-Duc describes it: 'the organs of [man's] you must ask how it is made, with what, and only creates but embodies. Historians have
best machines are generally made in conformity why, and try to guess it yourself.'14 often noted the autobiographical character of
to the principles by which his body moves'.11 The Story of a Young Designer," in which the
It seems worth exploring such a fundamen- ageing architect reimagines himself through
tally industrial conception, expressed by one a family romance in which he is his own
of the key theoreticians of architectural \ progenitor, as both characters
modernism, as it gives some substance not only ^ petit Jean, the master and the
to Giedion's thesis on mechanisation but to the •///■''"'' / with aspects ofhis personal h
more specific idea that architects may have fW (// P Viollet-le-Duc rewrites his chil
consciously entertained a prosthetic approach (O^ nat'ona' regeneration. The pro
before the advent of the postmodern cyborg.12 \w> aA he imagines for the young people of France is
More specifically, Viollet-le-Duc's ideas \\\ thus an autogenetic fantasy.
can shed new light on the status of iron in the IN A A \\\ Seen in this context, the
c ) WD
\D
nineteenth century, and on his own visionary a1 c CO
projects using metallic construction, which are Tí/ W
amongst the most iconic B/
works of nineteenth- £!i Bj/
century modernism. 11 \ /// \ immediately after the crucial chapter titled 'Jean
■ii fjust
The Story of a Young Designer was written - -v
-■ f Begins to See', in which the young appren
a few weeks before Viollet-le-Duc's death in 1879, achieves a first level of autonomy. Majorin
the last in a series of five illustrated books begins these lessons with a study of two rather
aimed at an adolescent audience, and produced terrifying creatures - a bat and a Pterodactyl
following the disastrous Franco-Prussian War. t -thus setting the theme of nature's great variety
Published by Jules Hetzel in the same collection • g / Ê with an undertow of monstrosity.
as Verne's The Steam House, the series repre- // Ê f M secret of anatomy is disclosed, any n
sented the most characteristic works of his ^ / jjm Mm can indeed be combined - a favoured
postwar period. Devastated by France's military / ''Jl /jgjf Viollet-le-Duc, nineteenth-century gra
failure and convinced that there was nothing A ¡ JHL. of the grotesque. But the technolog
to be gained by addressing an older generation, r ''"jlMr S tesque is no longer merely a respon
the ardent patriot in Viollet-le-Duc sought to sig*¡¡jr in representation: now the kinetics of machin
reach out directly to 'the children of all classes', -A ífSyyx ery are modelled on living beings because
as he himself put it to Hetzel, teaching the » " r®<SlÍI industrialisation has to fully assume
young people of France how to think and AiVSW> AA the creator of a second nature. In oth
muster the energy 'to get up in the morning and 1 lîÉr ^ machines mimic an organism it is
set to work'.13 In this sense the stories, often MM ¡M m c man himself must be reborn, autog
fraught with tensions and playing up the I If M JÊ into a technological ego (by the book
devastation of the war, form an early example ' 1 mi petit Jean is the head of a manufactur
of'revanchist'literature, aimed at galvanising ^ | ¡I producing iron furniture not unlike t
a younger generation and preparing France to ' furniture described by Giedion; and can thus
exact revenge. For petit Jean the act of seeing and drawing be construed as Majorin's - or Viollet-le-Duc's
But with no murder, rebellion or warfare thus becomes a relentless activity of reconstruc- - double, his mechanical son).17
casting a shadow over the narrative, The Story tion, as if the world has to be pulled back from Viollet-le-Duc's innumerable refl
of a Young Designer is the least ominous of the brink of self-destruction and made anew. the new conditions brought about by m
Viollet-le-Duc's five novellas. Instead, it merely This reflected Viollet-le-Duc's view that a new warfare, written just a fewyears befo
tells the tale of a quasi-military teaching pedagogy was required if France was to thrive publication of The Story of a Young Desi
experiment. An 11-year-old boy, petit Jean, lives in the new military-industrial era. Where the credence to this thinking. They des
quietly with his father, père Loupeau, on the Second Empire had engendered a fragmented, type of soldier who 'is nothing but a
outskirts of Paris. One day an eccentric factory- decentred self, his countrymen had now to transmitted to a weapon; the more
owner, Monsieur Majorin, pays a visit and cohere into a new unity, ready to take control will be perfected ... the more man will
notices a drawing made by petit Jean of his cat. of the environment. And with this control, the reduced to the state of a trigger me
Detecting an unusual level of aptitude, he offers passive body that loved to sink back upon Intelligence, prevision, knowledge wil
to take full custody of the boy and make him plump cushions had to give way to a new self, ensure more and more superiority
his pupil. Ripped away from the bosom of his transformed into a technological apparatus, an horrifying mechanism which we call a
natural family, petit Jean is subsequently active part of a larger machine. This, then, is the Such a technologically assisted warri
drilled in various subjects over several chapters. have been the specific product of modern
Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,
Especially fundamental to this pedagogical Eugène Emmanuel Viollet le Due, industrialised warfare,
the
the working
working of and
of muscles muscles and tendons applied . .... , . . .
tendons applied
test is the development ofhis ability to draw,
to a mechanical to
device (top), andaknee
mechanical
joint device (top), and knee joint wa
through which the reader understands he
used as model for used as
a mechanical model
device {bottom),for a mechanical device (bottom), Th
is learning how to see. For Viollet-le-Duc this
Histoire d'un dessinateur, 1879Histoire d'un dessinateur, 1879 in the p

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his Reasoned Dictionary of French Allied Arts from tajág' -~l f Sixteenth Century - arguably the most widely
the Carolingian Period to the Renaissance, a study JËÈ influential architecture manual of the entire
of medieval weaponry devoted to the same nineteenth century - Viollet-le-Duc developed
greater goal as his children's series: 'If this last this biological idiom further. A sort of treatise
part of our work... can contribute to impress on the anatomy of medieval architecture, its
upon the mind the love of the craft of war', wrote tX y *■ /fjjíSí thousands of illustrations analysed mo
Viollet-le-Duc, 'if it can demonstrate how, after <JÊEé- j^B". i X ies, castles and especially cathedrals 'li
so many unprecedented disasters, France has 1 « studies the development and the life of a living
been able, thanks to patriotism, to erase many X; being'.26 In one significant passage Viollet
of its errors and to recover, we think we will A X le-Duc marvels at the cathedral's corporeality:
have fulfilled a small part of the task that each 'JHLW-' We are struck by the interior organisation of
Frenchman must carry today.'19 these edifices. Just as the human body is held up
As always within Viollet-le-Duc's histori- and moves thanks to two simple, spindly supports,
cised outlook, the Middle Ages stand paradoxi- .occupying the least amount of space possible near
cally as the fantasy reservoir for France's future. JjES the ground, and complexifying and dev
Medieval knights -'these men covered in iron'20 v4- itself higher up as it must progressively contain
-were models for the'hardened'soldiers 1/ a greater number of crucial organs, so the gothic
of the future. In fact, Viollet-le-Duc transposed v building is held on the simplest kinds ofsupport,
the entire modern militarised state onto the * Wmerely a sort o/pinning whose stability is
Middle Ages: feudal society, thanks to its maintained only by the combination and develop
perpetual state of warfare, had given birth to clothing appropriate to our body'23 - a perfect ment of its upper parts. The gothic ed
new iron creatures, just as nineteenth-century dovetail into the mechanised limb that stand only if it is complete; one cannot cut
industrial Europe was in the process of engen- concluded petit Jean's anatomy class. of its organs without risking that it will per
dering a new type of mechanised being, most If the new military or technological ego is because it acquires stability only through
clearly visible, he argued, in the disciplined therefore a kind of deconstructed and recon- of equilibrium.27
bodies of German troops. structed self - following the processes inherent
in Majorin's discipline of seeing - then what
of architecture? Does it follow a similar

prosthetic conception? Nineteenth-century

buildings, at least as exemplified by their iconic
iron skeletons, may have been newly conceived
in terms of disassembly and reassembly. They
may even, according to Peters, have adopted
the military's approach to the kinetics of
machinery. If so, where does the 'mechanised'
limb fit within such a coupling of machine
and building?
One possible answer is suggested by the fact
that Viollet-le-Duc was the greatest nineteenth
century proponent of a biological paradigm
for architecture. In the first of his celebrated
Much of Viollet-le-Duc's wonderful and Lectures on Architecture (1858-72), he argued that,
manically detailed history of medieval arma- in absolute terms, man could not create (that This comparison between the human body
ment centres on the adaptation of body to was the sole preserve of God) but, byjoining and the cathedral underpinned Viollet-le-Duc's
weapon, weapon to body. Hundreds of fascinat- his imagination with a close observation of entire architectural conception, and at a certain
ing illustrations depict medieval warriors as nature, he might produce a 'second order' of level his use of biological terms reflected the
organisms that 'evolve' into a protective shield, creation in his art.24 By this alternative order central part played by notions of equilibrium
speculating that medieval armourers modelled Viollet-le-Duc meant 'composite' creatures of an and complexity in the nineteenth-century
their work on the shells of animals or insects.21 almost supernatural character; creatures like version of the great chain of being (itself a
His essential point is that armour was forged the centaur, 'that is to say, an impossible corollary to the romantic definition of life).
through a very delicate observation of the creature, counter to everything that nature has Applied to architecture, it allowed Viollet-le-Duc
disposition of the play of muscles and physical created, an animal that has four feet and two to renew the Vitruvian body metaphor and
movement, not unlike Giedion's mechanised arms, two pairs of lungs, two hearts, two livers, 'correct' its meaning in accordance with recent
patent furniture.22 Through comparative two stomachs and two bellies and everything scientific developments, with the most decisive
illustrations he demonstrates how certain parts that follows from there'.25 change being that the translation of the human
are adapted to human anatomy to produce In the ten volume Reasoned Dictionary body into architecture was not the product of
responsive 'metallic military clothing', gar- of French Architecture from the Eleventh to the an imitative process, as in the classical tradition,
ments that were all the more astonishing given but of an instinctive projection of man's bodily
'that medieval industrialists didn't possess the Eugène Emm
Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, diagram organisation. In an aside to his di
of a medieva
anatomical knowledge so familiar to us today'. of a medieval horseman propped up on his stirrups Greek temple in the Lectures on Ar
. . , to give maximum to resistance to his upper body maxim
give . „ ,, .... . ,
He adds, a little damnmgly, 'It is rather strange ^ fifteenth.Century
{left), fifteen armour
that our times, which possess such
and extended an(j spaulders (right), Dictionnaire r
spaulders
knowledge of anatomy, cannot
dubuild a defensive du mobilier, vols v and vi,
mobilier,

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all living beings. He is the myth of the structure; A to the medieval method', but without a specified
so, if one wants to build, he must be used as ' |l\ programme. Seen en masse, the majority
model."" Enter again petit Jean and Majorin, Viollet-le-Duc's iron projects can be categorised
who recommends that living organisms be used as similarly loose-programmed large-span
as the model for both machines and buildings. structures, symbols of the great assembly
In the case of architecture, that most noble íW\K I fflffM spaces required for the modern se
of arts, the human body is the only worthy ideal. j& | g||P even went so far as to deplore the
Viollet-le-Duc would in fact push this /¿j* à» vUJËN a time 'when meetings are becom
further, to claim that within the great western i ^at no hall is capacious enough to hold them',
tradition the true expressive source - the 'myth {j architects had not managed t
of the structure' - was the 'Aryan' body. Delving — space 'in which a crowd may be at ease, breathe
into racial theories around 1858, he transposed 1 \ comfortably and come and go freely'.33 To define
to architecture the idea of the Aryan master race M such a space, to find room for the multitude,
developed by his close friend Comte Joseph- béi you had to look to the medieval cathedrals-an
Arthur de Gobineau. He argued that cathedrals 4f a [f ^ Jit Jgk Jl effective way to show that his proposals bega
were instinctive'projections'of the perfect where the gothic left off.
Aryan body -the figure of Christ relaying that T \ f| ''/f Viollet-le-Duc
immanent aesthetic phantom29 - and therefore V \ % \' I jW*» ward and quixo
represented a form of'incarnation', or VgJ J 13.5m hall in section
a 'probole of the will', to borrow Gobineau's iffl Mt * IW the directional l
recondite terminology. According to Viollet- iÏt» the wall (line a-b).
le-Duc's historical dialectics predicated on set in the prolongation of that oblique line to act
blood - a vast schema that spanned from Egypt as a counterthrust, then a second column (d)
to the Middle Ages - the gothic cathedral was is placed below it, at the same angle but going in
the most evolved stage of such bodily transía- no other word better expresses his obvious the opposite direction, to shift the
tion. Its finely equilibrated organism followed desire to stage anatomical loss for the sake of toward the ground at point/. A
the same principle of organisation as a human technological gain. The simplest illustration tie-bar braces columns c and d tog
body; its structure was 'living' because every of this desire, and the most explicit, is the first to a coupling shoe (e). Small dr
'organ' was actively engaged in a dynamic play iron proposal shown in his twelfth 'lecture': how the tie-bar is affixed to a re
and counterplay of forces. the replacement of a medieval masonry corbel secured by end claws. By replacin
Such a living body would not survive the with a single oblique iron column. Even more buttressing with a metal space-fra
removal of one of its organs, Viollet-le-Duc had striking is the market project presented in continuously along the exterior w
asserted, because its equilibrium would be the same text, where the vertical ground-floor is left unencumbered. The same iro
destroyed. Yet cutting off one of the cathedral's supports are not only perceived as 'missing' strategy was later used for a m
organs and replacing it with an artificial limb (since their topping stone remains), but the masonry hall spanning 20m, excep
is precisely what he set out to do in his famous dramatic set of oblique cast-iron columns wrap instance the prosthetic space-fr
series of speculative iron projects, almost all the 'stump' of the obliterated limb with metallic inside the hall, below the vaulted
designed in the lead up to the Franco- fingers. Later in the same volume, Viollet-le-Duc This is probably the most curi
Prussian War and published in the second illustrates an even more developed project - le-Duc's projects: a frame with f
volume of his Lectures on Architecture. The a large hall spanning 13.5m and 'built according brackets acting as iron crutches
motive, for Viollet-le-Duc, was to achieve the domed masonry vault. In principle his method
'perfect' bodily proj ection that eluded the was to geometrically analyse the mechanical
gothic builders. But perfection necessitated 1 K W ||r , I fact of the masonry vault a
amputation, for the stability of the cathedral, j ¡J f Willi/ / sponding three-dimensiona
Viollet-le-Duc argued, relied on a passive , ijlfSml fil iron members concretising th
element; the massive peripheral buttresses J M' *// at play. In these last examples,
that absorbed the diagonal thrust of the main / tÊL}/ yff not so easy to see how the
vault. This was a malformation-a'mark of , aP T M/'Ú I /' makes structural sense. A f
impotence', wrote Viollet-le-Duc.30 To achieve / Jp / K j I / iron prosthetic device for it
an'equilibrium'according to an organic logic \ ®jj J WiV/'1!/ have taken over.
in which each construction element, or ij| # Mif/ll / The largest and most sp
member, played a crucial role,31 it was necessary I ni iw/J ' ( project presented in the Lect
to remove the buttresses and suspend the ¡ J§ | W/'l (lí is a 'vaulted concert hall' for
masonry on thin supports of cast iron - iron j K 1 if j 'V A. a freespan of46m and a high
being the'élément énergique'.32 / . plan derived from an octagonal geometry.
Viollet-le-Duc developed the'energetic' L ' y n With this polyhedral ha
character of iron members in two ways: first, sought to vault a space 15m longer than the
by positioning them in the 'oblique' - a resource dome of the Hagia Sophia, 'to obtain the largest
he insisted had never been used before - and void possible with the least amount of mass'.
Eugène
secondly, by resorting to a prosthetic strategy, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet le Due, This, he adds,'is
•" J b v, , . , fifteenth-century gauntlet (top) and fourteenth
fifteenth
•cutting off' a traditional architectural elementcentury
century armoured shin guard compared had to be solved by all archi
and replacing it with an iron crutch. Wh i 10 to [q the anatomy of a legthe
(bottom), Dictionnaire moment itan was necessar
he himself never employed the term 'prosthetic', raisonné du mobilier, vol v, 1874 public'.34 In other words,
raisonné

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the ultimate civic space, a sort ':|| ' .. - inorganic mechanical limb,
of modern cathedral with an ^jP ' like a brittle crystallisation
indeterminate programme. ¡jf/MB jiBJsa ': 1* j|HWH of human will,
The most striking aspect ^St^aKr.)J-"' 1 * w\tá¡L * bourgeois historicism to reach
of the project is of course 8^-|y|l towards the brutality of
the structure itself: a huge 'Jifj Jig mechanical life. This in turn
polyhedral framework T - 1 i Mir ii induced a peculiar form
of cast-iron columns and | ^ '''' of fantasy that anticipated
laminated plate beams * the machine-like imaginary
supporting a series of ribbed J 0 succeeding futurism,39
Every *~~p7 y '' ^ ^whose dream
rolled-iron plate beam in the procreation, in the words
frame is of equal length, with ^ ' M ^ r~ °f Hal Foster, was haunted just
similar junctions that form % \\f /7 like Viollet-le-Duc by'the
'at the meeting of these 1 îVïHÙ ® \ \ / spectre of the damaged body
members, a pyramid of like ! j wWj » v Ik À \ .Jim 3 , of the worker-sold
angles'.35 The result is a Ifl lJP ^ fra B^SN^IuK Jp Ultimately, then,
quasi-geodesic structure in Lúl J ■ 1 jffpk W L . knights in armour may have
which a lattice shell is created Provided a historical prelude
by a network of spheres that to Viollet-le-Duc's logic of
intersect to form triangular elements. In makes the viewer vividly conscious of tensions. prosthesis, but
keeping with the rest of Viollet-le-Duc's iron The two materials at play - nature's stone versus and loss s
projects, what is most arresting is the unre- industry's iron - cannot be reduced to the usual A new form
strained structural drama that celebrates frame and infill dialectic. The rigid iron shaft the technologica
the fight between gravity and support: the inserted within the softer masonry construction eliminate a
immense iron prosthesis braces the heavy is a deliberate expression of active (male) tion. Here, na
masonry structure, which would otherwise strength - a 'living thought'36 - within a passive events, beca
come crashing to the ground. To render (female) stone. For Viollet-le-Duc, the energetic you see an anim
palpable the action of support - underscoring iron member acquired a kind of martial sheep, or an
the need for a structural crutch - is no doubt strength. 'The rifle, the canon, it is iron or it does in ord
the dominant aspect of all Viollet-le-Duc's iron bronze', wrote the French philosopher Pierre sustenance a
projects. Here, however, it is pushed to an Leroux in 1845.37 Historically, iron's use for pupil (and V
extreme. The gigantic apparatus reveals a desire military purposes was indeed its oldest 'When you s
to stage struggle, as if the new democratic association (a dimension clearly not lost on comes up fro
collective ego could only take shape under the Viollet-le-Duc). For Leroux, however, the shoots; and
threat of impending collapse. correspondence between iron and warfare was leaves, flowers and
something more specific to modern industrial thus proceeded through th
capitalist society. He grouped together 'iron, forces of an unconscious, a
gunpowder and capital' as the century's three suaged underlife of a mec
homicidal forces, developing a fascinating is no accident, therefore, tha
argument to show how they were born furniture, which left the body
from each other: 'Through its solidity and its embrace of mechanical ar
durability', he wrote, 'iron [like money] embodied physics of an aut
condenses a lot of human sweat in a small of another by putting part o
volume'.36 In this sense, Viollet-le-Duc's 'living the other' - such is the log
thought' could also be conceived as a bellicose
intrusion entering the maternal body of the
domed masonry building. Such a technologi- }_E== ^— u

a\

cally assisted womb served as the perfect / \ ^\\ \ f'

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symbol for the rebirth of a hybrid industrial / \ \\ \
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body-ego. W x
Taken together, the iron projects of Viollet
/
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le-Duc tread a curious line between the histori
cal, the organic and the machinic, in the process
somehow synthesising the three key vectors Spw
that structured nineteenth-century architectural
discourse. But his attempt to complete or to

'repair' the cathedral by inserting into it a dark, ÉfflFL

mut éÊF\ HI I //£
In its domed aspect the concert
Eugène
Eugène
hall projects
Emmanuel
Emmanuel
"^ÜsSB^ IWí'%//
Viollet-le-Duc,
Viollet-le-Duc,
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bodily references as an enveloping
2om-span hallmass, zom-span
(left), market hall {left), market project [mi
project (middle)
instilling a sense of cave-like and
protection. But the and 13.5m-Span hall (right
i3.5m-span hall (right), c. i. 'Mi/iituor

Entretiens
network of iron that invades and supports sur l'architecture,
Entretiens vol II, 1872
sur l'architecture, vol 11,1872

48 AA FILES 68

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 This article borrows and expands
from my Architecture and the Historical
Imagination: Eugène-Emmanuel
Viollet-le-Duc 1814-1879 (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2014) and is part of a research
project funded by the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council
of Canada. I wish to thank Thomas
Weaver for his generous and exacting
editing, and the research assistance
of Edward Houle and the advice of my
colleague Aaron Sprecher.
1. Sigfried Giedion, Mechanisation Takes
Command: A Contribution to Anonymous
History (New York, ny: Oxford
University Press, 1948) pp 329-481.
2. Ibid, p 390.
3. Ibid, p 2.
4. Allison Muri, The Enlightenment Cyborg:
A History of Communications and
Control in the Human Machine,
1660-1830 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2007). The study of the
history of the intersection of body and
machine in the nineteenth century
remains embryonic. Apart from Muri's
book see Laurence Guignard, Pascal
Raggi and Étienne Thévenin (eds),
Corps et machines à l'âge industriel
(Rennes: Presses universitaires de
Rennes, 2011); Laura Otis, Networking:
Communicating with Bodies and
Machines in the Nineteenth Century
(Ann Arbor, mi: University of Michigan,
2001); Lianne C Castravelli, 'Building
Beyond Limits: Fantastic Collisions
Between Bodies and Machines
in French and English Fin-de-Siècle
Literature', PhD dissertation,
Université de Montréal, 2012; Claude
Quiguer, Femmes et machines de 1900:
Lecture d'une obsession modern style
(Paris: Klincksieck, 1979). See also the
chapter 'Machine et organisme' in
Georges Canguilhem, La connaissance
de la vie (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1952)
and Alain Corbin, Georges Vigarello
and Jean-Jacques Courtine (eds),
Histoire du corps. Tome 2: De la
Révolution à la Grande guerre (Paris:
Le Seuil, 2005).
5. On the link between architecture and
eugenics see Georges Teyssot,
'Figuring the Invisible', chapter two of
his A Topology of Everyday Constella
tions (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2013),
pp 31-82.
6. Rosalind Williams, The Triumph of
Human Empire: Verne, Morris and
Stevenson at the End of the World
(Chicago, il: Chicago University Press,
2013), p 110.
7. See Paul Malmassari, Les trains blindés
français 1826-1962 (Paris: Soteca, 2010),
pp 22-23.
8. Mark Wigley, 'Prosthetic Theory:
The Disciplining of Architecture',
Assemblage 15 (August 1991), p 23.
9. Tom F Peters, Building the Nineteenth
Century (Cambridge, ma: mit Press,
1996), p 354
10. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,
Histoire d'un dessinateur, comment on
apprend à dessiner (Paris: J Hetzel, 1879),
p 131. English translation by Virginia
Champlin, Learning How to Draw: Or,
The Story of a Young Designer (New York,
ny: Putman, 1881), p 140.
11. Viollet-le-Duc was of course not the
only one to understand industrial
products as coextensive with nature.
The opening sentence of German
engineer Franz Reuleaux's famous
AA FILES 68
The Kinetics of Machinery of 1875 - the
founding study for our modern way
of thinking about mechanism - states
it clearly: 'While in appearance a
machine differs greatly from any of the
force- or motion-distributors of nature,
yet for the theoretical or pure
mechanician no such difference exists
... so that to him the problems of
machinery fall into the same class as
those of the mechanical phenomena
of nature.' See Franz Reuleaux, The
Kinetics of Machinery: Outlines of
a Theory of Machines (New York, ny:
Dover Publications, 1963), p 29.
Originally published in German in 1875
as Theoretische Kinematik: Grundziige
einer Théorie des Maschinenwesens.
A French edition was published in 1877
under the title Cinématique:principes
fondamentaux d'une théorie générale
des machines. The first English edition
dates from 1876. Reuleaux of course
never compared an animal's limbs to
the organs of his machines.
£.a*UMMT. mdcccixiv:
Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,
46m-span polyhedral vaulted (London:
Entretiens sur l'architecture, vol
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12. See Georges Teyssot, op cit, pp 183-250.
13. Passage from a letter from Viollet
le-Duc to his publisher Jules Hetzel,
20 July 1874, Médiathèque de
l'architecture et du patrimoine, Paris,
'Correspondance et rapports, 1872-75',
doc 93.
14. Viollet-le-Duc, Learning How to Draw,
op cit, p 21.
15. See for instance Laurent Baridon,
L'imaginaire scientifique de Viollet-le-Duc
(Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000), p 136; see
also Michel Vernes, 'Voir c'est savoir,
savoir c'est créer', Le Voyage d'Italie
d'Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1836-1837,
edited by Geneviève Viollet-le-Duc and
Jean-Jacques Aillagon (Paris: École
nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts,
1980), pp 21-24. Madame Geneviève
Viollet-le-Duc relayed to me personally
the same opinion.
16. In the very last page of the novel
Viollet-le-Duc himself writes that it is
a 'histoire véridique'; see Histoire d'un
dessinateur, op cit, p 302. For my analysis
Critical Writings of Adrian Stokes
hall, Thames and Hudson, 1978),
il,
vol 2, p 254. 1872
of the autobiographical ch
of The Story of a Young De
Architecture and the Histor
Imagination, op cit, pp 499
17. In fact Viollet-le-Duc on
Jean manufactured, usin
production, 'iron and woo
that join elegance to grea
and that these were of 'novel and
original' designs; see Histoire d'un
dessinateur, op cit, p 298. But knowing
the type of movable and adaptable
furniture in iron and wood that he had
built for himself, I speculate that
Viollet-le-Duc may have had that sort of
design in mind.
18. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc,
Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier
français de l'époque carlovingienne
à la Renaissance (hereafter drm), vol 5
(Paris: A Morel et cie, 1875), p 5.
19. Ibid, ps
20. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné
de l'architecture française du xie au xvie
siècle (hereafter dra), ten vols (Paris:
B. Bance/A Morel, 1854-68), vol 3, p 164.
21. Viollet-le-Duc, drm, vol 5, p 125.
22. Ibid, p 484.
23. Ibid, pp 484-85.
24. Viollet-le-Duc, Entretiens sur
l'architecture, two vols (Paris: A Morel,
1863-72), hereafter ea, vol 1, pp 25-27.
25. Ibid, p 25.
26. Viollet-le-Duc, dra, vol 1, p vi. For
a fuller account of the anatomical
character of the Dictionnaire raisonné
see chapter eight of my Architecture
and the Historical Imagination, op cit,
pp 267-304. See also my 'Opposition
et équilibre: le rationalisme organique
de Viollet-le-Duc', Revue de l'art, no 112,
Spring 1996, pp 28-37 and 'Anatomie
comparée et anatomie philosophique:
l'unité du monde selon Viollet-le-Duc',
Architecture and Ideas, no 3,1999,
pp 46-62. On the anatomical character
of the illustrations of the Dictionnaire
raisonné see my 'Viollet-le-Duc's Optic',
Antoine Picon and Alessandra Ponte
(eds), Architecture and the Sciences
(Princeton, nj: Princeton Architectural
Press, 2002), pp 118-39.
27. Viollet-le-Duc, dra, vol 1, p 149.
28. Viollet-le-Duc, ea, vol 1, p 82.
29. For an extended discussion of Viollet
le-Duc's racial theories see chapter 10
& 11 of my Architecture and the Historical
Imagination, op cit, pp 333-406.
30. Viollet-le-Duc, ea, vol 2, p 38.
31. Ibid, pp 34-35.
32. Ibid, p43.
33. Ibid, p 47.
34. Ibid, p 91.
35. Ibid, p 95.
36. Ibid, vol 1, p 294.
37. Pierre Leroux, 'De la recherche des
biens matériels, ou de l'individualisme
et du socialisme - les juifs rois de
l'époque', Revue sociale, ou, Solution
pacifique du problème du prolétariat 1
(1845-46), p 55.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Hal Foster, 'Prosthetic Gods', in
Prosthetic Gods (Cambridge, ma: mit
Press, 2004).
41. Viollet-le-Duc, Learning How to Draw,
op cit, p 21.
42. I am borrowing here from Adrian
Stokes in 'Smooth and Rough', in The