Thesis ID: CBB001567515

Airs of Modernity 1881--1914 (2013)

unapi

Ramirez, Enrique Gualberto, III (Author)


Eigen, Edward A.
Boyer, Christine
Cohen, Jean-Louis
Princeton University
Boyer, Christine
Cohen, Jean-Louis
Harwood, John
Harwood, John


Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Advisor: Eigen, Edward A; Committee Members: Boyer, Christine, Cohen, Jean-Louis, Harwood, John.
Physical Details: 629 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation considers the burgeoning aeronautical culture in France between the Franco- Prussian War and the First World War as the setting for a conceptualization of air as a modernizing phenomenon. Changes from aerostatic to aerodynamic flight during this time--that is, the shift from lighter-than-air flight via balloons to heavier-than-air flight with airplanes in nineteenth-century France--resulted in a rethinking of the envelope of air that moved through buildings and surrounded cities as something that was not exactly air, into something that was more than just air. Air fragmented into several modernities: It was recast as ground and treated like its own legal domain; It was an abstraction made material due to experiments in laboratories and the development of advanced representation and measurement techniques; Air even occupied its own separate historical domain--these developments all came about due to the collision, so to speak, of aeronautics and architecture. And yet architecture was the very device, the instrumentality that made the cultural ramifications of this collision apparent. Different modes of representation will be analyzed for their role in using architecture to communicate aspects of these aerial modernities. L'empire de l'air (1881), by the French ornithologist and artist Louis Pierre Mouillard (1834-1897) features drawings of large birds of prey to introduce the idea of air as a supporting and dynamic substrate. The conception of air as a "column" of geometricized space from two legal treatises by the French jurist Paul Fauchille (1858-1926) considers the relationships between building envelopes on aerial sovereignty. Photographs of smoked air flowing over solid objects by Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) show how an architectural apparatus--a sealed, wood-framed wind tunnel with a glazed wall--can be used to turn moving air from something that was "optically empty" to a discernible, tangible phenomenon. Finally, the idea of a wind tunnel as an architectural object reaches its fullest expression in Gustave Eiffel's (1832-1923) aeronautical experiments. His wind tunnels at Champ-de-Mars and Auteuil are analyzed as architectural machines for the recording of pressurized streamlines on solid objects. In short, Eiffel's wind tunnels will be understood as part of a larger entanglement between architecture and human flight via the convention of line drawing. This dissertation will conclude with an examination of architectural drawings by Adolphe Augustin Rey (1864-1934). Though Rey's name is not associated with advances in French aeronautics, his drawings for a worker housing competition sponsored by the Fondation Rothschild nevertheless stand for an important proposition underlying this dissertation. Rey's plans and elevations for the Rothschild housing scheme suggest a new kind of relation between architecture and its surrounding air. Here, architectural drawings help elucidate how air has become a historical and material condition coextensive with architecture.

...More

Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 74/09(E), Mar 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1368987854.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567515/

Similar Citations

Book Leo Marriott; (2019)
Early Jet Bombers, 1944–1954 (/isis/citation/CBB814404699/)

Book Mark C. Wilkins; (2019)
German Fighter Aircraft in World War I: Design, Construction and Innovation (/isis/citation/CBB564215890/)

Book Scamehorn, H. Lee; (2000)
Balloons to Jets: A Century of Aeronautics in Illinois, 1855-1955 (/isis/citation/CBB000102159/)

Book Greenly, Larry W.; (2013)
Eugene Bullard: World's First Black Fighter Pilot (/isis/citation/CBB001550034/)

Book Leo Marriott; (2020)
Early Jet Fighters 1944-1954: The Soviet Union and Europe (/isis/citation/CBB453044826/)

Thesis Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira; (2018)
The Ascending Republic: Aeronautical Culture in France, 1860-1914 (/isis/citation/CBB439076207/)

Book Bonillo, Jean Lucien; (2004)
Les Riviera de Charles Garnier et de Gustave Eiffel: Le rêve de la raison (/isis/citation/CBB000773375/)

Article David Aubin; (2017)
Ballistics, Fluid Mechanics, and Air Resistance at Gâvre, 1829–1915 (/isis/citation/CBB798989206/)

Book Clodfelter, Mark; (2010)
Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917--1945 (/isis/citation/CBB001212488/)

Article Meyer, Peter B.; (2013)
The Airplane as an Open-Source Invention (/isis/citation/CBB001320690/)

Book Harriss, Joseph; (1975)
The tallest tower: Eiffel and Belle Epoque (/isis/citation/CBB000013022/)

Article Soppelsa, Peter; Stein, Blair; (2013)
Santos-Dumont's Blimp Passes the Eiffel Tower (/isis/citation/CBB001320540/)

Book González Redondo, Francisco A.; (2009)
Protagonistas de la Aeronáutica: Leonardo Torres Quevedo (/isis/citation/CBB001022244/)

Article Guivarc'h, Marcel; (2007)
Les ambulances civiles pendant la guerre franco-prussienne (19 juillet 1870--28 janvier 1871) (/isis/citation/CBB000931847/)

Book Anthony E. Clark; Leland M. Roth; (2020)
China Gothic: The Bishop of Beijing and His Cathedral (/isis/citation/CBB144344631/)

Article Vorotnikov, O. S.; (2008)
The Use of Anti-Aircraft Rocketry during the First World War (/isis/citation/CBB000930362/)

Book Richard D. Newton; (2019)
The RAF and Tribal Control: Airpower and Irregular Warfare between the World Wars (/isis/citation/CBB701743531/)

Authors & Contributors
Leo Marriott
Mark C. Wilkins
Nord, Philip G.
Leland M. Roth
Richard D. Newton
De Oliveira, Patrick Luiz Sullivan
Concepts
Aircraft; airplanes
Technology and war; technology and the military
Engineering, aeronautical
World War II
Military technology
Balloons and ballooning
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
20th century, late
20th century
Places
France
United States
Germany
Soviet Union
Great Britain
Europe
Institutions
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment