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University of Cincinnati UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI _____________ , 20 _____ I,______________________________________________, hereby submit this as part of the requirements for the degree of: ________________________________________________ in: ________________________________________________ It is entitled: ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Approved by: ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ POCHÉ PARISIENNE: THE INTERIOR URBANITY OF NINETEENTH CENTURY PARIS A Thesis submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in the Department of Architecture of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning 2001 by Sudipto Ghosh Dip. Arch (B. Arch), C.E.P.T, Ahmedabad, India, 1997 Committee Chair: John E. Hancock Poché Parisienne: The Interior Urbanity of Nineteenth Century Paris ABSTRACT The “Haussmannization” of Paris was characterized as much by what it ‘defined’, as by what it excluded. The thesis focuses on the apartment houses, the brothels, and the sewers as embodiments of those exclusions that were part of the process of Paris’s modernization between 1852 and 1870. By analyzing the representations of these spaces in architectural drawings, photographs and the literary novel, the paper posits that poché, an architectural drawing technique of defining and excluding, was implicitly a part of that process. For Haussmann and Napoleon III, the image of progress was built upon the elimination of all that could not be observed, decoded, or homogenized. In attacking the hidden pockets of private spaces of the apartment houses of the lower classes, the brothels, sewers and catacombs as disorderly, unhygienic and immoral, the State promoted notions of progress as scientific, hygienic and moral. Emile Zola’s novels, on the other hand, are attacks on Haussmannization. Critics have claimed that Zola’s writings demystify the image of the modern and progressive city by exposing the literal and moral filth that lay behind the new structures of the city and their deceptively imposing facades. The act of differentiation and classification in both their attempts, the thesis argues, are comparable to the technique of poché that prescribes the covering up of certain elements of an architectural drawing in order for other elements to emerge more clearly. To understand the poché as an act of differentiation, an act of putting in a bag and covering up all that is mysterious and unpredictable is to understand it beyond the scope of the architectural drawing. The poché emerges as a human tendency rather than a technique. Its association with the image of modern society and the progressive city reveals a perception of the world in terms of conceptual pairs: black and white, interior and exterior, solid and void, public and private, and so on. These conceptual pairs have come to be understood as natural and self- evident, however, to realize that the act of differentiation is only a technique or a method, opens up possibilities in architectural thinking not restricted by such a method. Contents Acknowledgements …………………………………………………… 2 Introduction……………………………………………………………. 3 Chapter 1.0 POCHÉ …………………………………………………………… 11 1.1 Background and Etymology 1.2 Poché and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts 1.3 The Paris Opera 2.0 HAUSSMANN AND POCHÉ …………………………………… 23 2.1 The Nineteenth-Century Apartment House 2.2 The Brothel 2.3 The Sewers and Catacombs 3.0 ZOLA AND POCHÉ……………………………………………… 39 3.1 Zola and the Nineteenth Century Realist Novel 3.2 Pot Bouille 3.3 Nana 4.0 POCHÉ …………………………………………………………… 67 4.1 The Apartment House and the Mirror 4.2 The Brothel and Degas’s Monotypes and Pastels 4.3 Félix Nadar’s Portraits of Celebrities and Sewers 4.4 The Phantom of the Opera ILLUSTRATION CREDITS …………………………………………... 93 BIBLIOGRAPHY… …………………………………………………… 96 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to a number of people for this work. I would like to thank my advisor, John Hancock for his invaluable comments and his constant encouragement for my work. I would like to thank Patrick Snadon not only for his rigorous criticism but also for initiating the topic. It was in one of his courses that I, like many others, found a topic of interest that could be developed into a thesis. I am grateful to Jim Bradford for his lectures on philosophy that will affect any work that I take up in my life. I would also like to thank Daniel Friedman for his inspiring lectures and talks and, even though he could not be a part of my committee, his suggestions were very helpful. My gratitude also goes to Aarati Kanekar for help with the section on Zola’s novels. Friends and colleagues have contributed to the development of my ideas, through conversations, class discussions and their own research works: particular thanks are due to Jaideep Chatterjee, Andrew Schilling, Lejla Vujicic, and Ellen Guerrettaz. I also thank Bhawna, my wife, for her enthusiasm in reading my work and her questions that have clarified my own thinking. I am grateful to the University of Cincinnati for an excellent program. Any doubts that I had about an all-theory Masters program in architecture were dispelled within the first week of my joining. I am indebted to Dean Jay Chatterjee for the financial support for my education and also for my travel to Paris and Istanbul. Finally, I’d like to thank my parents for all their support and encouragement. Sudipto Ghosh Cincinnati, 2001 2 INTRODUCTION Every inquiry begins with a mystery and yet the mysterious is that which resists inquiry. The study of Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century is marked by such a paradox perhaps more significantly than any other time, since in no other period in history was the ‘mysterious’ attacked so fiercely. The ‘mysterious’ was identified in various ways as the ‘other’ of the rational, moral, and hygienic and efforts made were towards its eradication. The period between 1852 and 1870, coinciding with the reign of the Second Empire, not only witnessed an intense ‘cleaning up’ of the city through city planning, moral policing, and urban sanitation, but also severe criticism against this effort. Artists, writers, and revolutionaries disapproved of the Empire’s efforts for not matching the ideals of the Enlightenment and merely implementing a superficial cleansing. It was in fact the Enlightenment that laid the grounds for a perception of the world where the ‘mysterious’ became classified as merely the ‘not yet resolved’, and more significantly, a perception that relied on classifications: a systematic arrangement of the world in terms of difference. Things are easily differentiated and categorized in such a structured world and categorizations are assumed to correspond to differences in a precise manner. Such a perception has not only become the prevalent mode of thought for science, it has established itself as the only way. As Martin Heidegger might say, the ‘odos’, the way, has become the ‘methodos’.1 However, if the ‘mysterious’ resists 1 Martin Heidegger, quoted by Jacques Derrida, “Architecture Where the Desire May Live” in Neil Leach, ed., Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory (New York: Routledge, 1997), 319-323 3 inquiry, inherent in it’s resistance may lie a loosening of such an ossification of thought. An investigation into the various acts of ‘cleaning up’, this study anticipates, would provide ample evidence of such a resistance. The study, therefore, is less about the hidden, interior, ‘mysterious’ Paris, as the subtitle may imply, and more about the attempts made in the second half of the nineteenth-century to classify, control, and resolve such a Paris. Poché, the act of blackening, filling-in, differentiating, classifying etc., is offered as a metaphor for such attempts. Although in the course of this study, poché has been discussed in several senses that are non-architectural, the term is inherently linked to architecture through its use at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where it was used to describe the act of filling or darkening walls and service areas of a plan. This study attempts to establish, however, that this act of differentiation is more than a mere tool for representation and is well beyond the scope of the architectural drawing. In fact, Poché emerges as a basic human tendency that perceives the world in terms of conceptual pairs: black and white, interior and exterior, solid and void, public and private, clean and dirty, moral and immoral, and so on. In its study of nineteenth-century Paris, particularly the second half of the nineteenth-century, the thesis concentrates on three kinds of spaces that were identified as ‘mysterious’ by those who launched their attacks upon it: the servants spaces and apartments within the apartment houses, the brothels, and the sewers. These, along with their occupants, were the main targets of the attacks that were identified as assaults against irrationality, immorality, and insalubrity. 4 The thesis is divided into four chapters. Each of these chapters deals with the three spaces: apartment house, brothel and sewer. The last chapter, which has an additional subsection on the Paris Opera, also serves as a conclusion. The chapters, though related to each other, could become individual essays on the same issue. They have been written
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