Rewriting the Urbanist’s Archaeology
This photograph, taken during the filming of a documentary on the legacy of Georges-Eugène Haussmann, [1] shows the design historian and art and architecture critic Françoise Choay walking the streets of Paris. In this film, as well as in the photograph, what becomes evident is Choay’s very humanistic approach to urbanism and her sharp, critical mind. What one can also sense from the photograph is Choay’s visceral need to visit places, to walk them and experience them, to go to the source and explore the essence of the subject in order to sense proportions and space. She also highlighted the need to have a critical eye in the lectures that she delivered from 1966 onwards at the University of La Cambre in Brussels and the University of Vincennes in Paris, [2] as well as universities in the United States and Italy. In her classes, she encouraged students to look critically at the purely functionalist conception of urban design, and to question the tasks of the designer by going on site and experiencing it.
Choay does not criticise urban planning per se, but rather the theories underlying urbanism and heritage. She does so through her publications, notably Urbanisme, utopies et réalités. Une anthologie (1965), [3] a book that exemplifies her critical examination of thoughts in the discourse of urban design. The book provides a concise summary of urbanism-related ideas from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Simultaneously, Choay analyses the urbanisation of the twentieth century via the works of thirty-seven different authors, and identifies purported new planning strategies as models. The book stands out for its extraordinarily manifesto-like character. [4]
Choay’s wide-ranging interests and engagement were also evident in her academic career, which began with her initial studies in philosophy, before turning to aesthetics, architecture and, finally, urban planning. Choay was born in Paris in March 1925. Brought up in a bourgeois, secular and republican Judaic and Alsatian Protestant family, she acted in the Resistance by transmitting news next to her philosophy studies, and having an enormous interest in the people and situations around her. Choay’s foundation and convictions were laid and strengthened early in her life. [5] After she finished her studies, she dedicated herself to art and architecture criticism. What marked an interdisciplinary shift in her career was her 1965 article on designer Jean Prouvé’s Maison des Jours Meilleurs (1956).
Choay visited Prouvé’s prototype house, built as a response to the government being forced to commit to funding a shelter after many homeless people froze to death in the winter of 1954. Following the publication of her review in a French news magazine, France Observateur, she wrote numerous other articles, including a report on the grands ensembles, in which Choay was one of the first to criticise the French state’s urban planning response to the housing shortage after World War II.
Choay’s experience in journalism influenced her career very positively, sharpening her sense of observation, critical thinking and ability to focus on the essentials. These characteristics informed both her academic writing and her work as a lecturer decisively, and thus contributed significantly to her success.
Image Credits: Still from Jean-François Dars and Anne Papillault (dir.).
1. Histoires courtes DarsPapillault. POURQUOI HAUSSMANN Par Françoise Choay. Vimeo. (Accessed 20 April 2022) Link.
2. Frey, Katia, and Eliana Perotti, eds. Frauen Blicken Auf Die Stadt Architektinnen, Planerinnen, Reformerinnen. Reimer, 2019.
3. Choay, Françoise. Das Architektonische Erbe, Eine Allegorie: Geschichte Und Theorie Der Baudenkmale. Trans. Christian Voigt. Vieweg, 1997.
4. Choay, Françoise. Interview. “On the Disaster of Amnesia. An Interview with Françoise Choay.” By Lionel Devlieger. ARCHIS, vol. 4, 2003: pp. 26-31.
5. Paquot, Thierry. “L’invitée: Francoise Choay.” Urbanisme, vol. 278, November–December 1994: pp. 5-12.
