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Review: Richard Whitman, Architecture, Print Culture, And The Public Sphere In Eighteenth-Century France, Jean-François Bédard

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

This review of Richard Whitman's Architecture, Print Culture, and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century France (Routledge, 2007) examines the relationship between architectural discourse and political power in Frame from 1671 until the end of the ancient regime. The volume successfully foregrounds the socio-political functions of architectural writing, though the use of Habermas' thesis proves to be less convincing. Some of his arguments also tend to be simplistic or schematics .Nonetheless, this volume is a valuable contribution to the study of French architecture during the eighteenth century.