Exchanges, Adaptations and Borrowings

Since it became the subject of scholarly reflection and theoretical debate, housing in France has been the subject of my research and my position consists of confronting spatial arrangements with the evolution of customs and life styles. The relations between architecture, culture and living practices are explored, combining the examination of architectural doctrines and the analysis of changes occurring at the same time in French society. These investigations, which are considered on the one hand as part of social history and of a reflection on architectural conception, for example in the two volumes of Architecture de la vie privée1 also concentrate on an ethnological examination aimed at understanding new ways of life and the modes of evolution of contemporary buildings, as in Urbanité, sociabilité, intimité.2

Notes:

• Monique Eleb (with Anne Debarre-Blanchard), Architectures de la vie priveé. Maisons et mentalités. XVIIe- XIXe siècles (Paris: Édition Archives de l’Architecture Moderne, 1989), 311 (new edition paris: Hazan, 1999); Monique Eleb (with Anne Debarre-Blanchard), L’invention de l’habitation moderne, Paris, 1880-1914, Architecture de la vie privée. Suite (Paris: Hazan/Archives de l’Architecture Moderne, 1995, new edition 2000), 550; third volume forthcoming
• Monique Eleb (with A.M. Châtelet), Urbanité, sociabilité, intimité. Des logements d’aujourdhui (Éditions de l’Épure, 1997), 352; Monique Eleb (with A.M. Châtelet and T. Mandoul), Penser l’habiter. Le logements en questions (PAN 14, 1987) (Liège, Paris: Éditions Mardaga, 1990), 147.