The ‘Coupe Anatomique’: sections through the nineteenth century Parisian apartment block

Capturing Interiority

“…The exhibition Signs of Life, by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, was an attempt to represent the internal structure of everyday world, as an inquiry into "the forms of the ordinary" (Fausch, 1997, p. 76) through thousands of photographs using the realistic display technique. The Coupe Anatomique (Periton, 2004) captured everyday life as part of urban life through a section drawing that contained pieces of everyday stories. Another drawing technique, developed surface interior (Evans, 1997), depicts objects as part of interior boundaries that reveal the inhabitation of space.…”

Untitled

“…The exhibition Signs of Life, by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, was an attempt to represent the internal structure of everyday world, as an inquiry into "the forms of the ordinary" (Fausch, 1997, p. 76) through thousands of photographs using the realistic display technique. The Coupe Anatomique (Periton, 2004) captured everyday life as part of urban life through a section drawing that contained pieces of everyday stories. Another drawing technique, developed surface interior (Evans, 1997), depicts objects as part of interior boundaries that reveal the inhabitation of space.…”

Expanding the boundaries of architectural representation

“…If we return to nineteenth-century France, Periton's explication forms a new historical conception of the popular sectional drawings found in illustrated newspapers, guides and didactic histories of Paris. 6 By invoking…”