The scaffolding (Georges Perec's Lieux)

The following thesis examines Georges Perec's unfinished project Lieux. It has as a main goal to define the project-and, to that end, construct its history- and, in turn, to interrogate the project from-and for-the field of architecture. Since over the twelve years it remained in progress Lieux was formulated and reformulated, named and renamed, and enacted and adjusted, the thesis proposes to inscribe the project within four different trajectories. Each of these corresponds to a major project reformulation, as well as to one of the four modes of interrogation that Perec identified at play in his work: what he termed, the autobiographical, the sociological, the ludic, and the fictive. In addition, the thesis addresses each of these trajectories as a distinct urban- and spatial-practice. In other words, the thesis attempts to define Lieux, firstly, as a project of remembering through the city, secondly, as a project of recording the city, thirdly, as a project of wandering the city, and, lastly, as a project of fictionalizing through the city. As the thesis ultimately argues, Lieux implied a turning point for all four modes of interrogation, and a realignment in Perec's use of self-imposed constraints towards what Raymond Queneau- and Perec after him-defined as scaffolding. This suggests a number of concepts regarding the use of constraints in the field of architecture. In fact, the thesis has as its ultimate goal to instrumentalize Lieux (or, rather, its findings) as the starting point for a potential theory of self-imposed constraints in architecture.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo