Antoine Picon

Antoine Picon is Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and Co-Director of Doctoral Programs (PhD & DDes) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He teaches courses in the history of architecture and technology.

Career

Trained as an engineer, architect, and historian of science and art, Picon is best known for his work in the history of architectural technologies from the eighteenth century to the present. His French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment (1988, with an English translation in 1992) is a synthetic study of the disciplinary "deep structures" of architecture, garden design, and engineering in the eighteenth century, and their transformations as new issues of territorial management and infrastructure-systems planning were confronted.

Honors and Awards

Picon has received a number of awards in France for his writings, including the Medaille de la Ville de Paris and twice the Prix du Livre d'Architecture de la ville de Briey. Picon received engineering degrees from the École Polytechnique^[1] · ^[2] and from the École nationale des ponts et chaussées,^[1] an architecture degree from the Ecole d'Architecture de Paris-Villemin, and a doctorate in history from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

He is Chevalier des Arts et Lettres since 2014.

Works

• Claude Perrault (1613–1688) ou la curiosité d'un classique (1988),
• Picon, Antoine (1992). L'Invention de L'ingénieur moderne, L'Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées 1747-1851. Presses de l'école nationale des ponts et chaussées.
• Picon, Antoine (1998). La ville territoire des cyborgs. Editions de L'Imprimeur.
• Picon, Antoine (2002). Les Saint-Simoniens: Raison, Imaginaire, et Utopie. Belin.
• Tra utopia e ruggine, Paesaggi dell'ingegneria dal Settecento a oggi (2006),
• Picon, Antoine (2007). Marc Mimram Architect-Engineer: Hybrid. Anta Prima/Infolio.
• Picon, Antoine (2010). Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Professions. Birkhäuser, Basel, 224 p.
• Picon, Antoine (2013). Ornament: The Politics of Architecture and Subjectivity. Chichester, Wiley, 2013, 168 p.
• Picon, Antoine (2013). Smart Cities: Théorie et Critique d'un Idéal Auto-réalisateur. Paris, Editions B2, 2013, 120 p.

Picon has also published numerous articles, mostly dealing with the complementary histories of architecture and technology.

References

1. From promotion X1976, cf. the website of the association des anciens élèves de l'École polytechnique (l'AX), i.e. the old fellows association ; information about him on this website also shows his present rank as a French civil servant  : « ingénieur des ponts et chaussées » and confirms he was a student in École nationale des ponts et chaussées as a civil servant, because of his rank when leaving Polytechnique.
2. Website of the bibliothèque de l'École polytechnique, i.e. the École library, onglet « Catalogues de la BCX –> Famille polytechnicienne », search for « Antoine Picon », rsult : « Picon, Antoine Maurice Joseph Charles (X 1976) ».