Naomi Miller

The form and Meaning of the Fontaine Des Innocents

The first mention of a fountain at the site of the Church of the Innocents in Paris dates from ca. 1186, when one is recorded as being placed in the wall constructed by Philip Augustus to enclose the cemetery.1 The fountain was situated at the angle where the rue aux Fers meets the rue St. Denis (text fig. 1), while the cemetery, according to the salubrious practice of the ancients, then stood outside the city precincts.2 With the opening of a nearby market, the graveyard had been converted into a well-known—indeed infamous—and busy, thoroughfare. Later, in the fourteenth century, charnel houses were built in the encircling vaulted galleries of the churchyard, and the cemetery was surrounded by funerary monuments and shops, and offices of notaries and merchants. Beneath the somber arcades, covered with frescoes representing the dance of death, pleasantries were exchanged and commerce enacted; while burials were being announced, strollers promenaded and processions took place.3 Amidst clear evidence of the...

Building the Unbuildable: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. is a memorial among monuments, a bastion of history on the mall of the nation’s capital. This paper examines the creative process, focusing on the education of architect James Freed in the design of a building, whose primary mission is “to guard memory against oblivion...to inform Americans about the murder of six million Jews and millions of other victims of Nazi tyranny from 1933 to 1945.”

Urban Architectural Studies: Paris

PARIS is a logical target for todays urbanists. New regional schemes for the Paris area are constantly challenged by historic precedents. The books here cited reflect the current focus on urban studies, and the interlocking with architecture of economic development, social purpose, and political history. All these disciplines converge to view the city as a biological organism, and its formation, growth, and decline as part of a natural process. Concentrating on a historical overview, these works are excellent accompaniments to the wealth of architectural tracts now appearing devoted to specific periods of the vernacular in Paris, such as the Stately Mansions of Michel Gallet or the more humble Demeures Parisiennes of Jean Pierre Babelon and Gallets recent Paris Domestic Architecture of the Eighteenth Century. The studies under consideration range from an atlas guide to a documented dissertation, Couperies breezy but brilliant text spanning two thousand years of Parisian history without a footnote, to Sutcliffes detailed examination of the obsolescence of central Paris via an enormous