Joseph Mackey

Joseph Mackey, Thesis UCD Architecture, has created a book of interior spaces about a book about interior spaces. The "casting" of specific spaces in the appropriate roles is an interesting parallel to how we might imagine literary places. Seductive.

In his own words:

Le Petite Maison

Le Petite Maison is a novel by Jean-Francois Bastides which describes a plot of seduction as it unfolds in a visit to a maison de plaisance in suburban Paris. It presents an intimate relationship between a host, a guest and a building, through its layering of spaces and its elaborately ornamented rooms its describes an architecture which explicitly seduces and manipulates the senses.

Tremicour, the host, ‘is a man of wit and taste..magnificant and generous’. Melite the guest ‘had never played the coquette and had yet to take a lover; time that other women squandered in love and deception, she spent in instruction, acquiring true taste and knowledge’ he challenges her to visit his Petite Maison after she had discouraged his advances, ‘so they called it a wager and there she went’. The building itself is an active participant in this seduction not only is it the setting but it also acts as an instrument deploying a sequence of scenes where painting, sculpture and ornament are staged to manipulate a user. ‘I can’t take this any more she said this house is too beautiful, there is nothing comparable on earth’.

In order to establish the extent of Melite’s seduction I chose to study Bastide’s Petite Maison through the construction of a layered narrative or scene study, my intention is that through the turning of the pages the seductive layering of the Petite Maison is revealed to the reader.

As there is no accurate architectural representation of Bastide’s Petite Maison. I chose to construct the layered narrative using an architectural cast of players to appear in 3 scenes from the text. The Salon, The Bedroom, and the Boudoir.

Architectural Cast

Salon – Sir William Chambers – York House

Bedroom – Jacque-Francois Blondel, Maison a l’Italienne

Boudoir – Claude-Nicolas Ledoux - Théâtre Guimard

josephmackey@yahoo.com