Of Crystals, Cells, and Strata: Natural History and Debates on the Form of a New Architecture in the Nineteenth Century

One of the most peculiar texts of French Romanticism is Jules Michelet's today little-read tome,L'Insecte(1857), a fascinating forerunner of FranzKafka's Metamorphosis. In Book 2, Chapter 8, entitled ‘De la rénovation de nos arts par l'étude de l'Insecte' [On the renovation of our arts through studying insects]. Michelet writes there already of two themes that are central to the panorama of intersections between natural history thinking and architectural thought and practice outlined in this essay (itself an interim report on a much longer research project). Here I can take up only some key episodes in the veritable explosion of interest throughout the long nineteenth century (1789 to 1914), and after 1850 in particular: in inorganic and organic nature as sources of inspiration, models even, in the quest to confront the challenges not only of modern society and construction but also of the yearning for a modern style in architecture, and the issue of the new ability to see rather than intuit the inner workings of nature. Michelet writes: