Building Construction and Architectural Practice: the Teaching of François Marie Jaÿ at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Paris (1824-1863)

This paper focuses on the teaching of Adolphe François Marie Jaÿ, successor of Jean Baptiste Rondelet, to the chair of building construction of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The contents and the means of spread of the technical knowledge and, above all, the topics of the assigned building construction competition programs, put in evidence the close link between didactics and architectural practice, established by Jaÿ in the crucial phase of a new legitimation of professional role of the architect. Without to deny the contribution of the history of the architecture to the learning of the constructive cultures, the competition programs elaborated by Jaÿ express the osmosis between his teacher's activity and his architect's works in particular for the municipal administration of Paris. From the end of the 1820s to the beginning of the 1860s, the technical and functional characteristics of the architectures and infrastructures of the contemporary city emerge through the competition themes and drawings.