The restitution and drawing of lost methods of wood construction in Auguste Choisy's Histoire de l'Architecture

Each chapter of Choisy's Histoire de l'architecture describes the elementary methods of construction proper to a historical period or a specific culture. Especially in the first book of his Histoire, many of the drawings he devoted to this question offer seemingly factual views of wood construction that are in fact inferred from buildings in stone. When considered as a whole, they form a compelling historical panorama. They lead to believe that “fossilization” was almost a general trend in architectures of the past. Each time it proved right, this hypothesis gained credibility. Choisy regarded it as the more convenient approach to what initially appeared as decorative forms. In this paper, I shall study Choisy's particular position in relation to other historians. Secondly, I'll research on the originality and the reliability of his graphical representations. As Choisy's drawings usually stem from documents that we don't see, although we receive an elusive mention about them (a photograph, another drawing, a piece exhibited in a museum), a recovery and comparative study of their sources will elucidate this point.