Developed Surface

Selected images

About

French architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc constructed La Vedette as his home in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1874. Inside the house, the Grande Salle served as the dining room, reception space, and office, and housed the architect’s most ambitious restoration: the reconstitution of an idealised mountain landscape, realised through a painted panorama installed on two walls of the room. The panorama was lost at an unknown time and the home was demolished in 1975.

By interpreting the remaining records, the room is reconstructed and unfolded as a ‘developed surface interior’ (Evans, 1989). The linework and rendering are coded to indicate the degree of documentation or speculation that is inherent in their reconstruction.