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Jacques Gaucher Born in Nantes, 1949 Member from 1990 to 1993 Jacques Gaucher is a architect graduate from the Nantes School of Architecture, 1974. He attended P. Courbin's seminar on historic archeology and material civilization at the EHESS in 1982 and completed his doctorate with D. Lombard at the EHESS in 1992 (with a specilaty in Urban Studies). Beginning as an architect-urbanist (1974-1984), he has since directed specialized missions to Asia (since 1983), has taught at the Nantes School of Architecture (1983-2002), was a member of the EFEO (1990-1993), and most recently has been director of the French Archeological mission at Angkor (since 1995). He has participated in archeological missions to Ras-Ibn-Hani, Syria (1980-1082), Anuradhapura, Sri-Lanka (1984-1986), and has led study missions to Tamil Nadu, India (1985-1989), Chandernagor, India (1986-1988-1989), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (1989-1990), Panauti, Nepal (1991-1992), Phanom-Wan, Thailand (1992), Luang-Prabang, Laos (l994), and China (1995). Now seconded to the EFEO (2002), he is conducting a program of urban archeology at Angkor, Cambodia (1994-1998, 2000-2004). His field of research centers on questions concerning Asian towns. He bases his work on the material quality of space, and works to build an understanding of the modalities of structuring a specific kind of space : urban space. Seeing himself as a social scientist rather than a historian of art, J. Gaucher makes use of several different disciplines. Towns are understood as accumulations of articulated series of constructed forms and organized spaces. On the basis of morphologic reality, and also archeologic and/or ethnographic data, the historical and social forms of the conception, building, functioning, and representation that are at work in a town can be identified. The programs he has developed are concerned in the first place with representations of regularity. The approach chosen is that of the encounter between the spatialities produced and prescribed by the Brahmanist and Buddhist worlds, and precise local geographic and cultural contexts. On the basis of this problematic, two major areas are of interest : South Asia, for a model of temple villages investigated on the basis of a series of studies carried out in Tamil territory, and Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia with the archeological study of the ancient Khmer royal capital Angkor Thom. For J. Gaucher, this contribution to his field of study should eventually permit on the one hand a better integration of Asian urban forms within a corpus of international forms that are still perceived essentially from a European-American perspective, and, on the other hand, a start on comparisons on the basis of precise examples, such as that of the understanding of visual unity in urban space. |
Publications 1982 « Fortifications antiques et urbanisme moderne », in La fortification dans l'histoire du monde grec, Paris, CNRS. 1991 « Recherches urbaines en Inde du Sud », in Passeur d'Orient. Encounters between India and France, Paris, Ministère des Affaires étrangères. 1992 « À propos des temples khmers de Thaïlande », BEFEO, 79/1 (1992). 1994 « Architectures et mythe fondateur », in Penser la ville demain, qu'est-ce qui institue la ville ?, sous la dir. de Cynthia Ghorra-Gobin, Paris, L'Harmattan. 2002 « Archaeology and Town Planning : an Indian Model in South-East Asia », Urban Morphology 6- 1(2002), p. 46-49. 2003 « New Archaeological Data on the Urban Space of the Capital City of Angkor Thom », in Fishbones and Glittering Emblems. Southeast Asian Archaeology 2002, Anna Karlström and Anna Källén (éd.), Stockholm, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 2003. |