Editorial For a Dictionary of the History of Construction

Since Viollet-le-Duc, no one has tried to create a dictionary about the history of construction; meanwhile new relationships have developed between the politicized city dweller and the surrounding environment. The Academies preserved the arts and crafts. The Encyclopédistes elucidated “the order and sequence of human knowledge.” The end of the nineteenth century enshrined construction in memory. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the scope of knowledge was beyond any reckoning. A collaborative dictionary would spotlight new terms and meanings.