Antoine Picon / Harvard University

Antoine Picon is the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and Director of Research at the GSD. He teaches courses in the history and theory of architecture and technology. He is also Director of Research at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris. Trained as an engineer, architect, and historian, Picon works on the history of architectural and urban technologies from the eighteenth century to the present. He has published extensively on this subject.
Four of his books are devoted to the transition from early-modern societies to the industrial era: French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment (1988, English translation 1992), Claude Perrault (1613-1688) ou la curiosité d’un classique (1988), L’Invention de L’ingénieur moderne, L’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées 1747-1851 (1992), and Les Saint-Simoniens: Raison, Imaginaire, et Utopie (2002).
With La Ville territoire des cyborgs (1998), Picon began to investigate the changes brought to cities and architecture by the development of digital tools and digital culture.