Antoine Picon is Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and Co-Director of Doctoral Programs (PhD & DDes) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design

Harvard Graduate School of Design

The Harvard Graduate School of Design is a graduate school at Harvard University offering degrees in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and Design.-History:...

. He teaches courses in the history of architecture and technology.

Career

Trained as an engineer, architect, and historian of science and art, Picon is best known for his work in the history of architectural technologies from the eighteenth century to the present. His French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment (1988, with an English translation in 1992) is a synthetic study of the disciplinary "deep structures" of architecture, garden design, and engineering in the eighteenth century, and their transformations as new issues of territorial management and infrastructure-systems planning were confronted. He has published six other books:

• 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),
• La ville territoire des cyborgs (1998),
• Les Saint-Simoniens: Raison, Imaginaire, et Utopie (2002),
• Tra utopia e ruggine, Paesaggi dell'ingegneria dal Settecento a oggi (2006),
• Marc Mimram Architect-Engineer: Hybrid (2007).

Picon has also published numerous articles, mostly dealing with the complementary histories of architecture and technology.

Awards

Picon has received a number of awards in France for his writings, including the Medaille de la Ville de Paris and twice the Prix du Livre d'Architecture de la ville de Briey. Picon received engineering degrees from the Ecole Polytechnique

École Polytechnique

The École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...

 and from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees

École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées

Founded in 1747, the École nationale des ponts et chaussées , often referred to as les Ponts, is the world's oldest civil engineering school...

, an architecture degree from the Ecole d'Architecture de Paris-Villemin, and a doctorate in history from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

The École des hautes études en sciences sociales is a leading French institution for research and higher education, a Grand Établissement. Its mission is research and research training in the social sciences, including the relationship these latter maintain with the natural and life sciences...

.