MATGRAF : Les matériaux par l'étude de cas en huit coupes historiques

MATGRAF – Case Studies: Eight Historical Cross-Sections is a longitudinal dataset investigating the place and role of materials in architectural thought across two millennia. It brings together 77 case studies identified within eight historical textual cross-sections, from Vitruvius to Kenneth Frampton. Each case study is linked to its source quotation, its location within the analysed text, and a structured analytical coding. The dataset can be explored by material and through four analytical axes: Subject, Relation, Object, and Concept, as well as by case-study type and type of knowledge. Rather than constructing a continuous or linear history of materials, MATGRAF uses these eight historical cross-sections as distinct observation points. The dataset makes it possible to trace how material-related ideas, relations, examples, and forms of knowledge emerge, persist, shift, disappear, or become reactivated across architectural texts. The analytical categories and coding should not be understood as absolute historical facts, but as a structured interpretation of the selected corpus. Likewise, the absence of a material or relation within a given cross-section indicates that it was not identified in the analysed selection, rather than that it is absent from the author’s work or historical period as a whole. The dataset includes the structured corpus, source traceability, analytical tables, and an interactive Excel interface for exploring material trajectories across the eight historical cross-sections. Version 1.0 — 77 case studies — 8 historical cross-sections.DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21870649License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).