Pages d’un Journal de Chantier. Riflessi di Jean Cocteau in Berthold Lubetkin

This essay investigates a curious text by Berthold Lubetkin, Pages d’un Journal de Chantier, published in the October 1932 issue of “The Architectural Review” as a presentation of the architect’s first completed building in Paris, an immeuble de rapport located on the Avenue de Versailles. The text is accompanied by hand-drawn caricatures of the French bourgeoisie: investors, future tenants of the apartments, clerks of the administrative offices, future neighbours. These caricatures, as well as Lubetkin’s narrative style, reveal an interest in the literary and artistic avant-garde, in particular, Jean Cocteau, while the interwoven narratives of text and image speak of an approach to architecture rooted in art, and at the same time, politically involved.