Stereotomy of Vaulted Systems of the École Polytechnique

This study investigates the contributions made by Gaspard Monge and the students of his School to the stereotomy of vaulted systems in France between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The complexity of the apparatuses and the generality of the proposed solutions express the extent of the contributions that descriptive geometry made to the applications that preceded it. First among these stereotomy, which, though in decline from an operational point of view, was considered fundamental in the schools that were then being founded. The ellipsoidal vault, the helicoidal apparatus and the arrière voussure de Marseille are expressions of the relationship between the operability of stereotomy and the theoretical speculations of descriptive geometry, which operates through the synthetic language of drawing. These applications make explicit a modus operandi, capable of resolving the problems of defining, representing and expressing the geometric properties of figures using the synthetic methods of descriptive geometry.