Reclus’ houses: towards the nature-city fusion, 1830-1871

Abstract

The idea of the union of man and nature was fundamental in the urban vision of the anarchists geographers Reclus and Kropotkin. This paper sets the “city-nature” fusion approach which Élisée Reclus stated in some text series from 1895, in his firsts writtings between 1858 and 1871. The contribution focus on the residential experience and the geographer’s life story.  It becomes obvious that Reclus, while giving up his antiurban youth stance for an increasing value of the city, he’s progressively appreciating the spaces of the suburban house as the ideal place for the everyday life, a house which gathers the nearness of nature with the civilization of the great city.