ABSTRACT
In the thesis he presented for his agrégation qualification at the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of Liège in 1939, Émile Foulon, a University of Liège Civil Engineer of Construction with a doctorate from the University of Paris, focuses on the transposition to space of the funicular polygons traditionally used in the plane and their applications to the calculation of three-dimensional constructions. Surprisingly, his approach was an original one as apparently no systematic study of space funicular polygons, as he defined them, had been published before. Foulon systematically studies the existence and degrees of freedom of space funicular polygons as a function of the number of forces considered. He further proposes to make use of descriptive geometry and develops practical methods which he applies to spatial structures. This article aims to shed light on Foulon's approaches, their specificities and how they relate to other historical methods of space graphic statics. In particular, Foulon’s theoretical and practical motivations will be compared to the radically different approach of Benjamin Mayor. This also explores why Foulon’s methods fell into oblivion.
