pp. 339-366

This article attempts to clarify the concepts of freedom and constraint through a study of architectural design work, an activity that its practitioners represent as a constraining space, though they in fact manage to find new solutions within it. The study aims at both factual and theoretical results : factual in that the difficulties of exercising this profession seem to be due less to constraints than the excessive degree of responsibility and near impracticability of the studies they induce ; theoretical because certain facts suggest that a fundamental revision of the negative relation generally understood to obtain between freedom and constraint is in order. Two examples of such facts : prohibitions are not as constraining as prescriptions, and certain « absorption » strategies can open a path to freedom while following a given constraint « to the letter ».