also nominated Professor at the EPHE, Historical and Philological Sciences Department, where he initiated a program of lectures on the history of pre-modern Japan's architecture and gardens—the first and only of its kind in Europe. Leaving purely urban studies aside for a while, he has resumed his work on the habitat of the Japanese elite, with a focus on architectural space in the retreats and retirement villas of Japan's 17th century elite. Work Fiévé's research hinges on two fields of study: on the one hand, the study of ancient documents (both literary and administrative, technical handbooks, maps and plans) pertaining to architecture, urbanism and landscape (including parks and gardens)—generally resulting in the establishment of lexicons and glossaries of technical vocabulary and translation of various texts— and on the other hand, in situ research, based on his experience and perception as an architect. These two complementary approaches, which are not always easy to conciliate, are the fruit of his dual training in Japanese Philology and Architectural Phenomenology. Fiévé conducts his fieldwork using the tools he acquired through his training as an architect, i.e. physical experience of the site under study, and observation of its spaces, routes, forms, materials, scale, and temporality, together with architectural survey based on measurements, drawings and photography. In his first years as a young researcher from 1980 to 1990, Nicolas Fiévé visited hundreds of sites throughout Japan: palaces, temples, towns and gardens, with a special focus on forty or so historical tea houses. He then cross-references and combines his field research with the study of related historical documents. In his first work on tea houses (1989), in part based on the research of the architect and historian Horiguchi Sutemi 堀口捨己 (1895-1984), Nicolas Fiévé addresses the subject of the tea houses’ architectural space through the study of writings ascribed to Takeno Jōō 武野紹鴎 (1502-1555), Sen no Rikyū 千利休 (1522-1585), Yamanoue Shōji 山上宗二 (1544-1590). His work on the tea houses may already be described as a ‘history of habitats’ or as an ‘anthropological study of historical space’ since the sources he uses were written by those who built the sites in question or occupied them in the past; thus his philological approach serves to define an anthropological perspective on space. This dual approach that characterizes all Nicolas Fiévé's work is often inspired by that of the geographer Augustin Berque, principally in the use of mesology (the study of the