The project ‘Nicolas Edme Restif de La Bretonne: an unacknowledged scophile’ was carried out by Jordan Zekri as part of the ‘Your Future Practice’ assignment for the Art, Landscape, Architecture during the 2016–2017 academic year at the Faculty of Architecture, ULB La Cambre Horta.

In 1769, Nicolas Edme Restif de La Bretonne wrote *Le Pornographe ou la prostitution réformée*. In it, he presents his ‘Parthénion’, a state-sanctioned brothel. Freely inspired by the book, the following project offers an interpretation of the places of pleasure theorised by Restif. The project establishes a dialogue between Restif’s theories and those of Freud on scopophilia, defined as the pleasure of looking. Restif, an ‘unacknowledged scopophile’, explains in an article that a man and a woman do not truly meet until they are in the bedroom. When considered in parallel, these theories influence the design of this Parthénion, which appears as an 18th-century version of our modern-day peep-shows: machines for looking that showcase the object of desire.