Each period we have talked about till now thought us different aspects of architecture and its uses, architecture is not just based on drawings or design but when we go in-depth it requires mathematics, a philosophy which we have learnt from the other era and now during the enlightenment period it was inspired by scientific studies and featured ideal proportions and geometric forms. The architects during this time had their designs bases on science and the primary geometric forms were spheres, cylinders and cubes. Some of the architects of this period include Claude Nicholas Ledoux and Etienne Louis Boullee. Let's talk in-depth about these architects and their buildings.
Claude Nicolas Ledoux
Claude Nicolas Ledoux was born on 21st March 1736 and dies on 1806. He is a French architect who developed eclectic and visionary architecture linked with nascent pre-Revolutionary social ideals, he not only used this knowledge in domestic architecture but town planning as well. One of his best work was the Château de Bénouville castle which was initially built for a family and now owned by the council and open to the public. In 1780 Ledoux proposed houses of spherical shape for the park keepers at Maupertuis; and when asked to render plans for furnaces for a gun foundry, he drew them as pyramids. His love of simple geometric form is further seen in his theatre at Besançon (1778-1784), where a Greek Doric colonnade is placed at the top of an amphitheatre of semicircular form. In 1780, Ledoux offered spherical houses for park wardens in Maupertuis; and when asked to draw a diagram of the furnaces for a gun foundry, he drew them in the form of pyramids. His love for simple geometric shapes was most evident in his theatre in Besançon (1778-1784), where the Greek Doric colonnade was placed atop a semicircular amphitheatre. He designed 42 toll booths for the city of Paris, the most varied in plan and elevation but uniformly massive and covered with dense carpentry columns of the Doric or Tuscan order. Among the architect's most imaginative achievements were his design for the royal salt mines at Arc-de-Senans (1775-1779) on the Loue River near Besançon. With the start of the French Revolution, Ledoux was accused of being an advocate for royalism. His popularity suddenly went down and he was forced to retire permanently. He turned to architectural theory and throughout his life focused on the principles he expected to lead to the construction of the ideal city. His flying, imaginative and essentially romantic ideas appear in L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des moeurs et de la législation (1807). It is ironic that Ledoux, who was among one those who opposed the French Revolution could be an artistic leader and helped to destroy traditional forms. When he died in Paris on November 19, 1806, I wondered if he knew how much influence he had on that time and the next generation of architecture.
Étienne-Louis Boullée, (born February 12, 1728, Paris, France—died February 6, 1799, Paris), French visionary architect, theorist, and teacher. During the 20th century, many architects career were cut short due to the French Revolution and show all their works re-entered and studied but few have gotten their hands on the fortunes of the reluctant architect Etienne-Louis Boure. Few architectural works have survived, and there are only drawings that support his fame. Without the scandal of his young colleague Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, whose ostentatious tolls around the tax wall in Paris were the subject of revolutionary fury, his death in 1799 almost unnoticed. And while Ledoux succeeded in publishing the first volume of Architecture L` before his death, Boullée's essay on architecture remained unpublished, and his drawings were largely ignored. ignored by scholars for nearly a century and a half. And yet, since the 1950s, his reputation as one of the main and most original figures of the late eighteenth century has firmly established himself as the oldest statesman of the radical Enlightenment in architecture. architecture, if not of the Modern Movement. Étienne-Louis Boullée initially wanted to become a painter but due to his father's desire, he took up architecture. He promoted the idea of expressing the purpose of architecture and often employed symbolism suitable for the purpose of the building. His works are characterized by removing all unnecessary decorations, expanding geometric shapes and repetitive elements on a large scale, such as a wide range of pillars. He used light and shadow to highlight the effect of natural forms. His focus on polarity (offsetting opposite design elements) and the use of light and shadow was highly innovative and continue to influence architects to this day. He was "rediscovered" in the twentieth century and has influenced recent architects such as Aldo Rossi. His key works were Hotel Alexandre in Paris and Hotel de Brunoy in Paris.
‘Yes, I believe that our buildings, above all our public buildings, should be in some sense poems. The images they offer our senses should arouse in us sentiments corresponding to the purpose for which these buildings are intended’ - Étienne-Louis Boullée
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