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AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. Rhee 18 th and 19 th centuries. Destabilizing the canonical nature of Classical architecture by Claude Perrault . What style to build with? The various interpretations of the Classical: Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Gothic, and little later “Oriental.”
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Rhee 18th and 19th centuries. Destabilizing the canonical nature of Classical architecture by Claude Perrault. What style to build with? The various interpretations of the Classical: Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Gothic, and little later “Oriental.” The division of enlightenment thoughts into rationalism and romanticism. Laugier’s rationalism and seeking the essential aspects of architecture from nature. Soufflot’s interpretation of the ideas of Laugier: reductive and sparse. Palladian Revival and Neo-Classicism: Interpretive revival of classical architecture, and the picturesque treatment. The archaeological fantasies of Piranesi. Romantic Classicism: The expressive architecture of Boullee and Ledoux. Durand, and the systematization of architecture, and its reduction into elementary units, and multiple combinations. Structural Rationalism or Classicism: The rational ideas of Viollet le Duc. The new engineering constructions using ironwork and glass by Paxton, Eiffel and Labrouste. Structural Classicism and Romantic Classicism.
AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT The 18th century was described as an astounding century, heralded as the Age of Reason. The Age was defined by a full social, scientific, intellectual and cultural transformation. “The century will become more enlightened day by day, so that all previous centuries will be lost in darkness by comparison.”
AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT Transformations. Political: Shift from enlightened despotism To the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” (1789). Revolution in America and France leading to new citizenry and state. Economic: Agrarian to urban society. Rise in international trade, and the beginning of the colonial empires. Capitalist economy. Technological: Steam engine and new material innovations and the inauguration of the Industrial Revolution. Science and Philosophy: Revolutionary changes, the dawn of the modern era. Existing religious and scientific views and old world-order challenged by Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton. Science and reason gain grounds. The work of the French “philosophes” made the Enlightenment project popular: Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau.
The Ptolemaic World-View The Copernican Revolution
The “Encyclopedie” was one of the many innovative intellectual projects produced by Enlightenment figures like Diderot and Rousseau
Claude Perrault makes the age-old Vitruvian-Albertian canon questionable, and brings about a crisis in Classical architecture.
Abbe Laugier (1713-69) Following the crisis, and in order to find a stable premise for architecture, Laugier proposes investigating the most original condition of architecture: Nature. Good architecture is the authentic imitation of nature. And Geek architecture is still the finest because it is the best imitation (mimesis).
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) Piranesi questioned the superiority of the Greeks. Good architecture should not imitate one ancient example or another, but should be a prudent combination of the Tuscan, Grecian and Egyptian. The artist “ought to open for himself a road to the discovery of new ornaments and new manners.”
The Revolutionary Architects Etienne-Louis Boullee (1728-99)
Jacques-Germain Soufflot: The Church for Ste. Genevieve, Paris demonstrated the new principles suggested by Laugier as well as by the Gothic.
“Revolutionary” Architecture It is “revolutionary” or “visionary” because it pushed Neo-Classical ideas beyond its time, thus inaugurating many modern architectural ideas. Rational and sensationalist appreciation of architectural form. Monument and monumentality. Grandiloquent, symbolic, and monumental forms. A composition of self-sufficient parts. Beauty of masses, and simplicity of forms and surfaces, generated by elemental geometric units. A poetics of “plainness”. “Architecture parlante”: an architecture that speaks.
“Architecture parlante”: an architecture that speaks. Issues of character of a building: what is it for, what does it convey? Expression of function and content. A romantic atmosphere of mood, effect and atmosphere.
Rationalist and sensationalist appreciation of form. Rational: geometric, pure shape. Sensational: Size, scale, quality of light and shadow. William Blake writes on the “sublime” as an aesthetical category. Science of perceptual appreciation of form begins.
Grandiloquent and monumental volumes, almost unbuildable The utopian project
Poetics of “plainness” Architecture of the City: Forts and City Gates.
Claude Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806) was a French neoclassical architect. Known as a Utopian he hoped that urban design and architecture could lead to an ideal society. Despite this his great works were funded by the French monarchy and came to be seen as symbols of the ancien regime. His career was thus curtailed by the French Revolution. In 1804 he published a book on his works titled L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation.His most ambitious work was the uncompleted Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, a utopian town showing many examples of architecture parlante.It also demonstrated his socialist vision. He also designed about 60 elaborate toll gates around Paris.
Imaginary Houses. Ledoux
