Imaginary Architecture of the Revolutionary Age

Delightful essay by Hugh Aldersen-Williams on the unbuilt fantasies of French architecture in the revolutionary period, at Public Domain Review. Aldersen-Williams focuses on the work of Étienne-Louis Boullée and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, two dreamers who must have been very frustrated that the work they actually built fell so far short of what they imagined. Above, exterior and cross-section of Boullée’s famous design for Newton’s Cenotaph, 1784. This would have been enormous; those are mature trees growing on othe terraces.

Many architectus of the time were fascinated by spheres; here is Ledoux’s design for a public mausoleum, from his book L’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurs et de la législation, 1804.

Perspectival view of  Ledoux’s design for the forge at Chaux, France, from the same book. Pyramids!

Boullée’s design for a coliseum, ca. 1781–1793. For these architects, design was the past, and the future was bold geometry.

More Ledoux, design for a bridge held up by stone classical ships.

And Ledoux's home for a "charpentier de la graduation," an expression beyond either my French, or Google's; master carpenter?