Étienne-Louis Boullée

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Étienne-Louis Boullée (born February 12, 1728 in Paris , † February 6, 1799 in Paris) was a classicist French architect .

Live and act

In addition to Claude-Nicolas Ledoux , Boullée has become known as the main representative of French revolutionary architecture. This trend in architecture broke with the baroque tradition and propagated a sparse, monumental classicism that indicated the imperial claim to rule. This shows an influence by the spirit of the Enlightenment . He designed numerous mostly public buildings that could not be realized because of their excessive dimensions.

Boullée was born in Paris as the son of the architect Louis-Claude. Although he initially wanted to be a painter, his father pushed him to become an architect too. From him he learned the techniques of construction and measurement early on. Boullée studied at the architecture academy with Jacques-François Blondel , Germain Boffrand and Jean Laurent Legeay , from whom he learned the revival of classical architecture in the 17th and 18th centuries. Important architectural issues were geometry, rigor and logic. As early as 1747, at the age of 19, Boullée was offered a professorship at the École des Ponts et Chausées in Paris.

Boullée: Design of a cenotaph for Isaac Newton , 1784
Boullée: Design for a Royal Library (National Library) , 1784

In 1762 he was elected to the French Royal Academy of Architecture. He built a number of private houses between 1762 and 1778, but most of them no longer exist. The exception is the city palace Hôtel Alexandre , built in 1763 , which is considered the only completely preserved work. The Hôtel de Brunoy in Paris, built by Boullée between 1774 and 1779, was destroyed in 1930.

He developed his greatest influence between 1778 and 1788 as a teacher and theorist at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées , where he developed a distinctive abstract style inspired by classical forms. In addition, Boullée used nature as an important model for his designs: They were intended to develop a similar effect for him as images and moods of nature. In his designs he consistently dispensed with functionless ornamentation and enlarged simple forms such as spheres and columns into monumental form. He developed the idea that architecture should express its purpose - a doctrine he called "speaking architecture" (architecture parlante) .

This style is most impressive in his design of a cenotaph for Isaac Newton , which he drew as a sphere 150 meters high. The ball rested on a double ring-shaped base topped by cypress trees. The interior was designed by Boullée - in the style of today's planetariums - as a starry night sky.

Boullée fell seriously ill in 1790 and bequeathed his manuscript and drawings to the French state in 1793, six years before his death.

Aftermath

Boullée's ideas had a great influence on his contemporaries, not least because he was a teacher of other important architects, including Jean-Françoise-Thérèse Chalgrin , Alexandre Théodore Brongniart and Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand .

Some of his designs only became known in the 20th century; his book Architecture, Treatise on Art, in which he advocated an emotionally engaged neoclassicism, was not published until 1953. The book contained all the drafts from the period between 1778 and 1788, mostly ideas for public buildings, but almost all of them in a size that was hardly realizable.

Boullée's penchant for oversized designs led him to be characterized as both a megalomaniac and a visionary. His preference for polarities (use of opposing design elements) and the use of light and shadow was innovative. Rediscovered in the 20th century, he influenced architects such as the Italians Aldo Rossi and Louis I. Kahn .

The film The Belly of an Architect (The Belly of an Architect) of the English filmmaker Peter Greenaway from 1987 shows several designs of Boullée.

See also

Realized buildings (selection)

  • 1752: Design of the church interior and the Lady Chapel in the Saint-Roch church in Paris (together with Jean-Baptiste Pierre and the sculptor Étienne-Maurice Falconet )
  • 1754: Design of the Calvary Chapel in the Saint-Roch Church in Paris (together with Étienne-Maurice Falconet and the court painter Pierre-Antoine Demachy )
  • 1759: Plan for the transept chapels of the Saint-Roch church in Paris
  • 1761: Castle for Robert Millin in Perreux (remained unfinished due to lack of money and was destroyed in 1910)
  • 1763: House (city palace) for M. Alexandre in Paris
  • 1764: Hotels for M. de Monville (destroyed)
  • 1764: Reconstruction of the Chaville Castle (destroyed in 1800)
  • 1768: House for M. de Pernon in the Chausée d'Antin (destroyed in 1862)
  • 1769: Hotel in the Chausée d'Antin for the Baron von Thun in Paris (destroyed in 1852)
  • 1769: Works at the Hotel de Villeroy for the Comte de Tessé in Paris
  • 1771: Remodeling of a house for M. Beaujon in Issy (destroyed in 1930)
  • 1776: Interior design of the apartments of the Comte d'Artois in the Palais du Temple in Paris
  • 1778: Renovation of the Hotel d'Evreux (Elysée Palace) in Paris
  • 1779: Hotel de Brunoy in Paris (destroyed in 1930)
  • 1782: Prison in the Hotel de la Force in Paris (destroyed)
  • 1783: Reconstruction of Chauvry Castle (destroyed in 1817)
  • 1784: Design of the entrance to the stock exchange on Rue Vivienne in Paris (destroyed)
  • 1787: Cladding of the Perronet bridge
  • 1788: The Langlée Hotel is converted into a royal lottery

Projects and drafts (selection)

  • 1755: Reconstruction project of the city mint
  • 1761: Project for an entrance to the Charité hospital
  • 1764: Project for the Palais Bourbon in Paris
  • 1764: Project for two semi-detached houses on Rue d'Anjou and Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris
  • 1780: Project for the Palace of Versailles in Paris (competition)
  • 1781: Design of the metropolis
  • 1781: Project for a theater
  • 1783: project for a museum
  • 1784: Design of a cenotaph for Isaac Newton
  • 1784: Design for a royal library
  • 1785: Project for a reading room for the Royal Library on Rue Richelieu
  • 1785: Project for a royal palace in Saint-Germain
  • 1792: Design of a national and municipal palace

Works

  • Boullée's Treatise on Architecture. A complete presentation of the architecture. Essai sur l'art, which forms part of the Boullée papers (MS 9153) in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Edited [with Engl. Note] by Helen Rosenau, London: Tiranti, 1953 (The Tiranti Library; 3).
  • Architecture. Treatise on Art. Introduction by Adolf Max Vogt . Translated by Hanna Böck, Zurich, Artemis, 1987.

literature

  • Klaus Lankheit: The Temple of Reason. Unpublished drawings by Etienne-Louis Boullée. Birkhäuser, Basel a. a. 1973, ISBN 3-7643-0666-1
  • Philippe Madec: Etienne-Louis Boullée. Birkhäuser, Basel a. a. 1989, ISBN 3-7643-2253-5
  • Marc Fester (Ed.): Built world views from Boullée to Buckminster Fuller. Arch - + - Verlag, Aachen 1993 (texts by J. Krausse, review: Vilém Flusser)
  • Beat Wyss (Ed.): Etienne-Louis Boullée. Architecture. Treatise on Art. Artemis, Zurich and Munich 1987
  • Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos: Étienne-Louis Boullée 1728-1799. Theoretician of Revolutionary Architecture. George Braziller, New York 1974
  • Jean-Claude Lemagny: Visionary Architects. Boullée, Ledoux, Lequeu. Hennessey & Ingalls, Santa Monica 2002, ISBN 0-940512-35-1

Web links

Commons : Étienne-Louis Boullée  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Fritz Neumeyer: Source texts on architectural theory. Prestel, Munich a. a. 2002, p. 182.
  2. ^ Hartmut Mayer: Mimesis and modern architecture: A reevaluation of architectural theory. Transcript, Bielefeld 2017, p. 91.
  3. ^ Stephan Güntzel: space, a cultural-scientific introduction. Transcript, Bielefeld 2017, p. 52.
  4. ^ Philippe Madec: Etienne-Louis Boullée. Birkhäuser, Basel a. a. 1989, pp. 17-39
personal data
SURNAME Boullée, Étienne-Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French architect
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1728
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1799
Place of death Paris