Revolutionary architecture
The term revolutionary architecture describes a development phase of classicism - the time of the end of the 18th century, especially in France . Although the word has found its way into technical language, it is not clear and therefore controversial. Often the term is only used for a special aspect of the architecture of the time, for a series of utopian designs, almost nothing of which was built. Other art historians use it to refer to the mainstream of the time, i.e. those buildings that were actually realized; some of them came from the same architects as the utopian plans. To make the issue clearer, the auxiliary terms real and utopian revolutionary architecture are used in this article .
The connotation of revolutionary architecture characterizes megalomania , here referred to as immensité, but also the moment of an architektur parlante , a speaking architecture, according to Antonio Hernandez. The development from absolutism to enlightenment, from courtly to bourgeois architecture and their societies, seems to point to a mannerism that becomes apparent as so-called revolutionary architecture for successive times, here from late baroque to classicism.
The real revolutionary architecture
The long planning and construction history of the Panthéon in Paris offers a useful overview of the development of architecture in the second half of the 18th century . It is considered a representative example of revolutionary architecture in the more general meaning of the word. In 1755 the architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot was commissioned to build the new Paris monastery and pilgrimage church of Ste-Geneviève. He planned a richly decorated, late baroque building with large windows. In the course of time, this concept has changed, the jewelry has been limited to more reserved motifs of ancient origin, and a simpler expression has generally been sought. After the former church was declared a national hall of fame on April 4, 1791, the “Panthéon des Grands Hommes”, the architect Quatremère de Quincy made further changes to the structure. He had windows walled up and decorative elements removed, thus strengthening the development that had previously started. The unity and impressive volume of the building were the objectives of classicist architecture at the time.
Similar developments and results can be found not only in sacred or immediate buildings , but also in private and commercial buildings such as the city palaces of wealthy clients, theaters in Paris and large provincial cities, some pre-industrial or early industrial facilities. As a rule, buildings of this type are referred to as "classical". Sometimes, however, the classicist architecture of the time around 1800 is also called "revolutionary architecture" - a misleading term. Because the development described had clearly changed, but not produced any revolutionary new forms. And there was also no direct connection between the French Revolution and this architecture, as a glance at the construction dates of the buildings shows. They were built almost exclusively under the “ Ancien Régime ” - i.e. before 1789 - and by no means in opposition to the absolutist form of rule.
However, they had emerged in the Age of Enlightenment , a time of gradual departure from courtly pomp and ceremony, a time that was heading towards radical change. The world of thought of the Enlightenment with its emphasis on reason had its aesthetic counterpart in the renouncement of overloaded forms of jewelry, as they were common in the Baroque and Rococo . The architects found historical inspiration from the Italians Andrea Palladio and Giovanni Battista Piranesi , but modified their ideas to create an even more objective and monumental effect and a clear emphasis on simple basic forms. So in the architecture actually built, although in a significantly weaker form, the same tendencies became visible as in the utopian revolutionary architecture, which, although conceived and drawn, could hardly ever be realized.
The utopian revolutionary architecture
In the narrower version of the term, revolutionary architecture is understood as a visionary architecture that usually only existed in completely new designs and therefore had little prospect of being realized. An exaggeration in often monumental proportions contributed to this; the word immensité (the immeasurability) served as the main concept .
Giovanni Battista Piranesi's copperplate engravings of monumental buildings in Rome, such as Castel Sant'Angelo, served as inspiration . At that time, buildings of this size could not be financed, nor were they structurally manageable. In a study from 1933, the Austrian art historian Emil Kaufmann spoke of “autonomous architecture”, here the exaggerated variant of classicism.
In general, three architects are named as the most important representatives of utopian revolutionary architecture: Claude-Nicolas Ledoux , Étienne-Louis Boullée and Jean-Jacques Lequeu . On the one hand, they were significantly involved in the general development of architecture of their time (this is particularly true of Ledoux and Boullée), on the other hand, they developed ideas that went far beyond this.
Ledoux was a sought-after architect for private and public building projects. In Paris he designed a number of city palaces, in which he successfully applied the new tendencies of classicist building. This also applies to his guardhouses (pavilions) built in the customs wall around Paris from 1784 , combinations of simple spatial structures, combined with elements from antiquity and the Renaissance . The Royal Saltworks in Arc-et-Senans was built between 1775 and 1779 . The completion of the semicircular building to a full circle and the ideal urban complex "Chaux", which was only conceived decades later and which was to be grouped as a ring around the saltworks, could no longer be realized. Ledoux also designed utopian, largely abstracted forms of construction under the newly developed model of architecture parlante , to which Boullée and Lequeu also felt obliged. This “speaking architecture” should express its purpose as clearly as possible. Design examples for these ideas are: a house made of concentric circles, which can be called either a studio house or a workshop for making barrel hoops ; a gardener's spherical house; the house of the river inspectors in the form of a horizontal cylinder through which a watercourse was passed; the hermetic fortress of the prison of Aix-en-Provence .
In the beginning, Boullée had also successfully created utility architecture for private clients. As theoretician and teacher at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (from 1778 to 1788) he then developed the unmistakable, abstract style of his utopian designs, which were mostly more consistent and spectacular than the corresponding ideas of Ledoux. For public buildings he planned structures made of almost pure stereometric shapes, often with monumental dimensions. In his design for a national library from 1785, the exterior consists of a barely structured cube; the reading room is spanned by a huge barrel vault. His best-known project is the cenotaph (in general: a grave memorial for a famous deceased who is not buried here) for the great English scientist Isaac Newton . The 150 m high sphere symbolizes the sphere of the universe , inside the starry sky is simulated by perforation of the spherical surface - a high point of architecture parlante and the utopian revolutionary architecture and their most famous symbol. Both designs are closely related to central motifs of the Enlightenment.
Lequeu applied the principle of speaking architecture more directly than his two more important colleagues. Projects such as the gate to a hunting ground decorated with animal heads or a cowshed in the shape of a giant cattle had a more bizarre look than the character of serious architecture. With this immediate, striking conception of architecture parlante , Lequeu remained a marginal figure in the architectural scene of the time.
Boullée: reading room of the National Library, draft
Boullée: Cenotaph for Isaac Newton, draft. cross-section
Ledoux: The ideal city of Chaux, draft
Ledoux: "House of the Circles", draft
Ledoux: gardener's house, design
Ledoux: prison in Aix-en-Provence, draft
Lequeu: Design for the gate of a hunting ground
Predominance: coffin-shaped cemetery - floor plan of the old southern cemetery in Munich 1818
Effects and parallels
The “moderately” progressive “real revolutionary architecture” had noticeable effects on the architecture of the following decades in Europe. In Germany, for example, alongside Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the young Prussian architect Friedrich Gilly , the Munich architect Gustav Vorherr and the Baden construction director Friedrich Weinbrenner were influenced by it, in England John Soane , the builder of the " Bank of England ", in Russia Adrian Sakharov . The Danish architect Christian Frederik Hansen worked in Altona from 1784–1804 .
For the extreme projects of the utopian revolutionary architecture, equivalents can only be found in the architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries. The jewelery-loving epochs of the Wilhelminian era - and Art Nouveau architecture were a thing of the past, Bauhaus and New Objectivity had formulated the foundations of modern building, construction technology had made tremendous advances - now large-scale glass cuboids, spherical houses, cylinders and pyramids were created that appeal to the Remembering Ledoux and Boullée's visions. In addition to the architecture of individual buildings, this also had an impact on designs for entire cities, such as B. at Le Corbusier . The urban planning visions of architecture under National Socialism , in particular the conversion of Berlin to the world capital Germania by Albert Speer , as well as the planned Führer Museum Linz , may have been influenced by this. The Gauforum Weimar is the only project planned as a Gauforum, which was largely realized and also survived the Second World War.
The building material concrete is of outstanding importance here because of the diverse design possibilities. Many later large-format architectural designs could only be realized with it.
literature
- Emil Kaufmann : From Ledoux to Le Corbusier. Origins and Development of Autonomous Architecture . Vienna, Passer 1933; New edition Stuttgart, Gert Hatje, 1985.
- Klaus Jan Philipp (Ed.): Revolutionary architecture. Classic contributions to non-classic architecture . Braunschweig / Wiesbaden: Vieweg & Sohn Verlag 1990
- Winfried Nerdinger , Klaus Jan Philipp: Revolutionary architecture. An aspect of European architecture around 1800. Exhibition catalog. Hirmer, Munich 1990.
- Bärbel Hedinger : CF Hansen in Hamburg, Altona and the Elbe suburbs. A Danish classicist architect . Exhibition catalog. Altonaer Museum in Hamburg. Munich Berlin, Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2000.
Web links
- http://www.beyars.com/kunstlexikon/lexikon_7557.html In addition to the article, there are also references to literature.