Étienne-Louis Boullée
Étienne-Louis Boullée (February 12, 1728 – February 4, 1799) was a visionary French neoclassical architect whose work greatly influenced contemporary architects and is still influential today.
Boullée, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Jean-Jacques Lequeu were each architects and thinkers whose ideas reflected some of the most radical strains of liberal bourgeois philosophy, with its cult of reason and devotion to the triplicate ideals of liberté, égalité, and fraternité. The structures they imagined and city plans they proposed were undeniably some of the most ambitious and revolutionary of their time. At their most fantastic, the buildings they envisioned were absolutely unbuildable — either according to the technical standards of their day or arguably even of our own. [1]
Proposals
Cénotaphe à Newton [Newton Memorial], 1784
Cénotaphe à Newton [Newton Memorial], 1784
National Library, interior, 1785
Pyramidal cenotaph of the Sepulchral Chapel, c1786
Conical cenotaph of the Sepulchral Chapel, c1786
Conical cenotaph of the Sepulchral Chapel, interior, c1786
Metropolitan church at Corpus Christi
Museum, plan, 1789
neoclassical cutaway, 1790s
Literature
- Emil Kaufmann, "Étienne-Louis Boullée", The Art Bulletin 21:3 (September 1939), pp 213-227.
- Emil Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu, Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1952.
- Ross Wolfe, "Revolutionary precursors: Radical bourgeois architects in the age of reason and revolution", The Charnel-House blog, 25 June 2011.
