Claude-Nicolas Ledoux

Claude- Nicolas Ledoux ( born March 21, 1736, in Dormans, department Marne, † November 18, 1806 in Paris) was a neoclassical French architect who carried out numerous public and private construction projects. He also designed completely utopian buildings and is shared with Étienne -Louis Boullée as the main representative of the French Revolution architecture.

Life

Claude- Nicolas Ledoux was born on March 27, 1736, in Dormans on the Marne, 100 km east of Paris. His parents, Claude Ledoux and Françoise Dominot, led a small civic and modest life, but remained him the " down to earth, honest " country life in the village community always good memories, as his later work showed. The reform of agriculture and the development of the provinces have been an important issue for him.

On July 26, 1764 Ledoux married in the Église Saint- Eustache Paris Marie Bureau ( † August 30, 1792 ), the daughter of musician Joseph -Grégoire Bureau. Together with her he had two daughters - Adelaïde - Constance (1771-1794) and Alexandrine Euphrasie (* 1775).

Training

By working at the local parish school early remarkable talent Ledoux received a scholarship from the local diocese to study at the Collège de Beauvais in Paris, which he began in 1749. His teacher Rollin taught by the didactic method of morceaux choisis. The students learned the usual formation of the canon of classical and contemporary know by selected quotations from recognized sizes. ( His later buildings and writings are characterized by this combination dicing the quotes. ) How ranged Ledoux ' knowledge of geometry, poetics, philosophy and rhetoric from the classical to the then present day. He was influenced by the Enlightenment, rationalism and Freemasonry with its ideals of community.

1753 Ledoux began an apprenticeship as an engraver and then the study of architecture, which was founded by Jacques -François Blondel " École des Arts " in Paris. This study gave him the knowledge of the ancient world with an emphasis on order and proportion, the designs of the Renaissance - probably about the " English detour " - and the then current issues in the debate on architecture: logic, method, rigor and character as opposed to the more dominant style of Rococo. Numerous theorists demanded that function and properties of a building should be already visible on the exterior, at the same time turned out is the question of the facade, for honesty or mask.

Buildings and Projects

House of the director in the Royal Saltworks at Arc -et- Senan 1775-1778

Entrance portico with grotto in the Royal Saltworks at Arc -et- Senan 1775-1778

Residential building of the working and back of the entrance building Royal Saltworks at Arc -et- Senan 1775-1778

Eastern Salt workshop in the Royal Saltworks at Arc -et- Senan 1775-1778

Theater in Besancon, 1779

Rotonde de la Villette, a former customs guard house in Paris, 1785

Utopian gardener's house in an ideal city

Design of the utopian city of Chaux Saline / Arc- et- Senans

Ledoux's first important job as an architect was in 1762 was the design of " café Militaire ," the meeting place of the Parisian upper class. In the following years he built for this group numerous palaces, villas and castles, so the pavilion of Madame Dubarry, who became his most important patron, in Louveciennes (near Paris) and the garden facade of the Hôtel of Franz -Joseph Hallwyl, a colonel of the Swiss Guard. He built for Cardinal de Luynes Castle Brienon- l'Archevêque. With these works Ledoux excited at the court of attention, and so public offices he was in the first decade of his career entrusted. He worked for the roads and bridges and the forest authorities, built rural churches, and in 1771 represented for the salt mines in the Franche -Comté and Lorraine.

In this capacity, he undertook an inspection tour in 1771, where he became acquainted with the malfunctioning of the salt mines. Ledoux proposed the construction of a new saline at 17 kilometers distance off of a Sole Source, at the edge of the forest of Chaux. The salt water should be passed through lines there because " it's easier to send the water to travel, to drive than a wood piece by piece through the area ."

King Louis XV. gave as the owner of all the salt flats, the project in April 1773 in order. A year later, Ledoux submitted its first draft, the second in 1774. On April 15, 1775, the foundation stone was laid. The work should take three years. Les Salines Royales, the Royal saltworks in today's Arc -et- Senan were Ledoux's masterpiece. In his treatise on architecture from 1804 Ledoux, the buildings of the Saline of Arc -et- Senans represents as part of a large, only partly realized urban and social planning, which was reduced to the building for the production of salt. In fact, more buildings were planned at the site of the salt mines never. Only later Ledoux has designed its urban utopia.

Ledoux oversaw as " contrôleur général des bâtiments " of Baude Partments of Hesse- Kassel 1779 completed Fridericianum. He built the theater in Besançon and was built in 1778 in Paris, Hôtel de Thellusson.

The last major project of Ledoux was the design of the customs building the wall erected in 1785 the farmers-general ( Mur des Fermiers généraux ). This penultimate of the Paris city walls was the collection of excise taxes so excise or inland duties. At a length of 24 kilometers, the wall should prevent the evasion of the directional duty which was levied on imports of goods in the city. But after two years Ledoux was relieved of the task because his buildings were too expensive. Most pavilions d' octroi guard houses were called soon after the fire of revolution to the victim. Until now receive the Rotonde de la Villette remained in the 19th arrondissement, the Rotonde de Monceau in the Parc Monceau, the Barriere du Trone ( Place de la Nation ) and the Barrière d' Enfer ( Place Denfert - Rochereau).

List of completed buildings

Theoretical work

The French Revolution ended abruptly the architectural work of Claude- Nicolas Ledoux, he was representative and builder of the ancien régime and had signed his plans with the addition of " Architecte du Roi " (Architect of the King). On November 29, 1793, he was for over a year detained ( released on January 13, 1795) and escaped a murder by the People's Tribunals, when he wrote his book on the Saltworks of Chaux as a prototype of democratic coexistence. His life was now financed by patrons, Ledoux devoted himself entirely to the theoretical work and work-up of his oeuvre.

Before he died in 1806, only the first volume of his work on four volumes of L'Architecture considerée sous le rapport de l'art, the moeurs et de la législation was published. It contained a description of a Chaux -called ideal city. It is the utopia of a damn to inactivity builder who tried to defend himself and his work in the recently built new political order.