Marc-Antoine Laugier

Marc- Antoine Laugier, SJ ( born September 26, 1713 Manosque, Provence, † April 7, 1769 in Paris) was a Jesuit priest, writer, historian and theoretician of architecture.

Life

At 14, he stepped on a drive of the parents in the Jesuit college at Avignon. In the following years he studied theology in Lyon, Besançon, Marseille, Nimes and Arles. On February 2, he laid in Paris from the vows and also preached first in the church of Saint -Sulpice de Paris. A short time later he became chaplain in Paris. In 1754 he gave to the king and the royal court at Versailles during Lent sermon. This became a public scandal. Laugier criticized the royal court because of his hedonism, lavishness in the monarchy and because of the moral way of life of the nobility. He also criticized the political situation of his time violently. After his last sermon on Easter Sunday, 1754 Laugier has been recalled by his Superior in the province to Lyon. There he had to face disciplinary action. In 1756, he joined the Order of the Benedictines. Because of its history Laugier was released from the diocesan duties and devoted himself to art, architecture and music. In the following years, he wrote various theoretical writings on architecture and art. On April 7, 1769 Laugier died after a short illness in Paris.

Architectural Theory

Laugier's Essai sur l'architecture ( first published anonymously in 1753, in 1755 under the name of the author ), was one of the most read and popular treatises by translations of the 18th century. He turned not only to the specialist audience, but also to art lovers and laymen. Laugier wanted to put the architecture in a natural and reasonable basis. Fundamentally, the model of the primitive hut, already described by Vitruvius for him: four arranged at the corners of a square floor plan featured tree trunks that are connected by four round logs and carry a sort of saddle roof of mutually identified branches. In the Stone translated, these are the elements of the ancient temple, with its colonnades and the horizontal beams. But these essential elements in its opinion, cause after Laugier the beauty of a building. Walls or vaulted hand, only need- determined, since people can not live in open porticoes. Unnecessary decoration is omitted. Laugier's theory has promoted the preference for the column and the colonnade in the architecture of classicism. Laugier advocated the use of "pure " forms and challenges the Formverschleifungen the Baroque and Rococo. The then newly built church of Sainte -Geneviève, now the Panthéon (Paris) was broadly in Laugier's ideas.

Pioneering the idea of Laugier, after all types of buildings can be designed through the back, side and in each other bodies of identical four -pole units by type of primitive hut. Laugier propagates a serial architecture always the same units as has been realized only in the 19th century and in modern times.

For the church Laugier calls for the connection of the colonnade as a support system in the manner of ancient temples with weightlessness and constructive boldness Gothic vault. The architecture of the Gothic he positively evaluated, only its decorative forms he rejects as barbarous.

Even further in the appreciation of Gothic go the " Observations sur l'architecture " ( 1765 ). Laugier can now imagine the interiors of churches in a direct line with the Gothic, although the individual forms are to be improved in the sense of classicism. In Germany Laugier's ideas have particularly influenced the architect Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe in the redesign of the interior of Leipzig's St. Nicholas Church in the late 18th century.

Works

• Essai sur l'architecture. Paris 1753 ( digitized by Gallica, first published anonymously, under his name again in 1755 ). English: An Essay on Architecture. In which its true principles are Explained (...). London 1755 ( digitized in the Internet Archive ). German: Essay on the building art. Translated from the French by David übersetzet Andreas Fast. Frankfurt 1756th Current German edition: The Manifesto of classicism. Artemis, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-7608-8124-6.