Symbolic Space: French Enlightenment Architecture and Its LegacyRichard A. Etlin explores the social and cultural hierarchies established in eighteenth-century France to illustrate how the conceptual basis of the modern house and the physical layout of the modern city emerged from debates among theoretically innovative French architects of the eighteenth-century. Examining a broad range of topics from architecture and urbanism to gardening and funerary monuments, he shows how the work of these architects was informed by considerations of symbolic space. For Etlin, the eighteenth-century city was a place in which actual physical space was subjected to a complex mental layering of conceptual spaces. He focuses on the design theory of Boullée and Durand and charts their legacy through the architecture of Paul Philippe Cret, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Louis Kahn. He defines the distinctive features of neoclassicism and outlines the new grammar for classical architecture articulated by theorists and architects such as Laugier, Leroy, and Ledoux. After discussing the eighteenth-century hôtel, revolutionary space, and the transformation of the image of the cemetery, Etlin examines the space of absence as embodied in commemorative architecture from Boullée and Gilly to Cret, Wright, and Terragni. His book provides an accessible introduction to a century of architecture that transformed the classical forms of the Renaissance and Baroque periods into building types still familiar today. |
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Symbolic Space: French Enlightenment Architecture and Its Legacy Richard A. Etlin No preview available - 1995 |
Common terms and phrases
Abrégé aesthetic amphitheater Anthony Vidler architect Architecture of Death Archives Beaux-Arts Boullée's building burial ground cemetery project Cenotaph central century chapel Chapter Church project civic Claude-Nicolas Ledoux columnar screen Corbusier Cordemoy Cret's decoration Detroit Institute dome Durand eighteenth eighteenth-century entrance Essai Etienne-Louis Boullée Etlin exterior facade Figure floor Frank Lloyd Wright French funerary galleries grand hall hôtel ideal Indianapolis Public Library Institute of Arts interior Jacques-François Blondel L'Architecture considérée sous landscape garden Laugier Le Corbusier législation 1804 Leroy Louis metaphorical moeurs monuments Museum Nationale nature neoclassical neoclassical architecture Pan American Union Paris patio Paul Cret Paul Philippe Cret Père Lachaise Pérouse primitive hut pyramid Quatremère de Quincy rapport de l'art Revolution revolutionary space ring colonnade sacrarium Sainte-Geneviève sous le rapport space of absence square symbolic character symbolic space Temple temple-like space Terragni tion tomb typological Unity Temple vestibule walls