Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuries — John Shaqi
Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuriesHitchcock, Henry-Russell
History
Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell
Architecture, Modern -- 19th century; Architecture, Modern -- 20th century
One major example of the accommodation of an older structure to a new
purpose deserves particular mention. In the years 1795-7 J.-P. de Gisors
(1755-1828), E.-C. Leconte (1762-1818), and the former’s brother
A.-J.-B.-G. de Gisors (1762-1835) built within the old Palais Bourbon
the Salle des Cinq Cents, the legislative chamber of the First Republic.
This hemicycle, at least as rebuilt along much the original lines by
Joly in 1828-33, still serves as the Chamber of Deputies of the Fourth
Republic. Such a chamber, so different in plan from the college-chapel
arrangement of the British House of Commons with facing benches for
Government and Opposition, is characteristically Romantic Classical in
form, but this form has unfortunately proved to be conducive to an
indefinite shading of multiple parties from right to left. The British
model, suited to two-party rule only, was rarely imitated; the French
one has been rather frequently, beginning with Latrobe’s House of
Representatives in the Washington Capitol. Leaving aside the apparent
political effect of the plan—not so notable in Washington as
elsewhere—Gisors’s chamber seems to have been respectable if not
especially distinguished. Covered with a segmental half dome and a
barrel vault, both top-lighted, the smooth though rather richly
decorated surfaces of the walls and the vaults made clear the
interesting geometrical form of the interior space. The prototype was
the lecture theatre of the École de Médecine in Paris erected in 1769-76
by Jacques Gondoin (1737-1818), one of the most advanced interiors of
its day.
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