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
After a theoretical introduction concerning the goal of architecture,
its structural means, and the general principles to be derived
therefrom, Durand deals as a convinced ‘constructor’ with various
materials and their proper employment before treating of specific forms
and their combination. Only in the second part of his work, concerned
with ways of combining architectural elements, do the visual results of
his theories become fully evident. There he presents in plan and in
elevation various structural systems from trabeated colonnades of Greek
and Roman inspiration to arcuated and vaulted forms of Renaissance or
even round-arched medieval character. Among his specific examples,
‘vertical combinations’ of fifteenth- or sixteenth-century elements
outnumber the strictly Classical paradigms (Figure 2); whole plates,
moreover, are given to schemes that are not only generically Italianate,
but of Early Christian, Romanesque, or even Gothic, rather than
Renaissance, inspiration. Common to most of his examples is the
insistent repetition of elements, both horizontally and vertically, and
most characteristic is his interest in the varied skylines that central
and corner towers can provide, as also in the incorporation of voids in
architectural compositions in the form of loggias and pergolas. More
monumental façades fronted by temple porticoes are in a minority,
although colonnades are frequent enough in his presentation of such
specific features as porches, vestibules, halls, galleries, and central
spaces. Here are to be found most of the detailed formulas—almost all
derived from Boullée and from the Grand Prix projects of the previous
decade—which the next generation of architects would follow again and
again throughout most of the western world.
[Illustration:
Figure 2. J.-N.-L. Durand: ‘Vertical Combinations’ (from _Précis des
leçons_, 1805)
]
In his second volume Durand turns from a consideration of architecture
in terms of structural elements to a notably systematic presentation of
buildings in terms of their varying functions. First he deals with
urbanistic features, including not only bridges, streets, and squares,
but also such supposedly essential elements of the ideal classicizing
city as triumphal arches and tombs. A second section considers temples
(not churches, it is amusing to note), palaces, treasuries, law courts,
town halls, colleges, libraries, museums, observatories, lighthouses,
markets, exchanges, custom houses, exhibition buildings, theatres,
baths, hospitals, prisons, and barracks. Here were all the individual
structures of the model Napoleonic city, of which Napoleon had time to
build so few but of which the next decades in France and abroad were to
see so many executed by Durand’s pupils and other emulators of his
ideals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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