Claude Nicolas Ledoux French Architect (1736-1806)

BY:KRISHNAKANTH.MNAGALAKSHMI

Contents

Biography About Works & Design criteria List of works Principal works:1. Chateau of Maupertuis2. The Royal Salt works at Arc-et-Senans3. Theatre of Besancon4. Toll houses Salient Features Sources

Biography

Claude Ledoux was born in Dorman's, France in 1736. He was educated at a private architectural school in Paris.

At an early age his mother, Francoise Domino, and godmother, Francoise Piloy, encouraged him to develop his drawing skills. Later the Abbey of Sassenage funded his studies in Paris (1749–1753) at the College de Beauvais, where he followed a course in Classics.

The school emphasized native Baroque tradition but exposed students to English architecture.

Ledoux' dramatic style owes much to the fact that he never visited Rome. His concepts of Roman architecture were accordingly warped by the engravings of Piranesi from which he derived his knowledge.

About

Claude was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical Architecture.

He used his knowledge of Architectural theory to design domesticArchitecture & also town planning ; as consequence of his visionary plan forThe ideal city of ‘Chaux’, he became know as a Utopian. His greatest works were funded by the French monarchy and came to be

perceived as symbols of the Ancient Regime rather than UTOPIA. { aiming for a state in which everything is perfect}.

He published a collections of his designs as book under the title Architecture considered in relation to art, morals & legislation.

In this book he took the opportunity of revising his earlier designs, making them more rigorously Neoclassical.

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Works & Design criteria

Ledoux's architecture is quite practical and functional, the "visionary" aspects of his work are better known.

His designs became symbols of the ancient regime and their exaggerated use of classical elements seems to anticipate post-modern classicism.

Ledoux began working for the Department of Water and Forests preparing plans, deciding on repairs, and designing everything from cemeteries. Thus increased his aristocratic connections, and he soon became the leading architect in Paris.

He designed simplified, powerful geometric forms. Towards the end, his private houses became more eccentric, with odd layouts & uneven elevations throughout his life.

Shafts are broken up by square blocks

List of His Works

His most ambitious work was Royal Salt works at Arc-et-Senans, an idealistic & visionary town showing many examples of architecture Parlance, which was found to be uncompleted.

Chateau of Mauritius. Theatre of Besancon Hotel of Mlle Guimard, Chaussee –D-Antin, Paris (destroyed). Pavilion Saint-Lambert, Eaubonne (destroyed) Pavilion d'Attilly, faubourg Poissonniere, Paris, 1771 (destroyed) Pavilion de musique de Mime du Barry, Louveciennes, 1770–1771 Project for the prison and law courts of Aix-en-Provence, 1785–1786. The French revolution hampered his carrier, much of his work was destroyed in

19th centaury.

CHATEAU OF MAUPERTUIS

CHATEAU OF MAUPERTUIS

The chateau of Maupertuis was designed by architect Owner- Anne-Pierra de MontesquiouFezenzac. It was like horseshoe 292.3 meters The circumferences crowned with balustrades, pierced with square and

round niches, arriving at a gentle incline at the door of the vestibule.

Reconstructed later.

Now nothing remains of Ledoux’s.

He gave priority to the natural setting Of the building .

His giant Doric orders and the famousspherical house of the ‘garden agricoles’ were unforgettable elements.

CHATEAU OF MAUPERTUIS

The Royal Salt works at Arc-et-Senans

The Royal Salt works at Arc-et-Senans

The project was something of an abstraction as he had no site in mind. This also freed him give free rein to his imagination.

He presented the resulting project with 2 site plan options for the King Louis.

Keeping the practical considerations, the project was ambitious, innovative, and a break with traditional approaches.

Aerial view of Royal salt work

The entrance facade

First plan of Royal salt work The buildings were placed around the

edges of an immense square, and linked to each other by porticoes; no building stood in isolation.

To establish the connections between buildings, Ledoux introduced covered arcades that linked the midpoints of adjacent sides, forming a square within the square.

Columns abounded. The buildings themselves were replete with them, and 144 Doric columns supported the covered arcades

Second plan of Royal salt work

He designed the semicircular complex to reflect a hierarchical organization of work. The complete plan included the building of an ideal city forming a perfect circle, like that of the sun.

Construction began in 1775. The city was never started, however. All that was completed was the diameter and a semicircle of buildings of the salt works.

The entrance building sits at the midpoint of the semicircle and contains on one side guardrooms and on the other a prison and a forge.

Second Plan of Royal salt• Other buildings on the semicircle include

on the left, as one faces the entrance, quarters for carpenters and laborers, and on the right, marshals and coopers.

• At the center of the circle is the house of the Director, which has a belvedere on top. A monumental staircase led to a chapel that was destroyed by fire in , following a lightning strike.

• These two buildings are 80 meters long, 28 meters wide, and 20 meters high.

• At each intersection of the diameter and the semicircle sit buildings that housed the works' clerks.

Entrance

• The entrance is marked by a dense Peristyle of six baseless Tuscan columns , with a squat attic above.

• The columns, with their alternating round and square stones.• Along the walls are openings out of which flows, in a sculptural mass, the thick,

saline water.• This is perhaps the first architect-designed factory in history

The Royal Salt work at Arc-et-Senans The interiors of the portico The rusticated archway contains a grottoOf natural rock. Detail of decorationThe windows of the entrance portico are framed as urns spilling forth petrified water, and the entrance grotto has imitation springs to each side.

Theatre of Besancon

Theatre of Besancon

It was constructed 1784, France. The exterior of the building was designed as a severe Palladian cube, adorned

only by an almost Grecian neoclassical portico of six Ionic columns. However, to the exterior followed the neoclassical style which was regarded as

modern then the interior was a revolution. The seating was not the only innovation at the theatre. It was decided that the social classes would still be segregated thus while the theatre of was the first to have a ground floor amphitheater furnished with seats for the ordinary paying public.

Theatre of Besancon

Above them was a raised terrace or balcony for state employers. Directly above was the first tier of boxes reserved for the aristocracy,

and above this a tier of smaller boxes occupied by the middle-class the second.

Besançon was the first theatre to screen the musicians in an orchestra pit.

AMPHITHEATRE, BOXES AND OTHER PARTS AS DESCRIBED IN PREVIOUS SLIDE

Toll houses

Toll houses

Ledoux’s tollhouses run the gamut of neoclassical combinations. They are basically cube like and they make use of temple fronts, the actuated “Pa

He designed 42 tollhouses for the city of Paris lladian window, peristyles, domes , and other familiar elements.

Plan and elevation are uniformly massive and overlaid with Doric or Tuscan orders of heavily rusticated columns. ,

He also followed a style of completely foreign to the delicacy of the dying rococo manner.

Eg:Rotonde de la villette

Rotonde de la villette

Plan

The rotunda is made of stone facade.  Plan combines simple figures inspired by the classical antiquity with an outer square in Greek cross and a vast internal cylinder wells zenith.  On the ground floor, each facade consists of eight pillars Doric short and topped with a massive entablature and a pediment low triangular. 

In the centre, the gallery made up of arches mounted responsible job and lintels berries serliennes 40 twin Doric columns recalls the  Italian Palladian and Pre-Palladian. 

The roof is funnel and narrow circular central courtyard serves as a skylight.

The building is crowned by a Doric cornice alternating metopes and triglyphs.

ROTONDE DE LA VILLETTE

Design aspects

The rotunda is built in the neo-classical style. The rotunda is made of stone façade. His plan combines simple figures, with anouter square in Greek cross and a large inner cylinder

Entrance of the building

Salient Features

Though the structures May be seen as most decorated, fanciful, even by today’s standards,

Ledoux aimed to make the ideals of classicism available to a brader Spectrum of the social strata.

The form of each building was directly themed to the occupation of its inhabitant.

The head of a water canal system, for example, lived in a house that is shaped like a tube.

Source

Encylopedia.Websitesgoogleweblight.comwww.britannica.com