A Study Of Etienne-Louis Boullee:Life, Architecture And Theory

In the late 18th century, a famous political revolution took place in France. Meanwhile, there was a "revolutionary" trend of thoughts in architecture. The most creative and influential architects in this trend should be Etienne-Louis Boullee(1728-1799) and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux(1736-1806). Boullee is the first of the so-called "revolutionary architects". After been forgotten for more than one century, Boullee and his school never caught attention until 1920s. In 1929, Emil Kaufmann, aAustrianscholar, published an essay to discuss the historical significance of Boullee and Ledoux. In 1952, He published the first treatise that gives Boullee a systematic introduction, namely "Three Revolutionary Architects:Boullee, Ledoux, Lequeu". After that, there is a growinginterest of Boullee in western academia.However, until today, there exists none systematic study of Boullee in Chinese academia. This essay is aimed at providing a whole introduction of Boullee’s works and theory, and a basic study to following researches in depth, through translating and integrating known materials. This essayanalyses Boullee’s theory from two angles:a dynamic change and a static state of his theory. This essay also provides juxtaposedparagraphs on views of others and an "autobiographical" narrative. According to this logic,this essay is divided into six chapters.First chapter is an introduction of this study about its significance, background, the academic achievements on this subject, and the method applied in this study. Chapter two is a narrativeparagraph of Boullee’s life-time and other background situations. Chapter three firstly discusses the changes taken place on Boullee’s thought and theory; secondly provides an overview of theory in his mature period. Chapter four extracts notions in Boullee’s treatise, and provides an interesting contrast on Chapter three. Chapter five gives an introduction of Boullee’s influence and critiques. The paragraphs of critiques include those from four main scholars, who represent the whole academia. Among them, Aldo Rossi is the most famous one. He highly recommended Boullee’s theory, and had integrated it to his own theory. I will lay a special stress on him in this chapter. Chapter Six is the conclusion of defects and promising points of this essay. Under the account of logic and confine of words, I will put the translation of the "autobiography" of designs in Boullee’s treatise, "Architecture, essay on art", in the appendices.