Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, and the Rococo (Neo-Classicism)

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Buildings across Time, 4th Edition Chapter Thirteen: Neo-Classicism,

Romanticism, and The Rococo

Introduction Eighteenth-century architectural developments were complex and diverse. The late Baroque lingered into the century in various parts of Europe. A late strain of the Baroque, called Rococo, is a style at once playful and highly decorative.

Both the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution began in the eighteenth century, and with them came the dominance of modern science. Radical changes in philosophy and government were accompanied by equally radical changes in architecture.

Architects and archaeologists, dissatisfied with their knowledge of the architectural past, returned to Greece and Italy, where they subjected ancient ruins to a new, more scientific scrutiny. Others, dissatisfied with the restrictive rationality of Neo-Classicism and science created Romanticism, an anti-rational and emotional philosophical system, and its aesthetic component, the Picturesque.

The English Neo-Palladians Mereworth Castle

Campbell: Mereworth Castle, Kent, 1723. Colin Campbell was among the circle of Neo- Palladians assembled around Lord Burlington. This is Campbell’s English interpretation of the Villa Rotunda.

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The English Neo-Palladians Chiswick Villa

Burlington: Plan of Chiswick House, London. The plan is even more unlike Palladio’s work than the elevation. It is a nine-part grid of squares, rectangles, circles, and polygons.

The English Neo-Palladians Holkham Hall

Kent: Holkham Hall, Norfolk, 1734.

This sprawling complex continues the vast scale of country houses established by Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor during the period of the Stuart Restoration. Each of its dependencies is the size of an eighteenth-century Georgian house in America.

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Robert Adams and William Chambers Grotesque Ornament

Adam: Plan of the Williams-Winn House, London, 1772. On a long narrow site, Adam disposed a variety of spatial types, including basilicas, rectangles, and polygons, without a trace of awkwardness. Not unrelated to developments in French hotels, such residential designs provided a context for Adam’s interior-ornamentation inventions.

Robert Adams and William Chambers Grotesque Ornament

Adam: Interior of the Williams-Winn House, London. This drawing illustrates Adam’s delicate, net-like ornament inspired by his investigations of Ancient Rome and Renaissance wall paintings. When developing such a scheme, Adam used four elevations arranged orthogonally around a plan or reflected ceiling plan. By means of such a device, he could conceive all elements of the room as a single unit.

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Robert Adams and William Chambers Somerset House

Chambers: Plan of Somerset House, London, 1776-86. Unlike most Englishmen, William Chambers went to Paris for his architectural education. The scale and rigor of his plan reflects the French tradition of J. F. Blondel and the École des Beaux-Arts .

Boullee and Ledoux Newton Cenotaph

Boullee: Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton, 1784. The most striking feature of Boullee’s creation is certainly its vast scale. The selection of Newton as the figure to be honored expresses Enlightenment admiration for reason through a celebration of the inventor of the clock-like universe.

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Boullee and Ledoux Chaux

Ledoux: Chaux, 1775- 79. Only half of Ledoux’s plan for this saltworks was constructed. In the center is the Director’s House, with buildings for salt production flanking it and workers’ housing in the surrounding semi- ellipse.

Boullee and Ledoux Hotel Thelusson

Ledoux: View of the Hotel de Thelluson, Paris, 1778-83. In the foreground, Ledoux placed a gateway like an ancient Roman, half-buried triumphal arch. A walkway at the second level then leads back to the corps-de- logis or main block of the house, with its central motif appearing as an embedded trabeated circular temple.

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Boullee and Ledoux Hôtel Thellusson

Ledoux: Plan of the Hôtel Thellusson, Paris. Built in a developing Parisian suburb, this hotel was not squeezed onto an irregular urban site, as in such seventeenth-century residential developments as the Place Vendome. It combines house, courts, gardens, and systems of pedestrian and vehicular circulation.

Boullee and Ledoux Hotel Thelusson

Ledoux: Longitudinal section through the Hôtel Thellusson, Paris. Perhaps this section gives the most informative view of Ledoux’s hotel. It reveals the bi-level organization, the situation of the building components in the landscape, and the extreme manipulation of the ceiling plane in the corps-de-logis.

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French Architects and Aggrandizement Pantheon

Soufflot: Plan of the Pantheon, Paris. Like the exterior, this interior of this church has been modified; the piers of the crossing have been modified, as the original columns here began to fail. The many other columns remain intact, demonstrating Soufflot’s interest in lofty Gothic openness.

French Architects and Aggrandizement Trianon

Gabriel: Plan of the Petit Trianon, Versailles. Each façade of this building is symmetrical. However, only one set of rooms, that on the west front, is symmetrically distributed. Otherwise the partitions are cleverly arranged to achieve internal convenience without sacrificing outward formality.

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French Architects and Aggrandizement Comédie-Française

Peyre and de Wailly: Comédie-Française, Paris, 1770. Large theaters were a new phenomenon in eighteenth-century Paris. They were more than venues for entertainment, being settings for social spectacle and something akin to temples of French drama.

French Architects and Aggrandizement Hôtel des Monnaies

Antoine: Plan of Hôtel des Monnaies, Paris, 1768-75. The public front of this mint faces the Seine, with the principal court behind the center of the façade. Still farther to the rear is the great hall of the foundry. To the left of the foundry and around smaller courts are the minting shops.

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French Architects and Aggrandizement École de Chirurgie

Gondoin: Plan of the École de Chirurgie, Paris. In this plan, the entrance façade is at the bottom. Behind it, the court leads to a temple front, then the semi- circular anatomical theater.

Neo-Classicism Schauspielhaus

Schinkel: Plans of the Schauspielhaus, Berlin. Schinkel was able to organize a wide variety of spaces inside a symmetrical envelope. This variety and the complex paths of circulation coexist in a remarkably coherent plan.

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Neo-Classicism Altes Museum

Schinkel: Plans of the Altesmuseum, Berlin. At the first- and second-floor levels, Schinkel combined a stoa along the front façade with a central rotunda or pantheon of art beyond flanked by twin temples, their cellas courtyards and their prostyle columns part of the stoa-front.

Neo-Classicism Charlottenhof

Schinkel: Site plan of the Charlottenhof, Potsdam, 1829-31. Schinkel was also skilled in planning such asymmetrical compositions as this one. He remodeled a small eighteenth-century house into a formal Ancient Roman villa rustica, or elaborate farmhouse.

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Neo-Classicism Charlottenhof

Schinkel: Charlottenhof, Potsdam. Shown here are two views of the temple-fronted villa. Schinkel manipulated architecture, landscape, and water features to achieve calculated vistas and panoramas.

I Carceri I Carceri

Piranesi: Engraving from his Carcerni, 1745. Pirani’s views of Rome inspired many architectural students studying in the Eternal City. His depiction of moldering, half-buried monuments appealed to eighteenth-century romantic sensibilities. The views of carceri (prisons) are his most imaginative spatial investigations, depicting as they do the interiors of fantastic, probably unbuildable, but profoundly evocative constructions.

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Neo-Classicism Monticello

Jefferson: Plan and exterior view or Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, begun 1770. For his own house Jefferson turned the familiar Palladian five-part organization backward in order to focus the complex on spectacular mountain views. He depressed the floor levels to produce a basement for service underneath both the house and the wings. This plan shows the principle floor of the central block and the basement level of the wings.

Neo-Classicism University of Virginia

Jefferson: Lawn at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1817-26. Still the most admired example of campus planning in America, the University of Virginia was called an “academical village” by Jefferson. The U-shaped site plan was closed on one end by the Ancient Roman Pantheon-inspired library that had been suggested to Jefferson by Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

Photo by Michael Fazio.

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Neo-Classicism University of Virginia

Jefferson: Pavilion VII, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. This pavilion design was suggested to Jefferson by William Thorton, winner of the competition for the U. S. Capitol. It is the only pavilion façade given an archade of arches on piers.

Photo by Michael Fazio.

Neo-Classicism University of Virginia

Jefferson: Plan of the University of Virginia campus, Charlottesville. Extending from the library at the top of the scheme are the two files of ten pavilions connected by the walkways fronting dormitory rooms or what Jefferson called “ranges.” Behind the pavilions are gardens and behind them more ranges as well as dining halls.