Claude Nicolas Ledoux was an influential French architect and urban planner during the late 18th century. Some of his most notable works included the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, which was an ambitious early example of an architect-designed factory complex arranged in a large semicircular plan; the Theatre of Besancon, which had an innovative interior design that segregated audiences by class; and numerous toll houses across Paris marked by heavy neoclassical architectural styles. Ledoux aimed to use architecture to visually represent different occupations and social roles through symbolic building designs and forms.
2. Contents
Biography
About
Works & Design criteria
List of works
Principal works:
1. Chateau of Maupertuis
2. The Royal Salt works at Arc-et-Senans
3. Theatre of Besancon
4. Toll houses
Salient Features
Sources
3. 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.
4. About
Claude was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical Architecture.
He used his knowledge of Architectural theory to design domestic
Architecture & also town planning ; as consequence of his visionary plan for
The 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.
5. 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.
7. 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.
9. CHATEAU OF MAUPERTUIS
The chateau of Maupertuis was designed by architect
Owner- Anne-Pierra de Montesquiou
Fezenzac.
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.
10. Reconstructed later.
Now nothing remains of Ledoux’s.
He gave priority to the natural setting
Of the building .
His giant Doric orders and the famous
spherical house of the
‘garden agricoles’ were
unforgettable elements.
13. 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.
15. 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
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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
19. The Royal Salt work at Arc-et-Senans
The interiors of the portico
The rusticated archway contains a grotto
Of natural rock.
Detail of decoration
The windows of the entrance portico are
framed as urns spilling forth petrified water,
and the entrance grotto has imitation
springs to each side.
21. 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.
22. 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.
25. 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
27. 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.
28. 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.
30. Design aspects
The rotunda is built in the neo-classical style.
The rotunda is made of stone façade.
His plan combines simple figures, with an
outer square in Greek cross and
a large inner cylinder
32. 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.
