4146 -- PROLOGUE — 4213-4146

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Plate from Durand’s Précis showing the grid of his ‘mechanism of composition’ and his method of combinations.

Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1760–1834) regarded the Précis of the Lectures on Architecture (1802–5) and its companion volume, the Graphic Portion (1821), as both a basic course for future civil engineers and a treatise. Focusing the practice of architecture on utilitarian and economic values, he assailed the rationale behind classical architectural training: beauty, proportionality, and symbolism. His formal systematization of plans, elevations, and sections transformed architectural design into a selective modular typology in which symmetry and simple geometrical forms prevailed. His emphasis on pragmatic values, to the exclusion of metaphysical concerns, represented architecture as a closed system that subjected its own formal language to logical processes. Now published in English for the first time, the Précis and the Graphic Portion are classics of architectural education.

DRAWING [ON] THE SUBLIME: REPRESENTATION OF THE UNREALIZED PROJECT AND THE SUBORDINATION OF THE REAL
….Boullée focused on more idealized programs illustrating to what architectural form can aspire…….…Etienne-Louis Boullée (1728, Paris) was an architect whose mature adult life coincided with the French Revolution……the impact of Boullée's design ideology later transformed to become the pedagogical foundation for the École Polytechnique, augmented by his student Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1761-1834)……..

……..Boullée saw more possibilities of evoking sublimity in painting than in the realization of architecture, making representation all the more critical, regardless of a project’s practicability…

J. N. L. DURAND. COMPENDIO DE LECCIONES DE ARQUITECTURA, PARTE GRAFICA DE LOS CURSOS DE ARQUITECTURA, PROLOGO DE RAFAEL MONEO.

DRAWING [ON] THE SUBLIME: REPRESENTATION OF THE UNREALIZED PROJECT AND THE SUBORDINATION OF THE REAL