Civil Engineering and Architecture Vol. 9(5), pp. 1590 - 1602
DOI: 10.13189/cea.2021.090529
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Notes on the Architectonics of the Public Will: From the Pedimented Primitive Hut to the French Pantheon of Quatremère De Quincy

Yasir M. Sakr , Naif A. Haddad ^*
Faculty of Architecture and Design, American University of Madaba (AUM), Madaba, Jordan

ABSTRACT

This paper highlights the crucial endeavour of the French neoclassical theoretician Quatremère De Quincy (1755–1849) to appropriate the theory of imitation (Mimesis) in architecture peculiar political use towards the end of the 18th century. Quatremère De Quincy, who became the Secretary Perpetual of the Academy of Arts (Académie des Beaux-Arts), was perhaps the most influential and prolific neoclassical architectural thinker of the 19th century. Since his election as a representative of the Commune of Paris to the Legislative Assembly of France at the eve of the French Revolution, Quatremère was active in politics between 1797-1800. The paper argues that Quatremère, preoccupied with the French Revolution's political ideals, upended the notion of architectural representation and its Vitruvian ideal, "the pedimented primitive hut", as was reproduced by Abbe Laugier. The study will show that, driven by a secular political vision, Quatremère equated architecture with the "Public will" (la Volonté Publique). Thus, not only Quatremère redefined architecture in linguistic or socio-political terms, as current scholarship generally contends, more importantly, he also redefined politics and its emerging nation-state, society, and public, all in architectural terms. He dismantled the idealist classical canon of referential "imitation" and replaced it with a "projective abstraction" that became the foundation of a modernist architecture concept. The study correlates the basic constructs of Quatremère's architectural theory (i.e., allegory, architecture, and character), which he articulated in the (Encyclopédie méthodique de l'architecture) during his active political career in the early years of the French Revolution between 1789-1794 with contemporaneous documents of his actual design practice when he was the architect in charge of shaping the French Pantheon as the premier national monument of the Revolution.

KEYWORDS
Quatremère De Quincy, Architectural Theory, Neo-classical, Hellenistic Architecture, French Revolution, Modern Nation-State, Pantheon, Type, Character, Allegory, Surface Design, Research through Design

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Yasir M. Sakr , Naif A. Haddad , "Notes on the Architectonics of the Public Will: From the Pedimented Primitive Hut to the French Pantheon of Quatremère De Quincy," Civil Engineering and Architecture, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 1590 - 1602, 2021. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2021.090529.

(b). APA Format:
Yasir M. Sakr , Naif A. Haddad (2021). Notes on the Architectonics of the Public Will: From the Pedimented Primitive Hut to the French Pantheon of Quatremère De Quincy. Civil Engineering and Architecture, 9(5), 1590 - 1602. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2021.090529.