Architecture Parlante

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The phrase architecture parlante refers to the concept of buildings that explain their own function or identity. The phrase was originally associated with Claude Nicolas Ledoux, and was extended to other Paris-trained architects of the Revolutionary period, Étienne-Louis Boullée, and Jean-Jacques Lequeu. Emil Kaufmann traced its first use to an anonymous critical essay with Ledoux's work as the subject, written for Magasin Pittoresque in 1852, and entitled "Etudes d'architecture en France". In Ledoux's unbuilt plans for the salt-producing town of Chaux, the hoop-makers' houses are shaped like barrels, the river inspector's house straddles the river, and an enormous brothel takes the shape of an erect phallus. Within more practical applications, nonce orders, invented under the impetus of Neoclassicism, have served as examples of architecture parlante