So I get to my preceptorial for architecture history today, thinking its going to be just as boring as every other week. I was wrong... by far the best preceptorial I've ever been to. We spent the majority of the class watching an "educational video" on the royal saltworks at arc-et-senans, but at the beginning of class we spent some time talking about neo-classicism and Boullee and Ledoux. My preceptor was trying to emphasize to us how Boullee and Ledoux created buildings that were not as ornamented on the outside because they wanted to focus on experimenting with geometric form. Ledoux continues to push this symbolism to a bizarre level in order to express the function of a building in its shape. Ok, I'll buy that... lets have some examples shall we?
Here we have a design for Newton's Cenotaph by
Boullee and Ledoux... as you can tell from the drawings, this building's purpose has to do with space, the solar system, constellations, etc. Ok, this works, I'm feelin' it.
This is a design for the inspector of the Loue River. Ok, this makes sense as well. Your
job is to watch the river, why not have the river flow right through the middle of your house? It
seems perfectly acceptable.
Then he shows is this drawing for the Oikema. Ok, so... I'm not really getting how the shape of this building represents its function, oh well. Oh no... here is the plan view...
So I'm thinking... well I know what I think it looks like... but surely they didn't have penis shaped buildings dedicated to oh I don't know... penis enhancement back then. Well, no, it is not for penis enhancement. But apparently the idea was for this to be a communal buildings to lead young lovers into an appropriate sexual life where they could receive a thorough sexual education. Well, ok then. My preceptor did have a rather hard time discussing this one though... he took a lot of silent pauses and he couldn't get the word sex out. But all and all it made for an interesting class. I guess you had to be there to see how it went down. But I'm for sure a fan of Ledoux now.
2 comments:
IT'S A BROTHEL.
My architecture history teacher had no trouble talking about the Oikema. He loved every second of it.
He gave a fairly graphic explanation of how it was meant to work. You enter at the base (ie balls). There were to be depictions all along the length of it of horrible sexual depravities. THe couple would get so worked up and horrified that they would take off running down the hall and would burst out the tip to escape the horrors of what they saw. Yeah, that was pretty much how he described it. Good times.
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