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From: Stirling's Inheritance To: Stirling's Legacy Re: Stirling's Muses

1.9

Laugier, Marc-Antoine 1713-69,
was a Jesuit priest and outstanding neo-classical theorist. His Essai sur l'architecture (1753) expounds a rationalist view of classical architecture as a truthful, economic expression of man's need for shelter, based on the hypothetical 'rustic cabin' of primative man. His ideal building would have free-standing columns. He condemned pilasters and pedestals and all Renaissance and post-Renaissance elemants. His book put Neo-Classicism in a nutshell and had great influence, e.g., on Soufflot.

John Fleming, Hugh Honour, and Nikolaus Pevsner, "Laugier, Marc-Antoine" in The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1972), p. 170.

origin of the column, etc.:
The pieces of wood set upright [for the rustic hut] have given us the idea of the column, the pieces placed horizontally on top of them the idea of the entablature, the inclining pieces forming the roof the idea of the pediment. This is what all masters of art have recognized.

Marc-Antoine Laugier, An Essay on Architecture, trans. Wolfgang and Anni Herrmann (Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc., 1977), p. 12.

aedicule
: a small structure used as a shrine : a niche for a statue

the rustic hut
He wants to make himself a dwelling that protects but does not bury him. Some fallen branches in the forest are the right material for his purpose; he chooses four of the strongest, raises them upright and arranges them in a square; across their top he lays four other branches; on these he hoists from two sides yet another row of branches which, inclining towards each other, meet at their highest point. He then covers this kind of roof with leaves so closely packed that neither sun nor rain can penetrate. Thus, man is housed. Admittedly, the cold and heat will make him feel uncomfortable in this house which is open on all sides but soon he will fill in the space between two posts and feel secure.

Such is the course of simple nature; by imitating the natural process, art was born. All the splendors of architecture ever conceived have been modeled on the little rustic hut I have just described.

Marc-Antoine Laugier, An Essay on Architecture, trans. Wolfgang and Anni Herrmann (Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc., 1977), p. 11-12.

Stirling's Muses Part I