From 1671 to 1793, the Academy of Architecture existed under the direct authority of the French Royal Works Administration (the
Bâtiments du roi
) and contributed to defining the image of the French monarchy during the reigns of Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI. Created by Louis XIV's powerful chief minister, Jean‐Baptiste Colbert, the Academy served as a consultative body of leading professionals and included a school where aspiring young architects were exposed to the principles of classical design theory. When it was suppressed during the French Revolution, the Academy's membership comprised an outstanding array of figures whose work had contributed substantially to defining late‐eighteenth‐century neoclassicism and to reshaping Paris through numerous royal monuments and private buildings.
"Space and the longue durée : Julien-David Leroy and the History of Architecture", by Christopher Drew Armstrong In the 18th century, the idea that architecture could be created by the fusion of classical and Gothic principles was a major innovation in French theory ; Jacques-Germain Soufflot's church of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris came to be regarded as the embodiment of this ideal. The premise that such a fusion was a valid approach to design seems to have been questioned, however, by the theorist Julien-David Leroy, whose work on the history of architecture grappled with the nature and cause of change over time. Ignoring Gothic architecture altogether, he endeavoured to show the development of Greek principles and their adaptation to Christian church planning, culminating in Soufflot's project for Sainte-Geneviève. Rejecting the cyclical model of historical change that was central to the work of Vasari and Winckelmann, Leroy developed diagrams to represent the progress of architecture since the earliest Egyptian and Greek constructions. Based on contemporary principles of etymology, Leroy's architectural diagrams suggest that forms acquire meaning over time by their adaptation to changing needs and beliefs, and that the principle catalyst for change are the interactions and exchanges among peoples. What is most significant about Leroy's approach to architectural history is the importance of space and his notion of a dialectic to understand the fusion of traditions.
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