Jean-Louis de Cordemoy

Abstract First published in Paris in 1706, the ›Nouveau Traité de toute l’architecture ou l’art de Bastir‹ by Jean-Louis de Cordemoy marked a provocatively unprecedented point of view in the panorama of 18th century architectural theories. Through a critical revision of the excesses of the Baroque, which was considered the last rhetorical public manifestation of the Ancien Régime, and in the name of a logical renewal of design, the work immediately became the focus of a broad cultural debate, which continued until 1713 in a polemic with Amédée François Frézier. Revolutionary in its challenge to the Vitruvian orthodoxy, the Nouveau Traité developed the search for a Greek-Gothic architectural ideal, which, in a comparison between classical and modern, was realized in the querelle des Anciens et des Modernes and developed in France in the effort to define a ›national‹ architectural style. As precursor and inspiration for the aesthetics of Marc-Antoine Laugier, Cordemoy subjected adornment to the laws of bienséance and was a harbinger of the modern functionalist language – the principles of simplification of surfaces, a rigorous volumetric study that anticipated what in later decades would result in stereometric purity of Enlightenment experiments.