The Arcades Project - Operi

forts will be occupied hy regular army troops! You admit then that, with a system
of forts, the population could not defend itself alone. This is ... an immense, a
terrible admission." Arago, Sur les Fortifications de Paris (Paris, 1841), pp. 80-
81. [r3a,l]
Marx on the June Insurrection: In order to dispel the people's last illusion, in
order to enable a complete break with the past, it was necessary for the customary
poetic accompaniment of a French uprising, the enthusiastic youth of the bour­
geoisie, the students of the Ecole Poly technique, the three-cornered hats-all to
take the side of the oppressors." Karl Marx, 'Dem Andenken del' Juni-Kampfee'
[Karl Marx als Denker, Mensch und Revolutionii1; eel. D. Rjazanov (Vienna and
Berlin < l928>,p, 36],' [r3a,2]
Again, in 1871, in his strategy for the defense of Paris, Blanqui comes back to the
uselessness of the forts which Louis Philippe erected against Paris. [r3a,3)
The postrevolutionary tendencies of architecture, which gain currency with Le­
doux, are characterized by distinct block-like structures to which staircases and
pedestals are often appended in "standardized" fashion, One might discern in
this style a reflection of Napoleonic military strategy, With this goes the effort to
generate certain effects by means of structural massing. According to Kaufmann,
"Revolutionary architecture aimed to produce an impression through giant
masses, the sheer weight of the forms (hence the preference for Egyptian forms,
which predates the Napoleonic campaign), and also through the handling of
materials. The cyclopean embossment of the saltworks, the powerful ordon­
nance of the Palais de Justice at Aix, and the extreme severity of the prison
designed for this city . .. speak clearly of that aim:' Emil Kaufmann, Von Ledoux
bis Le em'busier (Vienna and Leipzig, 1933), p. 29. [r4,1]
Ledoux's planned toll-helt for Paris: "'From the beginning, he set his sights as high
as possible. His tollgates were intended to proclaim from afar the glory of the
capital. Of the more than forty guardhouses, not one resemhled any of the others,
and among his papers after his death were found a number of unfinished plans for
expanding the system." Emil Kaufmann, Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier: Ursprung
und Entwicklung del' autonomenArchitektur (Vienna and Leipzig, 1933) , p. 27.
[r4,2]
Shortly after 1800, things were already so far along that the ideas which appear
in Ledoux and Boullee-elemental outbursts of passionate natures-were heing
propounded as official doctrine . ... Only three decades separate the late work of
Blondel, which still . . . embodies the teachings of French classicism, from the
Precis des leqons d'architectnre of Durand, whose thinking had a decisive
influence during the Empire and in the period following. They are the three decades
of Ledouxs career. Durand who announced the norm from his chair at the
Ecole Royale Poly technique in Paris, . . . diverges from Blonde! on all essential