The restoration of
legitimate monarchy
after the
fall of
Napoléon stimulated
a revival of interest in
older Gothic and early
Renaissance styles,
which offered a symbol
of dynastic reassurance
not only to the state
but also to the newly
rich. So in the private
and commercial
architecture of the
nineteenth century these
earlier styles
predominate - in
mine-owners' villas and
bankers' headquarters.
By the mid- nineteenth
century , a
neo-Baroque strain had
established itself, a
style exemplified by
Charles Garnier's Opéra
in Paris (1861-74),
which, under the heading
of Second Empire and
with its associations of
voluptuous good living,
seductive painting and
general
"ooh-la-la",
provides probably the
most persistent image of
France among the
non-French.
In addition to the
correct, official
Classicism and the
robust, exuberant and
commercial Baroque,
there is a third strand
running through the
nineteenth century that
was ultimately more
fruitful. The rational
engineering approach,
embodied in the official
School of Roads and
Bridges and
invigorated by the
teaching of
Viollet-le-Duc, who
reinterpreted Gothic
style as pure structure,
led to the development
of new structural
techniques out of which
"modern"
architectural style was
born. Iron was the first
significant new
material, often used in
imitation of Gothic
forms and destined to be
developed as an
individual architectural
style in America. In the
Eiffel Tower
(1889), France set up a
potent symbol of things
to come.
A more significantly
French development was
in the use of reinforced
concrete towards the end
of the century, most
notably by Auguste
Perret , whose 1903
apartment house at 25
rue Franklin, Paris 16e,
turns the concrete
structure into a visible
virtue and breaks with
conventional façades.
Changes in the patterns
of work and travel were
making the need for new
urban planning very
acute in such cities as
Paris. Perret and other modernists
were all for the
high-rise buildings that
were going to better the
haphazard layouts in
America by a rational
integration to new
street systems. Some of
their designs for
gigantic skyscraper
avenues and suburban
rings now look like
totalitarian
horror-movie sets. But
it was tradition, not
charity, that blocked
their projects at the
time.
