Temple of Death
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One night in the late 18th-century, as the Terror was tearing apart Paris, the Neo-classical architect and professor Étienne-Louis Boullée took a walk in the woods. In what must have seemed a rather Dantean scene, Boullée became transfixed by his shadowy silhouette as it moved across the moonlit trees. The play of dark upon light gave him an idea.
A decade earlier, Boullée had drawn up designs for a fantastical monument in honour of the physicist Isaac Newton, who sixty years on from his death had become the great icon of the intellectual movement that was just then beginning to be called the Lumières, or the Enlightenment. Amidst the tumult of the French Revolution, there grew a great fervour for sweeping away everything ancien, to overturn everything of the old order, whether that be the monarchy, church privileges, or public monuments. As the English polymath was generally credited with beginning the intellectual revolution, Boullée felt Newton deserved special recognition.
The architect’s design for the ‘Cenotaph for Isaac Newton’ was only ever a paper project, but it would go on to influence a generation of architects centuries later. He envisioned a gargantuan sphere, some 500 ft (150m) high — larger than the great pyramid of Giza — rising out from a base of concentric rings. The rings are stepped to increase in height until they meet the outer surface of the sphere, with ramps allowing visitors to walk up to and among the cypress trees that adorn them — trees chosen for their long association with death and immortality.
A cavernous opening at the base of the sphere acts as the entrance to the interior of the monument. Inside, a grand staircase leads up to a small viewing platform, upon which is placed Newton’s sarcophagus — the only human-sized portion of the structure. In Boullée’s ink and wash drawings, the tiny matchstick figures seemed overawed by what lies above them.
Encircling the platform, the interior of the sphere acts as the largest model of the cosmos ever proposed. The walls are illuminated with distant stars and galaxies, while hanging in the centre is a giant mobile of the Copernican Solar System — complete with revolving planets and moons. The ‘sun’ at the centre of the model would only light up at night, meaning inside the sphere, day and night were inverted.
Though Boullée’s design contained elements of Classical architecture — with symmetry and regularity remaining paramount — he sought a break with the building philosophy of antiquity. Vitruvius, the great Roman architect, argued for architecture founded on three principles: firmitatis (stability), utilitatis (utility), and venustatis (beauty). In his Architecture, essai sur l’art, Boullée wrote “In order to execute, it is first necessary to conceive… It is this product of the mind, this process of creation, that constitutes architecture…” In other words, building must begin with a grand vision, an inspiring ideal conveyed through an immutable and totalising structure. Architecture as art; architecture as awe.
We can see Boullée’s grandiose philosophy reflected in other designs from the same period, which he drew for his students at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées.
Like many of Boullée’s designs, his plans for Newton’s Cenotaph remained mostly private, and his treatise expounding his architectural philosophy remained unpublished. By the mid-1790s he had withdrawn from Paris — no doubt in no small part to the ongoing violence engulfing the city. Then came his walk in the woods.
With the guillotine falling regularly back in the capital, and his own health failing, perhaps it’s no wonder that death was ever on Boullée’s mind. It haunted his experience in the forest too, about which he wrote, “A mass of objects detached in black against a light of extreme pallor. Nature seemed to offer itself, in mourning, to my sight.” So inspired, he began to imagine an architecture, “stripped of every ornament … light-absorbing material should create a dark architecture of shadows, outlined by even darker shadows…”
Boullée envisioned an architecture of darkness, where the absence of light was the defining feature. He once again looked to antiquity for inspiration, but this time the Romans and Greeks wouldn’t do. He turned instead to a civilisation far more ancient — that of Egypt.
In a grand homage to Death itself, Boullée emulated Imhotep, architect of the oldest of all Egypt’s pyramids. He envisioned a vast structure rising out of a flat plain, again surrounded by cypress trees. But instead of the gleaming white limestone of the Egyptian desert, Boullée’s pyramid would be adorned in a deathly black, like a shadow cut into the sky. To symbolise death, his monument was a building in photographic negative. Horror vacui indeed.
A few years after drawing his Temple of Death, Boullée would pass on through its door, succumbing to his illness in 1799. His designs and philosophy of architecture were largely forgotten until the 20th-century, when they were rediscovered by, and inspired, a generation of utopian architects. Boullée’s monuments were never built, but his grand vision lives on.1
Notes
Miller, Michelle (2014) “Cenotaph for Newton / Etienne-Louis Boullée”, ArchDaily
veryagudo (2012) “Temple of Death & Cenotaph for Isaac Newton”, Myths, Tales, and Lies
Vidler, Anthony (2016); “Etienne Louis Boullée (1728-1799)”, Architectural Review
Ah, Boullée. He’s the definition of an uncompromising visionary. Thanks for this tour.
Until your post I was unfamiliar with Boullee. Thank you. I find it interesting this work followed The Terror and so, we can imagine, influenced by that dark period. Fascinating design.