ANTOINE-LAURENT-THOMAS VAUDOYER AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF ARCHITECTURAL THEORY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN EARLY 19TH CENTURY
Authors: Коптева Т.В. 
Published: January 2022

Годы творческого формирования А.-Л.-Т. Водуайе пришлись на 1780-е, период расцвета эпохи Просвещения. Водуайе был весьма успешен и оставался востребованным на протяжении всего сложного и долгого революционного периода. Спектр дошедших до нас проектов Водуайе чрезвычайно разнообразен, и кажется почти невозможным вычленить из них что-то, что можно назвать «творческим методом». Во многом он являлся сыном эпохи Разума, однако свои взгляды на теорию архитектуры он оформил только в 1832 г. В его «Рассуждении об архитектуре» постоянно чередуется просвещенческое и романтическое, и анализ этого текста поможет понять трансформации, происходившие с «новым классицизмом» и преемственность между XVIII и XIX вв. Примирить свои зачастую противоположные представления о зодчестве (например, идею о свободе романтического гения с идеей существования неизменных принципов архитектуры) Водуайе пытался, постоянно обращаясь к сравнению с другими «свободными искусствами». Изучение работы Водуайе показывает, что в XIX в. для поколения его учеников архитектура больше не являлась типом мышления, и Водуайе не мог говорить об архитектуре на языке эпохи Просвещения, который подразумевал, что теории зодчества являются неотъемлемой частью общественной и философской дискуссии. Ему иначе приходилось «популяризировать архитектуру», переводя ее на язык других свободных искусств (музыки, живописи, поэзии), который был понятен молодой аудитории.

One of the constant challenges in studying architectural theory of the French Enlightenment is to define what belongs to it and what does not. The approaches range from a specific period in the second half of the 18th century to a more broad definition, which encompasses almost 150 years, from the 1670s until 1820. Thanks to the almost universal acceptance of Emil Kaufmann’s theory, the projects and ideas of Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Étienne-Louis Boullée and Jean-Jacques Lequeu became the main symbol of Enlightenment in architecture. However, to explore the turning point of the architectural theory of that era we need to go beyond the more traditionally studied thinkers and practitioners. Antoine-Laurent-Thomas Vaudoyer was J.-J. Lequeu’s senior by a year, and his formative years fell in the same period, the 1780s, the years when architecture of the age of Reason was at its peak. Unlike many of his contemporaries Vaudoyer managed not to fall out of grace during the long and troublesome historical period of French revolutions. Due in part to this long career, his projects that remain until today are so various in style and approach, and it’s hardly possible to find a consistent modus operandi of this architect. But we could safely argue that he was in many ways one of the sons of the Enlightenment era in his architecture. What makes him especially interesting to study is that he formulated his theoretical views on this art only in 1832, at the time when the new Romantic Movement was powerful enough for him to try and bridge the opposing tendencies of both periods in his writing. He held simultaneously, the views of the age of Reason that essential unchanging principles exist in architecture, and supported new ideas about the free genius of every artist that can easily escape the constraints of reason. The article analyses the writings of Vaudoyer in conjunction with his projects, to uncover and reconstruct his ideas about the theory of architecture. As any theoretician of the Enlightenment era, Vaudoyer thinks that architecture is derived from nature. However, where other theoreticians considered cosmic geometry, natural forms and other ‘objective’ manifestations of nature to be the foundation, Vaudoyer shifts his focus towards the perception of nature’s forms and effects by those with a talent for architecture. According to him, architectural theory helps to enhance the ‘natural talent’, and is essential to foster an understanding of the art of architecture to those who cannot practice it. Vaudoyer draws a clear distinction between the ‘art’ and the ‘science’ of architecture, while their indivisible unity was paramount for other thinkers of the Enlightenment. In this and other aspects of his theory, Vaudoyer tries to combine the approaches to architecture of Romanticism with the ideas of what architecture is and should be, which stem from his formative years during the Enlightenment. He constantly drew upon the examples of other liberal arts, more “romantic” and individualistic in some aspects, to explain his architectural theories. It this he differs greatly from classic Enlightenment architectural writings where architecture was pretty much self-explanatory. The Enlightenment popularized architecture in the sense of architectural theory permeating the social and philosophical discourse and being their intrinsic part. Analyzing Vaudoyer’s writing, we can conclude that he spoke as ‘a relic of the Enlightenment’ at the time when architecture was no longer seen as a way of thinking. Thus, for him popularizing architecture is no longer about deriving all other social, philosophical and artistic discourses from architecture, but rather interpreting architecture through the language of other liberal arts, which was much more familiar to the new generation of the 1830s.