Friedrich Gilly
Friedrich David Gilly was a German architect and the son of the architect David Gilly. Born in Altdamm, Gilly was known as a prodigy and the teacher of the young Karl Friedrich Schinkel. In 1788 he enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Berlin, his teachers there included Johann Gottfried Schadow. In 1797 Gilly travelled extensively in France and Austria; the drawings he made in France reveal his interests in architecture and reflect the intellectual climate of the Directoire. They include views of the Fountain of Regeneration, the Rue des Colonnes—an arcaded street of baseless Doric columns leading to the Théâtre Feydeau—the chamber of the Conseil des Anciens in the Tuileries and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s grotto in its landscaped setting at Ermenonville, Oise, his 1797 design for the Frederick II monument reveals his debt to French neoclassicism, in particular Etienne-Louis Boullée, his explanatory notes indicate he intended the building to be spiritually uplifting. Beginning in 1799 Schinkel lived in the Gilly household at Berlin and was taught by Friedrich and Friedrich's architect father David Gilly.
Gilly was appointed professor at the Berlin Bauakademie at the age of 26. Of his built designs, only one survives: the ruinous Greek Revival mausoleum at Dyhernfurth near Breslau, in the form of a prostyle Greek temple. Gilly died from tuberculosis at the age of 28 in Karlsbad. Friedrich Gilly's works Fritz Neumeyer Introduction to Friedrich Gilly: Essays on Architecture 1796-1799 1994 Bust of Gilly
Albert Speer
Albert Speer was the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison. An architect by training, Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931, launching himself on a political and governmental career which lasted fourteen years, his architectural skills made him prominent within the Party and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler instructed him to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for Berlin, in which capacity Speer was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that evicted Jewish tenants from their homes in Berlin. In February 1942, Speer was appointed as Reich Minister of War Production. Using doctored statistics, Speer promoted himself as having performed an "armaments miracle", credited with keeping Germany in the war.
In 1944, Speer established a task force to increase production of fighter aircraft that became instrumental in the exploitation of slave labour for the benefit of the German war effort. After the war, Speer was arrested and charged with the crimes of the Nazi regime among the 24 "major war criminals" at the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, principally for the use of slave labor, narrowly avoiding a death sentence. Having served his full term, Speer was released in 1966, he used his writings from the time of imprisonment as the basis for two autobiographical books, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Speer's books were a success, the general public was fascinated by an inside view of the Third Reich. Speer died of a stroke in 1981. Little remains of Speer's personal architectural work. Through his autobiographies and interviews, Speer constructed an image of himself as a man who regretted having failed to discover the monstrous crimes of the Third Reich.
However, he continued to deny explicit knowledge of, responsibility for, the Holocaust. This image dominated his historiography in the decades following the war, giving rise to the "Speer Myth"; the first theme of the myth posits that after his appointment as Minister of Armaments he revolutionized the German war machine. The second theme is. Beginning in the 1980s, the myth began to fall apart; the armaments miracle was attributed to Nazi propaganda. Adam Tooze wrote in The Wages of Destruction that the idea that Speer was an apolitical technocrat was "absurd". Martin Kitchen, writing in Speer: Hitler's Architect, stated that Speer was intimately involved in the "Final Solution". Speer was born into an upper-middle-class family, he was the second of three sons of Albert Friedrich Speer. In 1918, the family moved to a home they had in Heidelberg. According to Henry T. King, deputy prosecutor at Nuremberg who wrote a book about Speer, "Love and warmth were lacking in the household of Speer's youth."
His two brothers Ernst and Hermann bullied him throughout his childhood. Speer was active in sports, mountaineering. Speer studied architecture. Speer began his architectural studies at the University of Karlsruhe instead of a more acclaimed institution because the hyperinflation crisis of 1923 limited his parents' income. In 1924 when the crisis had abated, he transferred to the "much more reputable" Technical University of Munich. In 1925 he transferred again, this time to the Technical University of Berlin where he studied under Heinrich Tessenow, whom Speer admired. After passing his exams in 1927, Speer became Tessenow's assistant, a high honor for a man of 22; as such, Speer taught some of Tessenow's classes while continuing his own postgraduate studies. In Munich, continuing in Berlin, Speer began a close friendship spanning over 50 years, with Rudolf Wolters, who studied under Tessenow. In mid-1922, Speer began courting Margarete Weber, the daughter of a successful craftsman who employed 50 workers.
The relationship was frowned upon by Speer's class-conscious mother, who felt that the Webers were inferior. Despite this opposition, the two married in Berlin on August 28, 1928; the couple would have six children together, but Albert Speer grew apart from his family after 1933, he remained distant after his release from imprisonment in 1966, despite efforts to forge closer bonds. In January 1931, Speer applied for Nazi Party membership, on March 1, 1931 became member number 474,481. In 1931, with stipends shrinking amid the Depression, Speer surrendered his position as Tessenow's assistant and moved to Mannheim, hoping to make a living as an architect. Unsuccessful, his father gave him a part-time job as manager of the elder Speer's properties. In July 1932, the Speers visited Berlin to help out the Party prior to the Reichstag elections. While they were there, his friend, Nazi Party official Karl Hanke, recommended the young architect to Joseph Goebbels to help renovate the Party's Berlin headquarters.
When the commission was completed, Speer returned to Mannheim and remained there as Hitler took office in January 1933. The organizers of the 1933 Nuremberg Rally asked Speer to submit designs for the rally, bringing him into contact with Hitler for the first time. Neither the organizers nor Rudolf Hess were willing to decide whether to approve the p
Embassy of Germany, Saint Petersburg
The former Embassy of Germany in Saint Petersburg is considered the earliest and most influential example of Stripped Classicism. It was built to house the diplomatic mission of the German Empire in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire. After the relocation by the Bolsheviks of the Soviet capital from Petrograd to Moscow, it served as a consulate of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Located at 11/41 Saint Isaac's Square in the Tsentralny District of Saint Petersburg, the building now houses the offices of two Russian government agencies. In the 1740s a two-storey building was erected by Nikita Shestakov on the site, today at 11/41 Saint Isaac's Square. In 1743 Shestakov sold the building to merchant Fedot Stepanov and from the 1760s to 1812 it was owned by a jeweller to the court of the Russian Empire. From 1815-1820, renowned Russian architect Vasily Stasov redesigned the house in the Empire style common in Russia during this period. In 1832 General-Adjutant Pavel Konstantinovich Aleksandrov, the illegitimate son of Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, purchased the building and lived there with his wife Anna Alexandrovna.
The couple held balls in the residence, with frequent visitors including Alexander Pushkin. The house was passed onto their daughter Princess Alexandra Pavlovna Lvova, wife of Prince Dmitry Aleksandrovich Lvov, between 1870-1871 the facade of the building was designed in Eclecticism style by Ferdinand Müller. In 1873 the German Ambassador declared an intention to acquire the building from Princess Lvova and the building was bought by the German Empire for housing the German Embassy to the Russian Empire that same year; the Germans commissioned architect Rudolf Bernhard to redecorate the buildings interiors, in 1889 Ivan Schlupp redesigned the building by adding a second floor over a part of the facade on Bolshaya Morskaya Street. In 1911-1913 the building was again redesigned, this time in Neoclassical style by German architect Peter Behrens, as a grandiose monument the power of a unified Germany. Behrens' design, which Albert Speer reported Adolf Hitler admired, saw the facade of the building being built in red granite, the frontispiece, reminiscent of Ancient Greek architecture, was completed with 14 columns, decorated with pilasters.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe served as construction manager on the project, sculptor Eberhard Enke created the Castor and Pollux sculpture, symbolising the reunion of the German nation, which adorned the tympanum. Other prominent German masters created paintings and fretwork to adorn the building; the Embassy building was opened on 14 January 1913. The artistic community in Saint Petersburg held negative opinions of the building, with prominent members of the community, Alexandre Benois, Nikolay Wrangel and Georgy Lukomsky, criticising the Teutonic style of the building as being hostile to the architectural style of the city, due to it differing from the Russian neoclassical revival style, it was rumoured at the time that the Embassy was linked to the German–owned Hotel Astoria via an underground tunnel, on 1–2 August 1914, after Germany declared war on Russia, crowds stormed the building as anti-German sentiment took hold in the city. The building sustained considerable damage, with crowds torching the throne room of Kaiser Wilhelm II, destroying Greek and Italian art work and a collection of Sèvres porcelain.
The Dioskouroi sculpture from the roof disappeared during this time, rumours abounded that it was dumped in the Moika River by the crowd, researchers have been unable to find any fragments of the sculpture in the river. After the war, the Germans returned to the city in 1922, at the time known as Petrograd, operated a consulate from the building, representing the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, until 1939. During the Siege of Leningrad, the Red Army operated a hospital in the premises, after the Great Patriotic War it housed the Institute of Semiconductor Physics. Tenants of the building have included Intourist, Dresdner Bank and the Committee for the Management of City Property of the Saint Petersburg City Administration. Today the building houses the Administration Board of the Ministry of Justice and the Chief Technical Commission to the President of the Russian Federation for the Northwestern Federal District. Restoration of the building began in 2001, with the support of Rossvyazokhrankultura and Governor Valentina Matvienko, in a project estimated at 170 million rubles, a group of restorers led by OOO «StroyTREST» are planning to recreate the Dioskouroi sculpture for placement on the tympanum of the building.
Plans have been in the works for several years to replace the sculpture, the warm relations between Russia and Germany have created the right political atmosphere for the restoration of the building to its former glory. Germany–Russia relations Embassy of Germany, Moscow
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German-American architect. He was referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of modernist architecture. Mies was a director of a seminal school in modern architecture. After Nazism's rise to power, with its strong opposition to modernism, Mies went to the United States, he accepted the position to head the architecture school at the Armour Institute of Technology, in Chicago. Mies sought to establish his own particular architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own eras, he created his own twentieth-century architectural style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity. His mature buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces, as conducted by other modernist architects in the 1920's and 1930's such as Richard Neutra. Mies strove toward an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of unobstructed free-flowing open space.
He called his buildings "bones" architecture. He sought an objective approach that would guide the creative process of architectural design, but was always concerned with expressing the spirit of the modern era, he is associated with his fondness for the aphorisms, "less is more" and "God is in the details". Mies was born March 1886 in Aachen, Germany, he worked in his father's stone carving shop and at several local design firms before he moved to Berlin, where he joined the office of interior designer Bruno Paul. He began his architectural career as an apprentice at the studio of Peter Behrens from 1908 to 1912, where he was exposed to the current design theories and to progressive German culture, he worked alongside Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, also involved in the development of the Bauhaus. Mies served as construction manager of the Embassy of the German Empire in Saint Petersburg under Behrens. Ludwig Mies renamed himself as part of his transformation from a tradesman's son to an architect working with Berlin's cultural elite, adding "van der" and his mother's maiden name "Rohe" and using the Dutch "van der", because the German form "von" was a nobiliary particle restricted to those of genuine aristocratic lineage.
He began his independent professional career designing upper-class homes. In 1913, Mies married the daughter of a wealthy industrialist; the couple separated in 1918, after having three daughters: Dorothea, an actress and dancer, known as Georgia and Waltraut, a research scholar and curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. During his military service in 1917, Mies fathered a son out of wedlock. In 1925 Mies began a relationship with designer Lilly Reich that ended when he moved to the United States. Mies carried on a romantic relationship with sculptor and art collector Mary Callery for whom he designed an artist's studio in Huntington, Long Island, New York, he was rumored to have a brief relationship with Edith Farnsworth, who commissioned his work for the Farnsworth House. Marianne's son Dirk Lohan studied under, worked for, Mies. After World War I, Mies began, while still designing traditional neoclassical homes, a parallel experimental effort, he joined his avant-garde peers in the long-running search for a new style that would be suitable for the modern industrial age.
The weak points of traditional styles had been under attack by progressive theorists since the mid-nineteenth century for the contradictions of hiding modern construction technology with a facade of ornamented traditional styles. The mounting criticism of the historical styles gained substantial cultural credibility after World War I, a disaster seen as a failure of the old world order of imperial leadership of Europe; the aristocratic classical revival styles were reviled by many as the architectural symbol of a now-discredited and outmoded social system. Progressive thinkers called for a new architectural design process guided by rational problem-solving and an exterior expression of modern materials and structure rather than what they considered the superficial application of classical facades. While continuing his traditional neoclassical design practice, Mies began to develop visionary projects that, though unbuilt, rocketed him to fame as an architect capable of giving form, in harmony with the spirit of the emerging modern society.
Boldly abandoning ornament altogether, Mies made a dramatic modernist debut in 1921 with his stunning competition proposal for the faceted all-glass Friedrichstraße skyscraper, followed by a taller curved version in 1922 named the Glass Skyscraper. He continued with a series of pioneering projects, culminating in his two European masterworks: the temporary German Pavilion for the Barcelona exposition in 1929 and the elegant Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic, completed in 1930, he joined the German avant-garde, working with the progressive design magazine G, which started in July 1923. He developed prominence as architectural director of the Werkbund, organizing the influential Weissenhof Estate prototype modernist housing exhibition, he was one of the founders of the architectural association De
Paul Philippe Cret
Paul Philippe Cret was a French-born Philadelphia architect and industrial designer. For more than thirty years, he taught a design studio in the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Born in Lyon, Cret was educated at that city's École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied at the atelier of Jean-Louis Pascal, he came to the United States in 1903 to teach at the University of Pennsylvania. Although settled in America, he happened to be in France at the outbreak of World War I, he enlisted and remained in the French army for the duration, for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and made an officer in the Legion of Honor. Cret's practice in America began in 1907, his first major commission, designed with Albert Kelsey, was the Pan American Union Building in Washington DC, a breakthrough that led to many war memorials, civic buildings, court houses, other solid, official structures. His work through the 1920s was in the Beaux-Arts tradition, but with the radically simplified classical form of the Folger Shakespeare Library, he flexibly adopted and applied monumental classical traditions to modernist innovations.
Some of Cret's work is remarkably streamlined and forward-thinking, includes collaborations with sculptors such as Alfred Bottiau and Leon Hermant. In the late 1920s the architect was brought in as design consultant on Fellheimer and Wagner's Cincinnati Union Terminal, the high-water mark of Art Deco style in the United States, he became an American citizen in 1927. In 1931, the regents of The University of Texas at Austin commissioned Cret to design a master plan for the campus, build the Beaux-Art Main Building, the university's signature tower. Cret would go on to collaborate on about twenty buildings on the campus. In 1935, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, became a full Academician in 1938. Cret's contributions to the railroad industry included the design of the side fluting on the Burlington's Pioneer Zephyr and the Santa Fe's Super Chief passenger cars, he was a contributor to Architectural Record, American Architect, The Craftsman. He penned the article "Animals in Christian Art" for the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Cret won the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 1938. Ill health forced his resignation from teaching in 1937, he served on the U. S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1940 to 1945. After years of limited activity, Cret died in Philadelphia of heart disease and was interred at The Woodlands Cemetery. Cret's work was displayed in the exhibit, From the Bastille to Broad Street: The Influence of France on Philadelphia Architecture, at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia in 2011. An exhibit of his train designs, All Aboard! Paul P. Cret's Train Designs, was at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia from July 5, 2012 to August 24, 2012. With a collection of 17,000 drawings and more than 3,000 photographs, The Athenaeum of Philadelphia has the largest archive of Paul P. Cret materials. Cret taught in the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania for over 30 years, designed such projects as the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, the master plan for the University of Texas in Austin, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia, the Duke Ellington Bridge in Washington, DC.
Louis Kahn studied at the University of Pennsylvania under Cret, worked in Cret's architectural office in 1929 and 1930. Other notable architects who studied under Cret include Alfred Easton Poor, Charles I. Barber, William Ward Watkin, Edwin A. Keeble, Chinese architect Lin Huiyin. Cret designed war memorials, including the National Memorial Arch at Valley Forge National Historical Park, the Pennsylvania Memorial at the Meuse-Argonne Battlefield in Varennes-en-Argonne, the Chateau-Thierry American Monument in Aisne, the American War Memorial at Gibraltar, the Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial in Waregem, Belgium. On the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated Cret's Eternal Light Peace Memorial. Following Cret's death in 1945, his four partners assumed the practice under the partnership Harbeson, Livingston & Larson, which for years was referred to by staff members as H2L2; the firm adopted this "nickname" as its formal title in 1976.
H2L2 celebrated 100 years in 2007. Witold Rybczynski has speculated that Cret is not better known today due to his influence on fascist and Nazi architecture, such as Albert Speer's Zeppelinfeld at the Nuremberg Nazi party rally grounds. 1908–09 – Stock Pavilion, Wisconsin 1908–10 – Organization of American States Building, Washington, D. C. 1914–17 – National Memorial Arch, Valley Forge National Historical Park, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania 1916–17 – Indianapolis Central Library, Indiana 1922–26 – Benjamin Franklin Bridge, Philadelphia – Camden, New Jersey 1923–25 – Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania 1923–27 – Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan 1926–29 – Rodin Museum, Philadelphia 1928–29 – George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge, Kentucky 1929 – Integrity Trust Company Building, Philadelphia 1929–32 – Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D. C. 1930 – Chateau-Thierry American Monument, France 1930–32 – Henry Avenue Bridge over Wissahickon Creek, Philadelphia 1931–32 – Connecticut Avenue Bridge over Klingle Valley, Washington, D.
C. 1932 – Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, 925 Chestnut St. Philadelphia 1932–33 Hershey Commun
Tudor Revival architecture
Tudor Revival architecture first manifested itself in domestic architecture beginning in the United Kingdom in the mid to late 19th century based on a revival of aspects of Tudor architecture or, more the style of English vernacular architecture of the Middle Ages that survived into the Tudor period. It became an influence in some other countries the British colonies. For example, in New Zealand, the architect Francis Petre adapted the style for the local climate. Elsewhere in Singapore a British colony, architects such as R. A. J. Bidwell pioneered what became known as the Black and White House; the earliest examples of the style originate with the works of such eminent architects as Norman Shaw and George Devey, in what at the time was thought of as a neo-Tudor design. Tudorbethan is a subset of Tudor Revival architecture which eliminated some of the more complex aspects of Jacobethan in favor of more domestic styles of "Merrie England", which were cosier and quaint, it was associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement.
The emphasis was on the simple and the less impressive aspects of Tudor architecture, imitating in this way medieval cottages or country houses. Although the style follows these more modest characteristics, items such as steeply pitched-roofs, half-timbering infilled with herringbone brickwork, tall mullioned windows, high chimneys, jettied first floors above pillared porches, dormer windows supported by consoles, at times thatched roofs, gave Tudor Revival its more striking effects, it is quite expensive. The Tudor Revival style was a reaction to the ornate Victorian Gothic Revival of the second half of the 19th century. Rejecting mass production, introduced by industry at that time, the Arts and Crafts movement related to Tudorbethan, drew on simple design inherent in aspects of its more ancient styles, Tudor and Jacobean; the Tudor style made one of its first appearances in Britain at Cragside, a hilltop mansion of eclectic architectural styles that incorporated certain Tudor features. However at the same time, Shaw designed Leyswood near Withyham in Sussex, a large mansion around a courtyard, complete with mock battlements, half-timbered upper facades and tall chimneys – all features quite associated with Tudor architecture.
Confusingly, it was promptly named "Queen Anne style", when in reality it combined a revival of Elizabethan and Jacobean design details including mullioned and oriel windows. The style began to incorporate the classic pre-Georgian features that are understood to represent "Queen Anne" in Britain; the term "Queen Anne" for this style of architecture tends to be more used in the USA than in Britain. In the USA it evolved into a form of architecture not recognisable as that constructed in either the Tudor or Queen Anne period. In Britain the style remained closer to its Tudor roots. Tudorbethan represents a subset of Tudor Revival architecture; this was modelled on the grand prodigy houses built by the courtiers of Elizabeth I and James VI. "Tudorbethan" took it a step further, eliminated the hexagonal or many-faceted towers and mock battlements of Jacobethan, applied the more domestic styles of "Merrie England", which were cosier and quaint. It was associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement. Outside North America, Tudorbethan is used synonymously with Tudor Revival and mock Tudor.
From the 1880s onwards, Tudor Revival concentrated more on the simple but quaintly picturesque Elizabethan cottage, rather than the brick and battlemented splendours of Hampton Court or Compton Wynyates. Large and small houses alike with half-timbering in their upper storeys and gables were completed with tall ornamental chimneys, in what was a simple cottage style, it was here that the influences of the crafts movement became apparent. However, Tudor Revival cannot be likened to the timber-framed structures of the originals, in which the frame supported the whole weight of the house, their modern counterparts consist of bricks or blocks of various materials, stucco, or simple studwall framing, with a lookalike "frame" of thin boards added on the outside to mimic the earlier functional and structural weight-bearing heavy timbers. An example of this is the "simple cottage" style of Ascott House in Buckinghamshire; this was designed by Devey for the Rothschild family, who were among the earliest patrons and promoters of this style.
Some more enlightened landlords at this time became more aware of the needs for proper sanitation and housing for their employees, some estate villages were rebuilt to resemble what was thought to be an idyllic Elizabethan village grouped around a village green and pond. The Tudor Revival, now concentrated on the picturesque. A well-known example of the idealised half-timbered style is Liberty & Co. department store in London, built in the style of a vast half-timbered Tudor mansion. The store specialised, among other goods, in fabrics and furnishings by the leading designers of the Arts and Crafts movement. In the early part of the century, one of the exponents who developed the style further was Edwin Lutyens. At The Deanery in Berkshire, 1899, where the client was the editor of the influential magazine Country Li
Claude Nicolas Ledoux
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical architecture. He used his knowledge of architectural theory to design not only domestic architecture but town planning, his greatest works were funded by the French monarchy and came to be perceived as symbols of the Ancien Régime rather than Utopia. The French Revolution hampered his career. In 1804, he published a collection of his designs under the title L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation. In this book he took the opportunity of revising his earlier designs, making them more rigorously neoclassical and up to date; this revision has distorted an accurate assessment of his role in the evolution of Neoclassical architecture. His most ambitious work was the uncompleted Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, an idealistic and visionary town showing many examples of architecture parlante. Conversely his works and commissions included the more mundane and everyday architecture such as sixty elaborate tollgates around Paris in the Wall of the General Tax Farm.
Ledoux was born in 1736 in Dormans-sur-Marne, the son of a modest merchant from Champagne. At an early age his mother, Francoise Domino, godmother, Francoise Piloy, encouraged him to develop his drawing skills; the Abbey of Sassenage funded his studies in Paris at the Collège de Beauvais, where he followed a course in Classics. On leaving the Collège, age 17, he took employment as an engraver but four years he began to study architecture under the tutelage of Jacques-François Blondel, for whom he maintained a lifelong respect, he trained under Pierre Contant d'Ivry, made the acquaintance of Jean-Michel Chevotet. These two eminent Parisian architects designed in both the restrained French Rococo manner, known as the "Louis XV style" and in the "Goût grec" phase of early Neoclassicism. However, under the tutelage of Contant d'Ivry and Chevotet, Ledoux was introduced to Classical architecture, in particular the temples of Paestum, along with the works of Palladio, were to influence him greatly.
The two master architects introduced Ledoux to their affluent clientele. One of Ledoux's first patrons was the Baron Crozat de Thiers, an immensely wealthy connoisseur who commissioned him to remodel part of his palatial town house in the Place Vendôme. Another client obtained through the auspices of his teachers was Président Hocquart de Montfermeil and his sister, Mme de Montesquiou. In 1762, the young Ledoux was commissioned to redecorate the Café Godeau, in the rue Saint-Honoré; the result was an interior of trompe mirrors. Pilasters painted on the walls were interspersed with alternating Pier glasses and panels painted with trophies of helmets and weaponry, all executed in bold detail. In 1969 this interior was moved to the Musée Carnavalet; the following year the Marquis de Montesquiou-Fézensac commissioned Ledoux to redesign the old hilltop château on his estate at Mauperthuis. Ledoux created new gardens, replete with fountains supplied by an aqueduct. In addition in the gardens and park he built an orangery, a pheasantry and vast dépendances of which little remains today.
In 1764, he designed for Président Hocquart, a Palladian house on the Chaussée d'Antin using the colossal order. Ledoux would employ this motif, condemned by the strict French tradition, which embraced the principle of superimposing the classic column motifs on each floor, rising from simplest to the most complex: Tuscan, Ionic, etc. On 26 July 1764, in the Saint-Eustache Church, Ledoux married Marie Bureau, the daughter of a court musician. A friend from Champagne, Joseph Marin Masson de Courcelles, found him a position as the architect for the Water and Forestry Department. Here between 1764 and 1770 he worked on the renovation and designs of churches, wells and schools, in Tonnerrois, Sénonais and Bassigny. Among the still extant works from this period are the bridge of Marac, the Prégibert bridge in Rolampont, the churches of Fouvent-le-Haut, Roche-et-Raucourt, the nave and portal of Cruzy-le-Châtel, the quire of Saint-Etienne d'Auxerre. In 1766 Ledoux began designing the Hôtel d'Hallwyll, a building that, according to the Dijon architect Jacques Cellerier, received widespread praise and attracted new patrons to the architect.
The owner Franz-Joseph d'Hallwyll and his wife, Marie-Thérèse Demidorge, were anxious to ensure work was executed economically. Therefore, Ledoux had to reuse portions of the former Hôtel de Bouligneux, he had envisaged two colonnades in the Doric order leading to a nymphaeum decorated with urns at the foot of the garden. However, the limitations of the site made this impossible, so Ledoux resorted to trompe l'oeil painting a colonnade on the blind wall of the neighboring convent, thus extending the perspective; the recognition given to the modest Hôtel d'Hallwyll led in 1767 to a more prestigious commission, the Hôtel d'Uzès, for François Emmanuel de Crussol on the rue Montmartre. There too, Ledoux preserved the structure of an earlier building. Today the panelling from the salon, an early example of the neoclassical style carved by Joseph Métivier and Jean-Baptist Boiston to the designs of Ledoux, is preserved in the Carnavalet Museum, Paris. Ledoux designed the Château de Bénouville in Calvados for the Marquis de Livry.
With its simple se
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