Boullée

Boullée refers to Étienne-Louis Boullée, a French neoclassical architect and theorist. He is best known for his visionary and often unbuilt designs, which emphasized grandeur, simplicity, and a profound sense of monumentality. Boullée's architectural style was characterized by geometric purity, often featuring vast, unadorned surfaces and colossal scale. He was a proponent of a style he termed "architecture parlante" or speaking architecture, where the form of a building directly conveyed its purpose.

Born in 1728, Boullée trained with Jacques-François Blondel and later became a professor at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. While he designed and constructed a number of buildings, including the Hôtel de Brunoy and the Hôtel de Thélusson in Paris, his most influential works were theoretical projects that remained on paper. These included designs for a Cenotaph to Isaac Newton, a New National Library, and a Palais de Justice. These projects, with their emphasis on light, shadow, and a sense of the sublime, greatly influenced later architects, particularly those associated with the Romantic movement. Boullée's ideas about the emotional and symbolic power of architecture continued to resonate long after his death in 1796.