Alexandre Brongniart

One of the most distinguished exponents of Neo-Classicism in France, born in Paris, a pupil of Blondel and Boullée. His Parisian town-houses, such as the Hôtel de Monaco, Rue St-Dominique (1774–7), Hôtel de Bourbon-Condé, Rue Monsieur (1780–3), and Hôtel de Montesquiou, Rue Monsieur (1782), were in a simple, elegant, Neo-Classical style, much influenced by de Wailly, but he also evolved a severe primitive type of architecture. He used an unfluted baseless Doric colonnade at the cloister of the Monastery of St-Louis d'Antin, Paris (1779–83), now the Lycée Condorcet, and at the Church of St-Germain l'Auxerrois, Romainville, Paris (1785–7), he was clearly influenced by Chalgrin's St-Philippe-du-Roule (1768–84), although he used sturdy Doric columns in the nave. Primitivist, too, was his astonishing stepped pyramid into which was set a tough Doric tetrastyle portico carrying a segmental pediment: he also designed the park, or Élysée, at Maupertuis, in which the pyramid stood. From 1804 Brongniart worked on the designs for Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, in which the jardin anglo-chinois became a burial-ground, a conception that had a profound effect on the design of cemeteries thereafter. His influential Bourse (Exchange) in Paris (1807–13), with ranges of Corinthian columns, satisfied the Napoleonic taste for Roman Imperial grandeur and embodied many of the theories of Cordemoy and Perrault.

Bibliography

• Builder (1980)
• Brongniart (1986)
• Eriksen (1974)
• Etlin (1984)
• Hautecœur (1952–3)
• Kalnein & Levey (1972)
• E. Kaufmann (1955)
• Middleton & Watkin (1987)
• Rosenblum (1967)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Alexandre Brongniart

Alexandre Brongniart (1770–1847) was a French chemist, mineralogist, and zoologist, who collaborated with Georges Cuvier on a study of the geology of the region around Paris. He was the son of the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart and father of the botanist Adolphe Théodore Brongniart.

Born in Paris, he was an instructor at the École de Mines (Mining School) in Paris and director of the porcelain works at Sèvres. He introduced a new classification of reptiles and wrote several treatises on mineralogy and the ceramic arts. He also made an extensive study of trilobites and made pioneering contributions to stratigraphy by developing fossil markers for dating strata.

Brongniart was also the founder of the French National Museum of Ceramics (Le musée national de Céramique), having been director of the Sèvres Porcelain Factory from 1800 to 1847. In 1823, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Bibliography

Brongniart, Alexandre. Traite des Arts Ceramique, ou des poteries considerees dan leur Histoire, Leur Pratique et leur Theorie. Paris. 2nd Ed. Rev. 1854

References

• Rudwick, Martin J.S., Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes (The University of Chicago Press, 1997) ISBN 0-226-73106-5

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.

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