Boullée analyses architecture, dismantles it from its own principles, and reassembles it according to his own logic. During this process, he realises that the underlying problem of architecture is that – unlike the other arts – it has not yet reached perfection. It is still a mysterious discipline, full of questions which dig for its roots and make it unstable. An art that in some way has already got to that crisis, which the other disciplines, will reach much later, but Boullée is far from knowing what will happen in the future.
Art: this is how Boullée defines architecture, in order to underline its strong bond with nature. A simple but powerful word creating a stable base to develop his thinking. A point of departure and return. The soul of his system and proof of the authenticity of his architecture.
In refuting the thesis of Perrault, Boullée analyses the theories of Rousseau. A source of inspiration from which he distances himself. In fact, the philosopher interprets nature as something, to which man must necessarily strive in order to rediscover his primitive happiness and goodness. However, Boullée goes beyond this temporal and causal relationship. He rises to another level, far off time and space, and discovers the first principles of architecture in nature. Architecture becomes a direct realisation of nature and the architect the one to implement it.
Boullée argues that the games of imagination – of which Perrault talks – merely shows aberrations, nevertheless, with a natural origin. Images originated from nature but then altered and disfigured, irregular bodies unclear in their appearance and ideologically confusing. It is therefore necessary a return to simple, regular, geometric, brute2 forms, strictly related to the mathematical origin of nature. If these basic geometric shapes are those in which nature is manifested, then also architecture must be designed in a similar disposition. These arrangements, seeking order, occur at all understandable.
Carlo Lodoli had already claimed that architecture was to use the same scientific principles that Galileo Galilei had discovered in mathematics. Boullée supports and reinforces these ideas with a completely personal approach guided by an unfailing faith in his system. Emblematic figure in this research, he creates a method of scientific design in order to achieve an architecture driven by nature. He constitutes a logical apparatus in which he verifies with every project the absolute principles. Principles established by the nature and by the feelings arisen in every man’s soul in front of its greatness. This presupposes a confidence which illuminates the system being outside of it. Aldo Rossi defines it an “exalted rationalism3,” as it combines, on one hand, the system’s autonomy and, on the other, the experience’s autobiographical singularity.
The Cenotaph of Newton, among all his buildings, probably best sets out Boullée’s thinking. Indeed the simple complexity of the structure can be easily understood from the sections – usually always the most representative type of drawing of Boullée’s edifices. The design of this mortuary temple leads him to consolidate his philosophy and to reach the pinnacle of his research, where this unravels.
“Con questa temporalità svelata dalla luce, l’architettura classica nata da un’idea a priori, tutta chiusa in un pensiero geometrico, ritorna ad essere natura; possiederà anzi un valore di cosa naturale, ferma nel tempo ma avvertita nella luce del tempo4.”
Architecture reveals itself as an entity fully depending on nature, its laws and its becoming.
The relationship of Boullée and Newton reminds of the one of Lodoli and Galilei and the Cenotaph of Newton is just a mere metaphor of the world discovered by Galileo and Isaac, a nature governed by mathematical laws. Trapping his ideology into a bare and perfect sphere, Boullée does not only want to represent Newton the scientist, but also Newton the man, everlasting in the memory of his discoveries, but mortal in his human condition. This is not only a temple for Newton but a temple for death. A temple capable of enclosing the whole universe as well as all the emotions perceived by mankind in front of its immensity and in front of death. One might almost consider Boullée a precursor of the sublime: in the cenotaph, our spirit would like to embrace the universe, but at the same time we feel so small. Crushed by gravity above us, lost in the infinity beyond us.
