Viel de Saint-Maux and the Symbolism of the Primitive Architecture

Abstract

One of the sources usually disregarded by the scholarship on 18th century architecture is a volume of seven letters published in 1787 by an obscure architect, Viel de Saint-Maux, under the ambitious title Lettres sur l’Architecture des Anciens, et celle des Modernes, dans lesquelles se trouve dévelopé le génie symbolique qui présida aux Monuments de l’Antiquité. The author of these letters speculated on the grounding of (classical) architecture onto an essentially tectonic culture, disregarding completely the paradigm of the forest. More precisely, according to him, the modern architecture must have been rooted in the megalithic assemblies which, furthermore, were religiously connoted through the medium of mysterious inscriptions. Extravagant and obscure as they were, the conjectures advanced by Viel de Saint-Maux are worth being read as an attempt to revive the theoretical discourse – even if virulently contesting the Vitruvian tradition – by resorting to allegory and symbolism. It is precisely this intricacy of myth, metaphor and history encapsulated within Viel de Saint-Maux’s discourse that my paper deals with.

Keywords

• architectural language
• metaphor
• symbolic