From the Ground Up is a series on Archinect focused on discovering the early stages & signs of history's most prolific architects. Starting from the beginning allows us to understand the long journey architecture takes in even the formative of hands and often, surprising shifts that occur in its journey. These early projects grant us a glimpse into the early, naive, ambitious and at points rough edges of soon to be architectural masters.

Few architects have had the impact of Etienne Louis Boullée. His visions for this out of this world in both scale and creativeness is one that to this day stands out. His approach to envisioning monumental buildings exist, but the possibility of ever envisioning them past our minds has proven both costs prohibitive and conceptually challenging. 

Boullée's work traditionally aimed and resulted in the theoretical designs for public monuments, he sought to inspire lofty sentiments in the viewer by architectural forms suggesting the sublimity, immensity, and awesomeness of the natural world, as well as the divine intelligence underlying its creation. The distinguishing aspect of Boullée’s mature work is his abstraction of the geometric forms suggested by ancient works into a new concept of a monumental building that would possess the calm, ideal beauty of classical architecture while also having considerable expressive power. 

Perfectly summed up by one of his own statements. ‘Yes, I believe that our buildings, above all our public buildings, should be in some sense poems. The images they offer our senses should arouse in us sentiments corresponding to the purpose for which these buildings are intended’ 

...The images they offer our senses should arouse in us sentiments corresponding to the purpose for which these buildings are intended...

One of Boullée’s early built pieces was The Brunoy Hotel, completed in 1779. The Brunoy Hotel was, in fact, a Parisian mansion and was for a matter of a fact considered to be Boullée’s masterpiece by many of his colleagues. As described by French Historian Jean-Marie Perouse de Montclos. 

"There is no doubt that the consecration of the house, of which the Brunoy Hotel gives the most accomplished example, proceeds at least indirectly from Palladio . But the success here is due to the fact that Boullée has also been Palladian and French. In fact, this great porticoed temple, without a floor, crowned like the mausoleum of Halicarnassus , is built on the plane of the hotel between courtyard and garden. This temple is a Janus bifront. On rue Saint-Honoré, it looks like the French hotel, and even an exemplary hotel since it is in the heart of islet to enhance the tranquility of the place as recommended by the treaties. In contrast, the garden, which is traditionally the bottom of the cottage, its innermost recess, is here open on the promenade of the Champs-Elysees where you can see the frontispiece of the temple. However, the novelty of this table is relative. The house hotel on the waterfront to enjoy the view of the river, developed in Paris in the xvii th century. In the xviii th century, the house is on the boulevardsto enjoy the greenery of the walks; the intimacy is sacrificed all the more readily as the fashion is to give the houses the appearance of public buildings."

While Boullée is much more famous and known for his out of this world monuments and visionary architecture built purely and intended for our imaginations such as Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton, Deuxieme projet pour la Bibliothèque du Roi, Tomb for Hercules, and the Temple of Death and while traditionally images or visions such as these would come at the sacrifice of a practicing practice of architecture, Boullée’s work as a builder is none the less spectacular and masterful from beginning to end.