The Architecture of the Enlightenment and the Birth of Modernity: from the High Baroque to Late Classicism

Abstract

The article is devoted to the architecture of the Enlightenment in a broad sense. The author is convinced that this period is the time of the beginning of Modernity, the birth of the Early Modern Times architecture. He thinks that the cycle of the development of humanity, which architecture has been expressing most clearly of all other arts since the 17th century - the epoch of the English Revolution, has not ended yet. The ideas developed at that time continue to exist in our minds. They are still actual for contemporary architecture, developing it and solving the problems established at our civilization’s birth. The most contemporary ideas: of the sustainable architecture, natural, biologically orientated, friendly to the environment, which create the world of the perfect natural man preserving the ideals of the Ancients and the Moderns, creativity, and technologies – they are all directly linked to the ideas which were on the agenda of the architectural theory of England, France, Russia, Italy, Germany of the Age of Enlightenment. They were put into practice in the implemented designs of those times. The panorama of the European art of building, including Russian as one of the central laboratories of the Enlightenment during which the vast country’s territory underwent reforms, is truly gigantic. The author cites the main theories of the period in question. He shows one of the main qualities of the art of architecture from the High Baroque style to the Late Classicism, and further – up to postmodernism and even sustainable architecture: the attempt to create the environment, in which architecture would emphasize different aspects of meaning, would become architecture parlante as Claude Ledoux said. The interaction of several stylistic trends took place during the implementation of the stated process. In this process, the author underlines the importance of the Baroque’s universal character and the ideology of the Enlightenment, which gave birth to the “clever choice” of architectural forms.