Visionary Architects: Boulee, Ledoux, Lequeu

The drawings and engravings of the French visionary architects Boullee, Ledoux, and Lequeu lie on the nervous cusp of Neoclassicism and hallucination. The three designed vast, impractical monuments, villas and temples, cathedrals and libraries, incorporating motifs from the classical era informed by the new intellectual freedoms of the Enlightenment. The resulting drawings and plans are like nothing done before or since, and their daring has reverberated through to us in the work of such architects as Speer, Graves, Sant'Elia, and Stirling.