Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis

Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis (1760–1834). Paris-born architect, one of the most important theorists and teachers of the early C19. He worked for Boullée, and for the civil engineer Jean-Rodolphe Perronet (1708–94—who designed the Pont de la Concorde, Paris), and in 1795 became Professor of Architecture at the École Polytechnique in 1795. His lectures were published as Précis des leçons d'architecture données à l'école polytechnique (Summary of Lectures on Architecture Given at the École Polytechnique—1802–5), and were widely influential, notably in Prussia, and his Recueil et parallèle des édifices de tout genre (Compendium and Parallel of Buildings of all Kinds—1800) was the first book organized by building type to deal with historical architecture, and with illustrations reproduced to the same scale. He was an important figure in Neo-Classicism, and his system of design using simplified, repetitive, modular elements anticipated industrialized building components.

Bibliography

Builder (1980);
Durand (1802–9, 1809);
Hautecœur (1953);
Hitchcock (1977);
Middleton & and Watkin (1987);
Rondelet (1835);
Szambien (1984);
Villari (1990);
D. Watkin (1986)