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Claude-Nicolas Ledoux
1736-1806
ArchitectHistorical Figure
A visionary of neoclassicism, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux dreamed of an architecture that would also serve as a social utopia. Highly active at the end of the Ancien Régime, he ranks among the leading creators of the neoclassical style.
His masterpiece, the royal saltworks at Arc-et-Senans (1774-1779), in eastern France, lays out an industrial complex in a semicircle with a geometric rigor never before seen, now recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
He also designed the roughly fifty toll gates of Paris, the capital's grand ceremonial gateways, and in his 1804 treatise laid out the theory for an ideal city, the city of Chaux, which remained largely on paper.
