From Ledoux to Le Corbusier… and Back. To the Historiography of Revolutionary Architecture

The article discusses one of the most important aspects of the study of the architecture from the Great French Revolution — its supposed connection with the main trends and representatives of modernism (modern architecture of the 20th century). The once unconditionally postulated influence, or at least the internal affinity of the radical currents of the late 18th and early 20th centuries, in fact, turns out to be a series of random coincidences where any rigidly established relationship is fraught with violence over historical reality. It may make sense to try to revise some of the approaches adopted, finding unexpected similarity where it was least of all expected to be found. For example, using modern language, in the framework of both postmodern and anti-modern, that is in the architecture of the notorious totalitarian regimes. Clearly, the legacy of visionary projects from the time of the French Revolution could be claimed by various trends and creative groups throughout the 20th century. Perhaps the correct conclusion should be that the architecture of a certain period belongs only to its own era and no other. This can be well illustrated by the various disputes over the past century around the heritage of architecture from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Starting from the (arbitrarily chosen) name of one of the first studies of architecture at the second half of the 18th century, the book by the Austrian art historian E. Kaufmann, the author shows how the attitude to the so-called revolutionary architecture as well as to the notion of its importance for the present and the future of the culture of the West changed throughout this century