Architectural Allegories of Vice and Virtue in the Work of Étienne Louis Boullée and Claude Nicholas Ledoux

Late in their careers, Ledoux and Boullée developed a series of visionary projects that symbolised the morals of a utopian society. This involved the translation of the idea of virtue into architectural form. The design methods used to achieve this enriched the 18th-century architectural vocabulary, widening its mission and impact. The current paper analyses these design methods and interprets the symbolic language they produced, by reference to its social and political background. This analysis provides new insights into one of the most influential architectural developments of the Age of Enlightenment.