The radically impractical 18th-century architect whose ideas on beauty endure

Today, the ideas of the 18th-century French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée influence building designs around the world. However, during his life, Boullée was more interested in the poetic potential of architecture than concocting practical plans, and built very few structures that remain standing today. Instead, his lasting impact derives from his bold proposals for buildings that reflected the beauty he found in geometric simplicity and symmetry, presented on exceptionally grand scales. Working through drawings of some of Boullée’s proposed and never-realised buildings – from a stadium with a capacity of 300,000, to a real-life Tower of Babel and a fantastical monument to Isaac Newton – this video essay from the YouTube channel Kings and Things explores how he borrowed from and expanded upon classical architecture for inspiration, as well as how his ideas had a resurgence upon the publication of his writings in 1953, some 250 years after his death.