Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
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.
Video by Kings and Things
video
Death
Even in modern secular societies, belief in an afterlife persists. Why?
9 minutes
video
Nature and landscape
Take a serene hike through an ancient forest, inspired by a Miyazaki masterpiece
6 minutes
video
Design and fashion
The mundane becomes mesmerising in this deep dive into segmented displays
14 minutes
video
Physics
A song of ice, fire and jelly – exploring the physics and history of the trumpet
9 minutes
video
Architecture
Tour the European architecture that dreamed of a wondrous, fictitious China
16 minutes
video
Spirituality
Trek alongside spiritual pilgrims on a treacherous journey across Pakistan
6 minutes
video
Thinkers and theories
Photographs offer a colonialist window to the past – one that must be challenged
14 minutes
video
Animals and humans
An artist and ants collaborate on an exhibit of ‘tiny Abstract Expressionist paintings’
5 minutes
video
Mathematics
How a curious question about colouring maps changed mathematics forever
9 minutes