Guadet, Julien Azais

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Guadet, Julien Azais (1834–1908). French architect and writer. A pupil of Labrouste, he was associated with the École des Beaux-Arts for virtually all his life. Among his few buildings the Hôtel des Postes, Rue du Louvre, Paris (1878–84), a stone-faced work with a partly metallic structure behind, may be mentioned. As a theorist he is regarded as of some importance because of his promotion of rationalist approaches to architecture, as set out in his Éléments et théories de I'Architecture (1901–4, with later editions): this work covered an enormous range of problems and solutions that students might come across, and included a comprehensive study of building-types from many periods in history. He argued that the architect should always establish the content from which he would arrive at the design of the container of that content. Taken out of context this remark gave his writings a spurious position in the canon of Functionalism, but he also advocated providing buildings with any historical garb demanded by the client (a fact that tends to be overlooked by most commentators). His pupils included Tony Garnier and Perret. The latter collaborated with Guadet's son, Paul (1873–1931), in the building of a pioneering concrete house in Paris (1912). Paul Guadet also worked with his father on the reconstruction of L. -N. -V. Louis's Comédie Française theatre, which had burned down in 1900.

Bibliography

P. Collins (1965);
Drexler (ed.) (1977)
Egbert (1980)

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

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Guadet, Julien Azais

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