François Blondel
Blondel, François
Born July 15, 1618, in Ribemont, Picardy; died Jan. 21,1686, in Paris. French architect; exponent of classicism.
Beginning in 1671, Blondel was director of the Royal Academy of Architecture. He planned cities and fortifications and built the Porte Saint-Denis in Paris (1672) in the style of an ancient Roman triumphal arch. In the book The Course of Architecture (1675–83) he claimed that the architectural forms of antiquity and the Renaissance were “eternal true laws” that must remain unchanged. Blondel tried to find an absolute numerical expression for these architectural forms.