Well, Happy it-would-have-been-your-287th birthday Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, the man who designed this building, which was inexplicably never, er… erected.
This is the Oikèma, or ‘house of pleasure’, in Ledoux’s ideal city. (Why, yes, he does mean brothel.) You can read more about it on ArchEyes — or,if you prefer turns of phrase like
…a Foucaultian calligram insofar as it cancels the oppositions of showing and naming…
…you could try an academic paper entitled The Anamorphic Phallus within Ledoux’s Dismembered Plan of Chaux.
Each to their own. Either way, I can’t help wondering what he might have done in the age of steel and glass. This, for example, is Jan Kaplicky’s proposed Green Bird Tower, also tragically never… er, put up.
I’d love to see some data on male architects and towering structures vs female architects and… less phallic design, let’s say.
