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Académie Royale d'Architecture

Académie Royale d'Architecture
Engraving depicting the medallion
Commemorative medallion, 1671
Latin: Regia architectonices academia instituta MDCLXXI
Founder(s)
Established 1671
Head François Blondel (1671)
Members
  • 8 at founding
  • 33 in 1793
Location Paris, France
Dissolved 1793, 1816

The Académie Royale d'Architecture (Royal Academy of Architecture), founded in 1671, was a French learned society, which had a leading role in influencing architectural theory and education, not only in France, but throughout Europe and the Americas from the late 17th century to the mid-20th.

The Académie Royale d'Architecture was founded on December 30, 1671, by Louis XIV, king of France under the impulsion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Its first director was the mathematician and engineer François Blondel (1618–1686), and the secretary was André Félibien (1619 –1695).

The academy was housed in the Louvre for most of its existence, and included a school of architecture. Its members met weekly.Jacques-François Blondel describes the academy quarters in his Architecture françoise of 1756. The main rooms were on the ground floor and included two lecture halls, one for meetings of the academy members on Mondays and mathematics lectures on Wednesdays (B3), and another for public lectures on architecture on Mondays (B4). There was also a large room for the display of architectural models (B5). The rooms for the secretary of the academy were in the mezzanine level, reached via the staircase. The academy quarters were temporarily roofed at the level of the main floor (premier étage), since much of the Louvre still lacked a roof at the level of the attic. The attic roof was finally added under Napoleon.

Louvre ground-floor plan of 1754 showing the Académie rooms (yellow), located in the north wing (bottom)

Detail showing the Académie rooms

The Louvre on the 1739 Turgot map of Paris, showing the parts which remained unroofed

The Académie d'Architecture was suppressed in 1793, but later revived and merged in 1816 into the Académie des Beaux-Arts, together with the Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture (Academy of Painting and Sculpture, founded 1648) and the Académie de Musique (Academy of Music, founded in 1669). In addition, the traditions of the Académie d'Architecture were maintained and spread by the architecture section of the École des Beaux-Arts up to 1968, when the French government completely reorganized architectural education.


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