La geometría moderna de Boullée frente a la geometría clásica de Kahn: Una contradicción aparente = Boullée's modern geometry versus Kahn's classical geometry: An apparent contradiction

Abstract

— In 1955, Emil Kaufmann's posthumous work (1891-1953) was published, in which the historian, in the middle of the 20th century, set the date of the end of the 18th century as a prelude to modernity, with great success, proposing a recovery of the theory of architecture, and cataloguing Boullée as a modern, revolutionary architect, whose antiornamental architecture represents a totally renovating approach to geometry, since it establishes the modernity of French architecture, introducing a change in the enormous size of the buildings. Likewise, it is established how Kahn's classical geometry emerges as a transference received from The Enlightenment, as a classical architecture, timeless, based on the discovery of mass, of ruin, of the heritage through the travelogue, of the discovery of the city of Rome in the United States, which is embodied in a series of buildings, which are shown as monuments, and which remain exactly in the same place, embedded in the same nature for centuries, in a geometry of unstoppable stillness where silence rules. This article analyzes the most representative buildings of the architect Louis I. Kahn, and their relationship with Boullée's geometry, which implies the discovery of Kahn's classical geometry. The analysis of both geometries will lead to the contribution of a series of comparisons, analogies and contradictions, the results of which will confirm, positively or negatively, the establishment of Boullée's modern geometry as opposed to Kahn's classical geometry.