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Maison d'Artisans [Artisans House]: "Atelier des Cercles" [model]; "...marked Ledoux as a practitioner of what a later commentator (Léon Vaudoyer, 1852) termed 'architecture parlante', or an architecture that would, in Ledoux's words, unambiguously 'speak to the eyes' about its function, role and emotional associations. Such 'speaking architecture', while practised by a number of Ledoux's contemporaries (notably Etienne-Louis Boullée and the hermetic Jean-Jacques Lequeu) was in Ledoux's own hands turned into a play of geometrical solids and associated functions. The engravings in L'Architecture considerée show a barrel-shaped workshop for barrel-makers; a cylindrical house with a stream flowing through it for river surveyors; and a spherical shelter for shepherds. These became the almost caricatural leitmotifs of Ledoux's style for the later 19th century and the 20th, inspiring the view of Ledoux as the forerunner of modernist abstraction and social reform (see Kaufmann, 1933). However, at least with regard to his political affiliations, the classification of Ledoux as a 'revolutionary' architect was misleading." [These are models of theoretical works never built.] Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.groveart.com/ (accessed 12/9/2007)