Dome

General view of the north side of the compound; Sited near Besançon, the Saline, a complex of factory and living quarters, was laid out in the form of a semicircular ideal town. Its monumental form, accentuated by giant Doric and rusticated orders and carved stone motifs as in the Maison du Directeur, immediately gave the architect a reputation for extravagance that overshadowed the careful disposition of functions, and an attention to the surveillance and social organization of labour that prefigured the ideas of the social reformer Jeremy Bentham. Constructed between 1774 and 1779, this small factory complex became an obsessive centre of Ledoux's architectural imagination until his death. He subsequently designed more ideal projects for its environs, proposing to expand it into an oval-plan town, Chaux, centred on the Saline but with economic and physical extensions into the surrounding provinces, and gradually assembling the elements of an entire Utopian city that illustrated the aspirations of the ancien régime. Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, 1982. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.groveart.com/ (accessed 12/2/2007)