Claude-Nicolas Ledoux : Architecture and uopia in the era of the French revolution
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806) is today regarded as chief representative of French revolutionary architecture. With his extraordinary inventiveness he projected the architectural ideals of his era. Ledoux's influential buildings and projects are presented and interpreted both aesthetically and historically in this book. His best-known projects - the Royal Saltwords of Arc-et-Senans, the tollgates of Paris, the ideal city of Chaux - reveal the architect's allegiance to the principles of antiquity and Renaissance but also illustrate the evolution of his own utopian language. With the French Revolution, Ledoux ceased building as his contemporaries perceived him as a royal architect. He focused on the development of his architectural theory and redefined the vision of the modern architect
A Rosicrucian Utopia in Eighteenth-Century Russia : The Masonic Circle of N.I. Novikov
The author undertakes an investigation into the history of Russian Freemasonry that has not been attempted previously. Her premise is that the Russian Enlightenment shows peculiar features, which prevent the application of the interpretative framework commonly used for the history of western thought. The author deals with the development of early Russian masonry, the formation of the Novikov circle in Moscow, the ‘programme’ of Rosicrucianism and the character of its Russian variant and, finally, the clash between the Rosicrucians and the State. The author concludes that the defenders of the Ancien Régime were not wrong. In fact the democratic behaviour, the critical attitude, the practice of participation, the freedom of thought, the tolerance for the diversity, the search for a direct communication with the divinity.

