To combine the unity of a central plan with the direction a church needs, plan the space as an oval, set across the axis to widen the view of the altar, or along it to lead the eye towards it.
The pleasure house in its garden
Give a pleasure house a single principal storey of rooms in enfilade round a central salon that projects into the garden, open on to the parterres through tall windows, and set it where its axis continues into the garden’s allées.
The maison de plaisance is the typical building of the Rococo: small, private, built for pleasure and conversation rather than state. J.-F. Blondel shows how its rooms should run in a line of doors from a central salon, often oval, with apartments of parade, of company and of convenience on either side, and how the house and its garden should be planned on the same axes. The garden pavilions of German residences, such as the Amalienburg at Nymphenburg (Cuvilliés, 1734–39), are of this kind.
Related rules
Let the wall of a façade curve in plan (concave, convex, concave) so that the front answers the street, the light and the space within, and the order bends with it.
Make the stair of a palace a processional space: one broad flight rising to a landing, then turning back in two flights either side to arrive at the principal floor beneath a single great vault.
Put the prince’s palace at the centre of a circle of thirty-two straight rays; give nine of them, between the wings of the palace, to the town, and send the other twenty-three through the forest as rides, so that every street and every ride ends on the palace tower.
32 rays at 11¼°: 9 streets + 23 forest rides
Lay the parterres next to the house, low and flat so that nothing blocks the view from its windows; set bosquets and groves beyond them, and lead long allées out toward the horizon, so that the garden always seems larger than it is.
Plan a town as a park is cut through a forest: with many straight streets, squares from which several streets branch, and broad entrances, so that there is regularity in the details and variety, even a certain disorder, in the whole.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The pleasure house in its garden”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/jfblondel-pleasure-house. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.