ABSTRACT
The house on rue Condorcet is indeed modeled upon the type-form of the medieval urban house as illustrated in the Dictionnaire raisonn de l'architecture: a straightforward wall structure with punched windows and a set of arcuated masonry openings for commerce on the ground floor. Behind that discreet medievalizing screen, Viollet-le-Duc elaborated a plan respecting all conventions of Parisian apartment living, with a special concern for daylight and for the clear demarcation of reception rooms from private quarters. Power being an expression of vitality, it provides a relative measure of greatness. "Only those carried away by passion reach superiority", writes Viollet-le-Duc in 1858. It is a similar notion that pushed him to believe that success in warfare is the gauge of a nation's health. Viollet-le-Duc was playing on the idea that what was going on during the Second Empire was basically a repetition and consolidation of the revolutionary wars of the First.
