Eugène Viollet-le-Duc

Biography

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879) was a French architect and writer, famous for restoring many of France’s most important medieval monuments, including Notre-Dame de Paris, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, Mont-Saint-Michel, the Sainte-Chapelle and the walls of Carcassonne. His writings on decoration and on the relationship between form and function profoundly influenced Art Nouveau architects such as Gaudí, Horta and Guimard, as well as early modernists including Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, who regarded him as a father of modern architecture.