Rejuvenating Jean Labatut's Legacy

What is it about?

This article is a chapter taken from my book Off-Modern Catholic Aesthetics: Rethinking the Role of Religion in Twentieth Century Art and Architecture. The chapter offers an overview of the pedagogical programme of the important, but often neglected French Catholic architect, Jean Labatut (1899-1986). Born in France at the turn of the twentieth century, Labatut was trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition before going on to develop his own unique form of architectural research and teaching based on visual sensibility at the Princeton School of Architecture from 1928 onwards. To this end, he helped create the Princeton Architectural Laboratory shortly after World War II - an interdisciplinary research hub across the Humanities and Social Sciences which became the creative foundation for a whole generation of architect-scholars. Among them, was the world-renowned architect, Robert Venturi, a name which today, we think of as synonymous with post-modernism in architectural theory. The chapter examines Labatut’s intellectual development in the context of his ongoing dialogue with French Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, before critically assessing the extent to which Labatut’s ideas about architecture and urbanism were transferred to his students.

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Photo by Mika Ruusunen on Unsplash

Photo by Mika Ruusunen on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This chapter is important because it acts as a paradigm case study for the broader aim of the book as a whole by concretely showing how Catholic intellectual frameworks became a source for renewal and innovation in the field of architectural theory. By examining the unpublished lecture notes of Jean Labatut, which offer a window into the theoretical world which emerged from the Princeton Architectural Laboratory, in addition to the correspondence between Labatut and Venturi, it offers a theoretical and cultural overview of how Catholic intellectual frameworks helped provide the basis for an overlooked path towards post-modernism in architectural theory.

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