Arc-et-Senans Saltworks

In the late 18th century (between 1775 and 1779), Claude Nicolas Ledoux built a monumental factory for the King of France in Franche-Comté. A revolution in architecture, a decade before the full-blown Revolution. Ledoux wanted to reinvent architecture, just as Rousseau wanted to reinvent the Social Contract, by returning to the sources, to "natural principles". It was both an aesthetic revolution, an innovative industrial site and the nucleus of an ideal city that would never see the light of day.