The phrase architecture parlante (“speaking architecture”) refers to the concept of buildings that explain their own function or identity.

The phrase was originally associated with French architects of the Revolutionary period, particularly Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. In his unbuilt plans for the salt-producing town of Chaux, the hoop-makers’ houses are shaped like barrels, the river inspector’s house straddles the river, and an enormous brothel takes the shape of an erect phallus. During the French Revolution (1789-1799) democracy and republicanism overthrew the absolute monarchy in France, and the French portion of the Roman Catholic Church was forced to undergo radical restructuring. ... Ledouxs Rotonde de la Villette in Paris Claude Nicolas Ledoux (March 21, 1736-November 18, 1806) was a French neoclassical architect. ...

The same concept, in the somewhat more restrained form of allegorical sculpture and inscriptions, became one of the hallmarks of Beaux-Arts structures, and thereby filtered through to American civic architecture. One fine example is the 1901 New York Yacht Club building on 44th Street in Manhattan, designed by the team of Warren and Wetmore. Its three front windows are patterned on the sterns of early Dutch ships, and the façade fairly drips with nautical-themed applied sculpture. The same team designed the 1912 Grand Central Terminal, which also contains self-explaining architectural elements in the form of the oversized allegorical sculpture group, and in the ingenious way that the shapes, surfaces, steps, arches, ramps and passageways inherent in the structure constitute a language that helps visitors orient themselves and find their way through the building. ... The New York Yacht Club is a private yacht club based in New York City. ... The clock in the Main Concourse © 2004 Metropolitan Transportation Authority Grand Central Terminal (often still called Grand Central Station, although technically that is the name of the nearby post office and New York City Subway station on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line) is a train station at 15 Vanderbilt Avenue... Sacrifice by Walter Hancock, Soldiers Memorial, St. ...

The same year, McKim, Mead & White designed the nearby Farley Building with its famous inscription taken from Herodotus: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." McKim, Mead, and White was the premier architectural firm in the eastern United States at the turn of the twentieth century. ...

The civic architecture of Washington DC provides some of the most poetic and most verbose inscriptions. Beaux-Arts architect Daniel Burnham is responsible for the Washington Union Station (1908), with its inscription program developed by Harvard president Charles William Eliot. It includes over the main entrance this paean: "Fire: greatest of discoveries, enabling man to live in various climates, use many foods, and compel the forces of nature to do his work. Electricity: carrier of light and power, devourer of time and space, bearer of human speech over land and sea, greatest servant of man, itself unknown. Thou has put all things under his feet." ... Daniel Burnham Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 - June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban planner. ... Burnhams Union Station: the central block of the immense front façade of Union Station Union Station is the grand ceremonial train station designed to be the entrance to Washington, DC when it opened in 1907. ... Harvard, see Harvard (disambiguation) Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... Prof. ...

The 1932 Commerce Department Building, part of the capital’s neo-Classical building boom in the 1930s, has this extreme example: "The inspiration that guided our forefathers led them to secure above all things the unity of our country. We rest upon government by consent of the governed and the political order of the United States as the expression of a patriotic ideal which welds together all the elements of our national energy promoting the organization that fosters individual initiative. Within this edifice are established agencies that have been created to buttress the life of the people, to clarify their problems and coordinate their resources, seeking to lighten burdens without lessening the responsibility of the citizen. In serving one and all they are dedicated to the purpose of the founders and to the highest hopes of the future with their local administration given to the integrity and welfare of the nation." Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism or Neo-classicism) is the name given to quite distinct movements in the visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture. ...

Beyond such inscriptions, in the United States the concept of architecture parlante likely reached its zenith in the Nebraska State Capitol (1922) and the Los Angeles Public Library (1925), both by architect Bertram Goodhue. With their extensive architectural sculpture programs, tile murals, painted murals, ornamental fixtures and inscriptions (Goodhue worked with a sort of multimedia repertory company of artists, like the sculptor Lee Lawrie), both of these buildings seem particularly eager to communicate a set of social values. The Nebraska State Capitol The Nebraska State Capitol (aka The Tower on the Plain), located in Lincoln, Nebraska, is the capitol and seat of government of the U.S. state of Nebraska. ... The Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) system serves the residents of Los Angeles, California. ... Goodhue by Lee Lawrie, holding the Rockefeller Chapel, Chicago, Illinois Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (April 28, 1869 _ April 23, 1924) was a renowned American architect celebrated for his work in neo-gothic design. ... Grill work from Education Building, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Lee Oscar Lawrie (October 16, 1877 - January 23, 1963) was one of Americas foremost architectural sculptors and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II. His work includes the details on the Capitol building in Lincoln, Nebraska and...

With the advent of Modernism, its formal rigor and its distaste for ornament of any kind, by 1940 or so architectural parlante was eliminated from the serious architectural vocabulary and found only in commercial and vernacular oddities like The Brown Derby. It has been suggested that Modernist project be merged into this article or section. ... The original Brown Derby. ...

Postmodernism has seen a revival of these ideas. Terry Farrell's eggcup-surmounted headquarters for TV-am in London and the book-shaped towers of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, can be seen as examples. Postmodernism is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. ... Categories: People stubs ... TV-am was a breakfast television station that broadcast in the United Kingdom from 1983 to 1992. ... The new buildings of the library. ...