Auguste de Montferrand practised at a period when the terms of architecture itself were under argument.
The record lists Auguste de Montferrand as French architect in Russia.
Auguste de Montferrand was born in 1786. His recorded nationality is France.
Baroque and neoclassical building served courts, churches and states, and architecture became an instrument of display.
Buildings outlast their architects and usually their purposes, which is what makes the discipline unforgiving.
That the work was built in France shaped it: climate, materials, planning law and who holds the budget all decide what can actually be built.
Auguste de Montferrand died in 1858, aged 72. The buildings remain, still in use by people who never knew the name - which is the particular afterlife architecture offers.
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