A hybrid space inaugurating modernity
Allen S. Weiss is a Distinguished teacher at New York University, landscape theorist, and a specialist of Le Nôtre. In his book Mirrors of Infinity, he analyses how the « Jardins à la française » resulted from the new aesthetic and ethical dimensions taken by geometry in the 17th century. The Champs-Élysées, the royal gardens of Versailles, and those Vaux-le-Vicomte have in common wide central perspectives, traced by new mathematical and optical tools, thus emphasizing the royal power. However, Weiss explains that the Champs-Élysées is distinguished from these two other works by their form as a hybrid space, an extension of the urban open to the rural : the Champs-Élysées introduce modernity in a city that is still fundamentally medieval.
