History, Geometry and Stereotomy in the Vaults of the Halle au Blé

This paper analyses the history, cultural background, geometric configuration
and stereotomic apparatus of one of the most interesting buildings in the urban
landscape of Paris between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Halle au Blé
in Rue de Viarmes, also known in English as Corn Exchange. This building, which
over the years underwent several formal, functional and structural transformations,
is particularly interesting to scholars because of the innovations researched and
designed by the French architect Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières, who tried to solve
some novel geometric and constructive issues drawing from available treatises,
probably most of all that of Frézier. His contribution to the Halle au Blé includes
the invention of particular vaulted surfaces assembled by blending stone ashlars and
bricks.