Pierre Patte

Who was Pierre Patte?

Pierre Patte was a French architect who was the assistant of the great French teacher of architecture, Jacques-François Blondel, whose Cours d'architecture which ran to nine volumes by 1777, he saw through the press after Blondel's death in 1774.

He has been credited for having been the first to illustrate a city street plan with buildings and sewer system shown in a section view. Under the reign of Louis XV Patte theorized in the middle of the 18th century about thinking about the overall structure of the city as an urban organism where changing one aspect would affect the whole thing. A century later some of Patte's ideas would help change Paris under the direction of Baron Haussmann.