Cenotaph for Isaac Newton

Étienne-Louis Boullée’s Cenotaph for Isaac Newton (1784) is a visionary architectural concept celebrating Enlightenment ideals through its monumental scale and symbolic grandeur. Designed as a hollow sphere 150 meters in diameter, the unbuilt structure was meant to honour Newton’s scientific legacy, with perforations in its surface creating a celestial effect when illuminated, evoking the cosmos he helped decipher. Boullée’s fusion of neoclassical purity and sublime theatricality transformed the cenotaph into both a tribute to human reason and an immersive experience of awe. Though never realised, the design remains an enduring icon of architectural imagination, embodying the era’s reverence for science, geometry, and the infinite.