Jean-Jacques Moll

Uncommon card · No. 100972

Jean-Jacques Moll (1743–1828), also known as Johann Jakob Moll, was a Swiss architect and architectural theoretician. He is known for having designed a set of proposals for ideal cities. He was born in Geneva, but lived and worked in Paris. In 1802, the French state announced its intention to construct a new city in Brittany named after Napoleon, Napoléonville. The initiative foundered, but prompted Moll to produce plans for six model cities, each for 100,000 inhabitants. Moll's plans, though varied in their details, are all characterised by symmetry and a geometric approach to the city plan, with a centre dominated by a rectangular space with an inscribed ellipse, where a central, communal building in a park would dominate the city. Around it are further public buildings. The rest of the city would be divided into sixteen equal areas, where individual houses equipped with small gardens in different constellations would be built. Moll provided no scale for his plans, but emphasised that...

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