Architecture parlante

Architecture parlante (French: speaking architecture) is architecture that explains its own function or identity.

The phrase was originally associated with Claude Nicolas Ledoux, and was extended to other Paris-trained architects of the Revolutionary period, Étienne-Louis Boullée, and Jean-Jacques Lequeu. Emil Kaufmann traced its first use to an anonymous critical essay with Ledoux's work as the subject, written for Magasin pittoresque in 1852, and entitled "Etudes d'architecture en France".