Oikema  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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The Oikema[1] is the informal title for a 'house of pleasure', or, more prosaically a brothel, part of Claude Nicolas Ledoux's plan for the Ideal City of Chaux. The phallic-shaped 'house of pleasure' was to be an integral part of Chaux.

The plan echoes the ideas of phalanstères, state brothels, as described by Restif de la Bretonne in Le Pornographe (1769). At the same time, the plan is reminiscent of Jean-Jacques Lequeu's Le Dieu Priape.

Plans for the Oikema were first published in Ledoux's architectural treatise L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation[2]. There, under the heading "Oikema. Fragments d'un monument Grec," Ledoux is a text on the utopian brothel:

Incipit:

" L'Hymen et l'Amour vont conclure un traité qui doit épurer les mœurs publics et rendre l'homme plus heureux…"

The Oikema project was analysed by Jean-Claude Lebensztejn in Transaction. Fleurs de rêve II (2007).

See also

• Elevated view[3]
• Oikos
• Eros and Neoclassicism