Towards a New Architecture - Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier is truly one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture. The biggest fan of the automobile to developing one glass x concrete tower for 3 million. There have been many many (too many) investigations, analysis and biographies of Corbu, so I don’t think I am nearly near well read enough to do so.
Rather, I will insert a few documentaries I have watched as a summary.
This adorable documentary was found in a yard sale, so we do not know much about the origins.
Le Corbusier Documentary Part 1 - Unite d’Habitation
Ville Radiuse - How fragments are built, but a whole scheme of machine serves the man was never built.
Unite D’Habitation in Marseille
Le Corbusier is a traveler. He moves quickly and constantly sketching architecture and urban planning from various countries, many of which inspired his seven articles for his avant-garde magazine, L ‘Esprit Nouveau. He eventually compiled them this very book.
Just finishing up writing this book, Le Corbusier did not build (1918-1922) and concentrated on his Purist Theory which he started with Amedee Ozenfant (eventually, he built a house for!). Together, they wrote several books ( Après le cubisme 1917, La Peinture moderne 1925 ) , started a journal (L’Esprit nouveau ) and eventually constructed his studio / home
So what is this Purist theory? Together, they constructed a manifesto:
Purism does not intend to be a scientific art, which it is in no sense.
Cubism has become a decorative art of romantic ornamentism.
There is a hierarchy in the arts: decorative art is at the base, the human figure at the summit.
Painting is as good as the intrinsic qualities of its plastic elements, not their representative or narrative possibilities.
Purism wants to conceive clearly, execute loyally, exactly without deceits; it abandons troubled conceptions, summary or bristling executions. A serious art must banish all techniques not faithful to the real value of the conception.
Art consists in the conception before anything else.
Technique is only a tool, humbly at the service of the conception.
Purism fears the bizarre and the original. It seeks the pure element in order to reconstruct organized paintings that seem to be facts from nature herself.
The method must be sure enough not to hinder the conception.
Purism does not believe that returning to nature signifies the copying of nature.
It admits all deformation is justified by the search for the invariant.
All liberties are accepted in art except those that are unclear.
The Engineer’s Aesthetic and Architecture
Much like his purist theories - “lack of truth is intolerable”. This indicates how seeing pure elements, pure processes using the tool is vital. This is linked to “morale” is adjusting our ways to develop through most efficient, most truthful manner.
The Tool (pp13) He compares architecture to the tool. Much like a tool which “are the result of successive improvement” Architecture should do the same.
“Cult of the House”(pp14) This refers to how we live the same way as for centuries- we need to develop a new moral and truthful way of living.
“Engineer fabricate the tools of their time” (pp14)
The engineer is the innovators of their time, they are “happy and virile, active and useful”.
Corbusier proceeds to describe our architects as “disillusioned”.
“Our engineers produce architecture,.. mathematical calculation...feeling of harmony” (pp15)
Relates to the “morale” - description of true mathematics is used when engineers design. Architecture should find a “certain path” to intervene the mathematical problem.
“It is the engineer who knows...the best way to construct, to heat, to ventilate”
The purpose of a home is to generate the best space using the best tools - beit tools of the mind or tools of the physical fabrication realm. An engineer will utilize materials which are “capable of affecting our senses”. Architecture should be morale in affecting our body.
“The purpose of construction is o make things hold together; of architecture is to move us” (pp19)
“Plastic forms”(pp 16)
These forms create “certain relationships are thus born which work upon our perceptions and put us into a state of satisfaction”. They are also “elementary and subtle”
The Machine > Styles (pp17)
Mass - which is the element which our senses perceive and measure and are most fully affected.
Surface - which is the envelope of the mass and which can diminish or enlarge the sensation the latter gives us.
Plan - which is the generator both of mass and surface ... irrevocably fixed.
“regulating lines” (pp 18)
created in architecture through mathematics and create “grateful perception of order”. We only know the truth.
client - “eyes which do not see” (pp18)- One of the purveyor of evils in architecture.
At the end of this essay, he wrote a few main points:
“mass production ... definite results have been achieved in both detail and in mass”
“Steel and concrete have brought new conquests”
“Styles no longer exist for us”
“new needs have arisen, consciously or unconsciously”
“architecture or revolution”
Architecture or Revolution
“These tools in the past were always in man’s hands; to-day they have been entirely and formidable refashioned and for the time being are out of our grasp.” (pp271)
Shows how before, we alter tools to our liking and use - now we are servants of the tools.
Le Corbusier goes on to comment on during the past age - man would “(live) like a snail in its shell, in a lodging made exactly to his measure”. Now, it is the “mass produced article” and the age of the “Industry”. We are now tied to “machines; an absolute precision”. Everything must be in “order”. (pp274)
He concludes, “The spirit of the worker’s booth no longer exists, but certainly these does exist a more collective spirit” (pp275). This is because each human is a small cog in the bigger achievement - collective achievement of the inventing new tools. i.e. a Car
SERVANT OF THE HOME AND SYSTEM
Le Corbusier comments on the living condition - the architecture of the home. If the workplace also acts like a machine, the home should be too. - we should generate a machine which facilitates the 8 hours where we do not work, to connect meaningless activities such as “factory, the office, the bank”.
“men’s minds (are) demoralized in servitude to anachronisms” (pp277)
An anachronism (from the Greek ἀνά ana, "against" and χρόνος khronos, "time") is a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of person(s), events, objects, or customs from different periods of time.
This indicates how servants to ridiculous academies - Work / Monetary / Family which have no connection to one another. We are servants to societies way of organizing their own life. - “A mass of demands” (pp278)
“since remuneration bears no real relation to the quality of their work” (pp279)- A home is a place to live easily, simply. There is no real quality of living.
COMMENTARY ON THE ACT OF BUILDING
“human enterprise is subject to the... warfare of competition, ...landlord..he is a king...” (pp281) The system of building today - how we create architecture does not allow for improvement:
“On the existing principle of property, it is impossible to establish a constructional program which will hold it together. And so the necessary building is not done” - “There would be a enthusiasm for building, and we should avoid Revolution” (pp281)
“Architecture finds itself confronted with new laws” (pp 286)
“Construction has undergone innovations so great that the old “styles” ...can no longer clothe it.... no longer close our minds... which are established on mass, rhythm and proportion” “there has been revolution in the conception of what Architecture is”(pp286)
The role of the engineer and the development of buildings are now based on engineering - how much concrete we need and how we bend materials to our functions.
Logic of work -> Confusion of Lodging -> “hinder him from...creat(ing) a family to live” -> “destruction of the family” (pp288)
“The problem is one for adaption, in which the realities of our life are in question” - How do we push ourselves to go back to reality, organic processes (pp288)
Le Corbusier is a writer to traverses across a large variety of topics - it is hard to conclude his ideas due to the sheer mastermind of his words. Each one has a specific thesis and conclusion. I think he is trying to say - how the human spirit can capture architecture to work for us. To work for our organic human adaptation and to establish a new order which adapts for the machine of the home.We are to forget the past and grasp the Industrial and the Engineer to create morale and truth in our machines.
