The Spirit of Le Corbusier

The Origin.

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret a.k.a ‘Le Corbusier’ is one of the most influential architects of the mid-20th century, known for his revolutionary functional designs and strong sculptural expression. Born in a small Swiss town, La Chaux-de-Fonds, he was engaged with art right from an early age, through watch engraving and paintings. Young Jeanneret found nature to be an ultimate stimulus to his art, but rather than just imitating nature, he pondered upon its form, idea, and vital development. Then, he began to derive strong geometric forms and shapes from the visual elements of nature. He believed that everything beautiful is made of fundamental forms, and they are beautiful because they can be easily perceived and appreciated.

Inspired and motivated by his teacher, Jeanneret’s interests moved towards architecture. He has taught himself the art of space making through his travels throughout Europe. He understood the masterpieces from ancient sites of Greece and the late Renaissance architecture in Italy through sketching, measure-drawing and writing about his understanding. In this search for knowledge, he gained a conviction through his own world of thoughts, ideas, and opinions developed through the

skill of writing and sketching. Later, as he moved to Paris to set up a practice, his work was guided by his ideas developed from the purist paintings and his notions of creating beauty through simple forms. This engagement with modern art and purist paintings can also be due to his early preconceived ideas of geometry and fundamental forms.

The Revolution.

Le Corbusier caused a revolution in the 1920s. After his association with the modernist painter Amedee Ozenfant, he became famous for his ideas published in the avant-garde magazine L’Esprit Nouveau. He was greatly fascinated by the radical change in society’s way of thinking and major advancements in science, engineering, and industrialisation. The perfect utilitarian designs of modern liners, ships, and planes captivated him; he felt the need for modernisation in architecture as well. His deep-rooted idealism made him work towards standardised, functional, and reproducible housing. He came up with the idea of the house as a ‘Machine for living’, stripped out of all the ornamentation and made of pure forms, which was further demonstrated in multiple projects like Villa Savoye. Corbusier, due to his nature of finding the vital essence of any subject, was fascinated by the golden ratio and its proportion, defining the beauty of nature. He later developed a system he called ‘Le Modulor’ that considers the human proportions, and their relation to create spaces. Later in 1925, he was shocked by the unhygienic conditions and dark streets of the city of Paris. He came up with a solution through ‘Plan Voisin’, which proposed the idea of building high and freeing up space on the ground for nature. His thoughts and proposals caused nationwide debates, and he came close to his dream of changing people’s lives through architecture. After trying for years to convince the world, finally in 1946, he got a chance to demonstrate his ideas through a mass housing project - ‘Unité d’habitat’ in Marseille.

A Standard.

Villa Savoye, a weekend house near Paris, is considered one of the most symbolic works of Le Corbusier. It stands as a result of his constant search for a standard design and an ideal solution through architecture. Corbusier defines ‘a standard’ to be something that has been refined and reached a certain level of perfection, and standard objects like cars, planes, etc, in an industrialized modern world, can be mass-produced around the world. Corbusier demonstrated his five principles of architecture through Villa Savoye; he wanted these ideas to be standardized and used throughout the world. The project also reflects upon the importance given to functionality in the modern world, such as a car’s turning angle deciding the curve of the building. On an organisational level, unlike premodern buildings, the processional spaces are not pushed to the peripheries but rather made to be the core of the building with habitable spaces at the periphery, enjoying the uninterrupted views of the landscape around. The circulation is used as a strong architectural element that drives the observer’s path through the building with multiple vistas revealing one after the other. Theatrical spaces in the building promote the idea of seeing and being seen, reflecting the ideas of the modern world at that stage. Though solutions are thought out to be standardized and universal, the context was also given a response by enjoying the elevated views from rooms and the terrace garden, and returning what was taken from the ground through the terrace gardens. All the ideas come together and define the idea of Le Corbusier’s ‘machine for living’.

The Villa Savoye.

The Villa Savoye is located on the outskirts of Paris, surrounded by a forest full of trees with a small plot cleared out for the building. The building stands as a sculpture amidst nature with no built form around it. Corbusier utilises the landscape by opening the main spaces at the periphery with long ribbon windows. After the journey through the spaces, the ramp ends at a framed view of the landscape with a window seat and walls around. This demonstrates his idea of “All view is no view!” to increase value by the controlled revelation of the view. The spaces at all levels are organised in reference to the structural grid of columns. The proportions and spacing of the grid are guided by the activities that the spaces adopt. The building is defined by a rectangular box with spaces created by the combination of orthogonal and curvilinear geometry, defined by strict functionalism and usage of space; for example, the curve at the ground floor is determined by the car’s turning angle. The spaces are made flexible by the use of sliding walls to transform the space and, at the same time, offer visual transparency to the activities happening in the adjacent spaces. Reflecting the modern attitude of a machine, the spaces that are processual are celebrated by getting them to the core and main spaces pushed to the periphery. This was an expression to reverse the hierarchy between spaces in house typologies of that time. As the processual spaces are brought to the core, the building is experienced through an observer’s path through the provided circulation, which is famously known as Corbusier’s architectural promenade. The structure of the building is clearly expressed through free-standing columns that are separated from the enclosure of the building. This expression gives freedom to have long, continuous openings - ribbon windows at the periphery of the space.

The Spirit of Le Corbusier.

Le Corbusier played a major role in shaping current-day architectural ideas and especially the so-called modern way of thinking in architecture. He was one of the first ones from his time to encourage rational thought, as he was never impressed by meaningless aestheticism. Many architects around the world were influenced and moved by his way of thinking and his way of deriving architecture from strong logic and spatial expression of space. Though Corbusier’s architecture was humancentric, he had painted himself a different picture of a modern human, living in modern society. He believed in equality and everyone’s right to happiness, which is still a progressive thought in the present day. Corbusier focused on developing an architecture that responded to the human body at three levels; Physical - everyone should enjoy the sun, space and vegetation, all the dimensional relationships in architecture are derived as a response to the human body; Emotional - thermal regulation, sonic insulation and ventilation; The third level being cultural, where human’s should be able to live in self-efficient mass-produced housing with all the facilities. Corbusier had also dreamt of creating standardised architectural ideas that could be mass-produced throughout the world, which can still be achieved in the present day. In this quest for standard, he introduced revolutionary ideas like his five points of architecture and many devices like brise soleil, ventilators, etc, that are relevant in tropical climatic regions. Corbusier’s ideas still stand timeless, due to their logic and relevance to the current age of advancing technology. Though Corbusier’s ideas may not be relevant directly in the present day, his way of thinking and appropriation/contextualization of architecture in modern society are still relevant.

References.

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