20513

Le Corbusier
ARCHITECT, TOWN PLANNER, DESIGNER, PAINTER, SCULPTOR, WRITER by Dr John W Nixon

Fig. 1 Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 19504. Reproduced from William J. R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 1982; 3rd edition, Phaidon, London and New York, 1996, ISBN 07148-3356-8, p. 418.

Training and influences

Le Corbusier began as a designer-engraver but was urged to switch to architecture by the director of his school, the painter Charles L'Eplattenier. His architectural training (c. 190512) was largely self-directed, and comprised:

Related Study Notes

Le Corbusier (18871965) born Charles-douard Jeanneret, the son of a watch engraver in the Swiss town of La Chaux-de-Fonds is generally regarded as the single most influential figure in mid-20thC world architecture. Le Corbusier' was the name he adopted about 1920. He exerted influence not just through architectural works but through town-planning, furniture design, painting and a considerable body of writing. His work of the 1920s and '30s was firmly Modern, rejecting the 19th century Arts and Crafts approach and embracing a machine, or engineering, aesthetic. The functional engineering of ocean liners, aircraft and cars strongly influenced him and this is especially evident in his designs of this time for villas around Paris. He did not simply design villas for the well-to-do. In his Maison Domino, 191415, and Maison Citrohan, 1921, he proposed systems for mass-produced housing in reinforced concrete, but probably his most influential solution to the mass-housing need was the Marseilles apartment block, the Unit d'Habitation of 194552 a partial realisation of his concept of a vertical housing city'. The building inspired many 'homages' around the world but, as a model 'solution' to mass-housing needs, it has also attracted much criticism. Brutalist' apartment blocks influenced by it often proved decidedly unattractive to those having to live in them, particularly further north than the south of France, or when aesthetic and technical problems were not solved with the master's flair, or when tight budgets impacted on aesthetic and other considerations. The Unit d'Habitation also reveals an emphasis on the sculptural, non-functional treatment of form, something increasingly apparent in his work from the 1930s on. This tendency probably saw its most poetic expression in his pilgrimage Church of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp, 195054.
Fig. 3 Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds, 1916; south faade shortly after construction. Reproduced from Curtis, 1986, p. 45. Fig. 2 Maison Fallet, La Chaux-de-Fonds, 19057. Reproduced from William J. R. Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, Phaidon, London, 1986, ISBN 0-7148-2790-8, p. 131.

10030 The order within: an approach to pictorial analysis 10040 Classicism, Neoclassicism and Romanticism 10060 From realism to abstraction 20400 Architecture and technical innovation 20445 Frank Lloyd Wright 20521 De Stijl 20522 Bauhaus 20527 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 20711 Art Deco 30412 douard Manet 30746 Pictorial analysis and interpretation: a case study 30820 Modernism and Postmodernism 40415 New Brutalism

o actual commissions (his first house, the Maison Fallet was produced in 19056 when he was aged 18; this, the Maison Jaquemont, 19078, and other early works in his home town of La Chaux-de-Fonds reveal L'Eplattenier's Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau stylistic influence); o working with established architects, including: 14 months (190809) with August Perret in Paris, here receiving a grounding in use of the reinforced concrete frame (a major example of Perret's work is the Church of Notre-Dame at Raincy, 192223); 5 months (1910) with Peter Behrens in Berlin (Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were also with Behrens about this time); o travel, establishing professional contacts (such as with Josef Hoffman and Adolf Loos in Vienna and Tony Garnier in Lyons) and viewing sites of architectural interest (e.g., 1911, Classical sites in Greece and Turkey). It was not until his Villa Schwob of 1916, at La Chaux-deFonds, that the characteristics of his mature work begin to tentatively emerge: geometrical simplicity, harmonious

proportions, functional planning and construction, and a sculptural' treatment of forms and spaces. The Villa Schwob, although providing hints of these characteristics, is a notably uneasy and unresolved mix of old and new approaches.

Theories and publications

Le Corbusier exercised considerable influence through his writings and he himself was much influenced by Nietzsche (10060). The controversial German philosophers aphoristic style of writing is reflected to an extent in Le Corbusiers own, some of his sayings being: the house is a machine for living in; a curved street is a donkey track, a straight street, a road for men; architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light; and the city that has speed has success.

AS and A2 content
This Study Note covers Le Corbusiers full career. Those intending to take examinations in the subject should note that the work falls across several sections at AS and A2 the current specification should be consulted. Examiners allow a measure of flexibility around specification chronological boundaries. Discussion of specific examples may range up to five years beyond any such boundary without penalty: over five years and up to a maximum of fifteen, penalties are progressively imposed. Where the purpose of discussion is not to describe and analyse specific examples but rather to establish general context or significance, no chronological restrictions apply.

In the text, a symbol refers to these Study Notes

Fig. 4 Domino skeleton, 1914-15. Reproduced from Curtis, 1986, p. 43.

1/5

20513u.doc: first published 2004; revised 2007

CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART

DOMINO HOUSING SYSTEM In 191415, a year or two before the Villa Schwob, Le Corbusier made a decided step towards Modernism with his Domino, or Dom-ino, housing system design. The Domino house skeleton comprised three rectangular horizontal slabs, six slender columns supporting each of the upper two slabs and six blocks the bottom one, with the three slabs connected by reinforced-concrete stairs. The columns, or pilotis as he later termed them, were set back from the outer edges of the slabs, allowing freedom of treatment to the infill, nonload-bearing, walls. The basic Domino unit could be replicated indefinitely in any direction. The floor slabs apparently reminded Le Corbusier of the chips used in the game of dominoes. This plus domus being Latin for house, and ino evoking innovation, led to the name. INTERNATIONAL STYLE While arguably anticipated in most, if not all, its essential elements,
1

a machine for living in", he wrote) o the need to satisfy intellectually and aesthetically through arrangements of abstract form. CITROHAN HOUSING SYSTEM The Domino was the skeleton of a house. The Citrohan, developed in 192022 and described in Vers une Architecture, took this a stage further. Curtis: Citrohan was a pun on Citron a house like a car. Le Corbusier hoped to mass-produce the pieces of the building by Taylorized methods like those being used in automobile factories. Housing shortages in post-war France were a critical matter, and the architect was directing his ideas at government agencies and industrialists as much as at private clients The Citrohan embodied the conception of a machine habiter a machine for living in a functional tool raised to the level of art through judicious proportions, fine spaces and the stripping away of pointless decoration and purposeless habits. It was a utopian challenge to the status quo.
3

there is no denying that Le Corbusiers Domino

system quickly exerted major and widespread international influence. William J. R. Curtis in his book Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, 1986, writes: Fourteen years later, in the Oeuvre complte, volume I, Le Corbusier published the Dom-ino skeleton on its own. By this time it had taken on the status of an icon of modern architecture. The formal characteristics of what was later called the International Style hovering horizontal volumes, taut skins, regular lines of support were based on analogous systems in concrete or steel The Dom-ino was trabeation in an elemental form pure column and pure slab One is not surprised by the legend that the ageing Le Corbusier kept a picture of the Dom-ino on his wall next to a photograph of the Parthenon: both were central to his lifelong production, and both embodied notions he regarded as fundamental.
2

Fig. 5 Model of the Citrohan House, 192022. Reproduced from Richard Weston, Modernism, Phaidon, London, 1996, ISBN 0-71482879-3, p. 110.

The Maison Citrohan was cubic with a flat roof, a double-height living room and a large area of factory glazing; in the later version the box was raised on stilts to liberate the soil beneath for parking but also to suggest the independence from the terrain In line with Purist pretensions to universality, the Citrohan was intended for everyone everywhere: an abstract product of technology above differences of region. In fact it seemed to be directed at the habits of an artist monk: the Parisian studio type of house (with large north glazing) cross-bred with the cell of the monastery of Ema. There were Mediterranean overtones in the whitewashed cube and nautical ones in the terraces like decks, but the section with a gallery slung along the back of a double-height living room was also inspired by a working mens caf in Paris.
4

PURISM In 1916 Le Corbusier left Switzerland to settle in Paris and in 1918, with the painter Amade Ozenfant, he launched the movement known as Purism. Purism embraced both the fine and applied arts and advocated: o a machine aesthetic o the conscious refinement, perfection, of existing types. The emphasis was thus essentially Classicist aimed at gaining an aesthetic through evolution rather than revolution. TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE Beginning in 1920, when he also adopted the name Le Corbusier, and continuing to 1925, he and others published the magazine L'Esprit Nouveau (The New Spirit) in which he formulated his ideas on architecture and aesthetics. These ideas were brought together in the most influential book by any 20thC architect, Vers Une Architecture, 1923 (published in English as Towards a New Architecture, 1927). Le Corbusier's new architecture' aimed to hold in balance: o the need to satisfy functional requirements ("the house is
1

Fig. 6 Diagram illustrating, on the right, the Five Points of a New Architecture contrasted against traditional masonry construction. Reproduced from Curtis, 1986, p. 70.

FIVE POINTS In his book Les 5 Points d'une Architecture Nouvelle, 1926 (Five Points for a New Architecture), Le Corbusier gave specific structural guidelines as to how his new architecture' could be achieved: o pilotis (columns) elevating the mass of the building off the ground o free plan, achieved through the use of columns, thereby relieving walls of a load-bearing function o free faade, also achieved through non-load-bearing walls o strip windows

The Oriel Chambers offices, Liverpool, of 1864 by Peter Ellis, and the Fagus Factory, Alfeld-an-der-Leine, of 1911 by Gropius and Meyer, are among earlier works which could be cited (20522).
2

William J. R. Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, Phaidon, London, 1986, ISBN 0-7148-2790-8, p. 43. See our Classicism, Neoclassicism and Romanticism (10040) Study Note for a brief introduction to Ancient Greek architecture.

The American Frederick Winslow Taylor (18561915) was one of the earliest to subject management the way work was done to scientific study and analysis. Curtis, p. 54.

2/5

20513u.doc: first published 2004; revised 2007

CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART

o roof terrace, or roof garden, thereby regaining' the ground covered by the building.

buildings produced from about this time. PAVILION DE LESPRIT NOUVEAU The Pavilion de l'Esprit Nouveau was built for the 1925 Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris. John Donat and John Killick write:

Fig. 7 Skyscrapers in the heart of the ideal industrial city; Plan Voisin, 1925. Reproduced from Curtis, 1986, p. 62.

TOWN/CITY PLANNING Town or city planning was a longstanding interest of Le Corbusiers. Among his books on the subject are Urbanism, 1925 (The City of Tomorrow, 1929), in which ideas were put forward for reshaping cities to make use of recent developments in transport and technology, and La Ville Radieuse, 1935 (The Radiant City, 1967) his principal contribution to town-planning theory.

Fig. 11 Pavilion of LEsprit Nouveau, Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts, Paris, 1925. Reproduced from Weston, p. 111.

The Pavilion de LEsprit Nouveau... very nearly never got built at all, not surprisingly perhaps, since its central theme was that 'Decorative Art' was irrelevant and a waste of time! Le Corbusier's exhibit was in two parts, an exposition of his town-planning theories and a full size mock-up of an apartment. The object was to demonstrate that architecture itself embraced every detail of the environment from furniture to the street and the city itself. The design of this dwelling embraces one of the most persistent themes in Le Corbusier's work the pursuit of an 'ideal home' for man... The principles behind the Esprit Nouveau apartment were that standardisation and mass-production industry would produce pure forms of their own which would have intrinsic values as art. The exploitation of the structural and spatial potentialities of steel and concrete could create a minimum dwelling that would be a comfortable, elegant and practical 'machine for living in'.

Fig. 8 The Modulor, 1948. Reproduced from Curtis, 1986, p. 164.

THE MODULOR In his book Le Modulor, 1948 (The Modulor, 1954), Le Corbusier set out his ideas for what his subtitle describes as a harmonious measure to the human scale universally applicable to architecture and mechanics. His Modulor' ergonomic or proportioning system factorises a six-foot measure an idealized mans height using the Fibonacci Series or Golden Section ratio (10030). In the preface to the second edition he wrote in 1951:
5

Fig. 9 Applications of the Modulor illustrated. Reproduced from Le Corbusier, The Modulor, 1954; Faber, London, 1961 edition, p. 67.

Architects everywhere have recognized in it, not a mystique, but a tool which may be put into the hands of creators of form, with the simple aim, as Professor Einstein has put it so well, of making the bad difficult and the good easy. The Modulor is a scale. Musicians have a scale; they make music, which may be trite or beautiful.
6

Fig. 12 Double house, Weissenhof Siedlung, Stuttgart, 19267. Reproduced from Curtis, 1986, p. 138.

Its principal features were a glass wall two storeys high lighting a double-height studio/living space beside a twostorey high garden terrace only remarkable when you realise that the intention was to stack up these dwellings into vast apartment blocks a vertical garden city.
7

Fig. 10 Analysis by Le Corbusier of faade of Michelangelos Capitol Building (Palazzo dei Senatori), Rome, c. 1538-64. Reproduced from Le Corbusier, The Modulor, p. 26.

WEISSENHOF SIEDLUNG Le Corbusier designed a pair of semi-detached houses for the 1927 Weissenhof Siedlung, Stuttgart, international housing exhibition organised by the Deutscher Werkbund and overseen by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. They exemplified Le Corbusier's interest in industrial methods of building. The houses were raised on slim columns, or 'pilotis'. There were various service rooms at ground level. At first floor level, the living area could be changed into a sleeping area by rearranging moveable storage units. The flat roof functioned also as a sun-terrace.

Among the many illustrations in Le Modulor, Le Corbusier includes a simple geometrical analysis of the faade of Michelangelos Capitol Building (or Palazzo dei Senatori) in Rome, c.153864. The analysis comprises only three rightangles but it well illustrates the kind of thinking behind much architectural and fine art design, past and present (10030, 30412, 30746).

Partnership with Pierre Jeanneret

In 1922 he went into architectural practice with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, a partnership which lasted until about 193940. The following are among the most important

Fig. 13 Maison Stein, Garches, 19267. Reproduced from Curtis, 1986, p. 140.

The Fibonacci Series is a sequence of numbers with each number being the sum of the previous two, thus: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 The further the series progresses the closer it approximates to the Golden Section ratio.
6

MAISON STEIN Again, in the Maison (or Villa) Stein, Garches, 19267, the

Le Corbusier, Le Modulor, 1948 (The Modulor, 1954), translated by Peter de Francia and Anna Bostock, Faber and Faber, London, 1961 edition, p. 5.

John Donat and John Killick, Architecture in the 20th Century, The History of Western Art, Visual Publications, Cheltenham, 1987, Series 19, Part 1, p. 21.

3/5

20513u.doc: first published 2004; revised 2007

CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART

structural system of reinforced concrete columns and floor slabs enabled great freedom of design. Donat and Killick: ...Double-height spaces pierced through the floor slabs to extend space vertically inside, curved screens and partition walls created long diagonal vistas extending the space horizontally and uninterrupted by structure. The house was a tour de force of solid, void, space and movement.
8

ure in the Twentieth Century, Taschen, Cologne, 1991, ISBN 3-82280550-5, p. 260.

on the balcony and window niches. The 7th and 8th storeys of the building were intended as a small internal mall comprising shops, a restaurant, hairdressers, etc and, in a sense, to be the civic centre of this vertical city'. However, as Peter Gssel and Gabriele Leuthuser observe:

Fig. 14 Villa Savoye, Poissy, 192731. Reproduced from Curtis, 1986, p. 142.

Fig. 18 Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 19504. Reproduced from David Watkin, A History of Western Architecture, 1986; Laurence King, London, 3rd ed., 2000, ISBN 1-85669-227-2, p. 652.

VILLA SAVOYE The Villa Savoye at Poissy, 192731, is one of the clearest statements of Le Corbusier's early maturity. The forms are smooth, white and severely geometrical a square, shallow box-like structure, with strip windows, raised on slim reinforced concrete pilotis (5 along each outside edge). Between the pilotis is room for parking and, running up the centre of the house, is a glass-enclosed elliptical ramp. A hall, servants' quarters and garages are also on the ground floor. The curvilinear theme reappears on the roof with an
9

...even assuming that all the families living here would also shop here, 340 parties were simply too few to keep in business a whole range of stores with attractive selections. The arcade soon became a wasteland with only one store remaining. Further mistakes can be seen in the design of its access areas... The indecisive territoriality of the neither private nor public corridor system, plus its darkness, made leaving the apartment seem an excursion into "enemy" territory and created insecurity and fear. There is simply no development of the sense of home which should ultimately accompany the communal ideal behind the "Unit". The architectural pose of this house on stilts primarily allowed an all-round view of the large parking lot: what passes under the house is not "landscape" but strong winds and the noise of car engines. In passing, Donat and Killick remark of the Unit d'Habitation, "The machine-aesthetic that pristine clarity of finish that photographed so well but weathered so badly was abandoned".
11 10

Fig. 15 Villa Savoye, Poissy, 192731; terrace. Reproduced from Weston, p. 114.

arrangement of screen-walls reminiscent of ships' funnels. On the first floor, a sliding glass wall separates the large free-plan living area from the terrace roof garden.

Fig. 16 Unit dHabitation, Marseilles, 194552; axonometric drawing. Reproduced from Curtis, 1982, p. 439.

UNIT D'HABITATION The apartment block known as the Unit d'Habitation, built in Marseilles in 194552, is a large rectangular structure of reinforced concrete, 17 storeys high and sitting on massive pilotis. It houses just over 1,600 people. Its 337 apartments are of 23 types, accommodating from one or two up to about eight. Le Corbusier himself described the structure as like a huge rack into which apartments slot like drawers. Each apartment extends the full depth of the building and includes a second storey to half the depth. Room heights within each apartment are (a very low) 2.4 m/ 7'5" and (a very high) 4.8 m/ 15'9". The high part of each apartment is given over to an open-plan living room with a full-height window overlooking either mountains or the Mediterranean. This arrangement permits two rows of interlocked apartments to open onto a corridor running through the centre of the building. On the roof are sculpted ventilation shafts and facilities for a crche, paddling pool and gymnasium. Another notably 'sculptural' feature is the staircase at one end of the block. Decoratively, the board-faced concrete finish is relieved by little else than a system of red, blue, yellow and green coloured squares

Fig. 19 Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, 19504; interior. Reproduced from Curtis, 1982, p. 421.

NOTRE DAME DU HAUT The pilgrimage church of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp, 195054, is one of the most innovative, distinctive and aesthetically accomplished buildings of the century. Set on a hill, it is dominated by the complex catenary curves of its concrete shell roof, only tenuously connected to the walls. The rough (brut') finish of the roof, textured by timber shuttering, is set off by the white of the massive walls. Small windows pierce these walls with a calculated irregularity, lending an air of sanctity and mystery. The church is as much a work of sculpture as of architecture.

Fig. 20 Monastery of La Tourette, Eveux-sur-lArbresle, near Lyons, 1953-60. Reproduced from Curtis, 1982, p. 422.

OTHER WORKS Among other notable late works are the Maisons Jaoul,
Fig. 21 Interior of one of the Maisons Jaoul, Neuilly, 195256 Reproduced from Watkin, p. 653.

Fig. 17 Unit dHabitation, Marseilles, 194552; roof terrace. Reproduced from Peter Gssel and Gabriele Leuthuser, Architect-

Neuilly Sur Seine, 195256; the Dominican monastery of Ste

10

8 9

Donat and Killick, 19.2.8. Also known as ribbon windows.

Peter Gssel & Gabriele Leuthuser, Architecture in the Twentieth Century, Taschen, Cologne, 1991, ISBN 3-8228-0550-5, pp. 259-63. Donat and Killick, 19.3.19.

11

4/5

20513u.doc: first published 2004; revised 2007

CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART

Marie de la Tourette at Eveux-sur-lArbresle, in France, 195360; and a number of major government buildings in Chandigarh, India, 195163.

5/5

20513u.doc: first published 2004; revised 2007

CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART