Le corbusier Selected works

Bio Swiss architect, urban planner, painter, writer, designer and theorist, active mostly in France. In the range of his work and in his ability to enrage the establishment and surprise his followers, he was matched in the field of modern architecture perhaps only by Frank Lloyd Wright. He adopted the pseudonym Le Corbusier for his architectural work c. 1920 and for his paintings c. 1930. His visionary books, startling white houses and terrifying urban plans set him at the head of the Modern Movement in the 1920s, while in the 1930s he became more of a complex and sceptical explorer of cultural and architectural possibilities. After World War II he frequently shifted position, serving as ‘Old Master’ of the establishment of modern architecture and as unpredictable and charismatic leader for the young. Most of his great ambitions (urban and housing projects) were never fulfilled. However, the power of his designs to stimulate thought is the hallmark of his career. Before he died, he established the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris to look after and make available to scholars his library, architectural drawings, sketches and paintings.

videos http://www.archdaily.com/tag/le-corbusier/ Key homes in Architecture’s history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWbcbC7uUaQ Le Corbusier Doco part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1a2aGOeHKA Le Corbusier- The Cloister https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG5W3lkSVYk Lecture- The Villa Savoye A manifesto for modernity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zBG1xML8U0 America’s best architecture

Domino Houses (1915) An idea for mass production houses. Uses reinforced concrete structure to allow the architect to apply non load bearing walls according to need. Intended to show how technology could be used to free the architect from the constraints of traditional building materials. Allows for construction of varied spaces using one basic skeleton.

Citrohan Houses (1919-27) Both Citrohan House variants featured a long rectangular volume with a glass wall that opened the double height living room to natural elements. At the rear of this light filled space was a mezzanine sleeping level comprising a cantilevered reinforced concrete slab. Below it was the dining area. Children’s rooms were placed on the terrace roof above. The side walls were weight bearing, reinforced concrete slabs pierced by strip windows. Window glazing was flush with the wall surface and the later variant of the Citrohan House was lifted off the ground by pilotis, both these features serve to enhance the impression of volume, the smoothness and rectilinear quality of the walls and lightweight construction of the house. The houses Le Corbusier built at Pessac in 1925 also featured coloured walls to emphasis their pure form and simplicity.

The immeuble villa Maison Citrohan’The Immeuble-villa’ was a maisonette unit with a double height living space, alongside which was placed a garden. Corbusiers intention was for each unit to be stacked vertically, or horizontally to create small housing blocks.’ p 13 The Maison Citrohan was of a similar design, but placed on stilts. Their designs were to be functional and suitable for mass production. Only one set of these designs were built, at Pessac new Bordeaux. His main designs were for wealthy families and individuals. These designs relied on basic elements from the above. But for appearance he developed a basic grammer and set of 5 rules. Immeuble- high rise, flat

In 1922 Le Corbusier exhibited the Citrohan House and a plan for a Contemporary City. The two ideas were developed in tandem and provided a blueprint for a new way of urban living. Whereas the Contemporary City would have required massive state intervention, the Citrohan House was intended to evolve directly from industrial production and market forces. The Citrohan House (the name evoking Citroën cars) embodied the ideas enunciated in Vers une architecture (1923). In that book Corbusier had argued for a house to be mass-produced, to work as efficiently as a motor car, and to function effectively as a machine for living in. The Citrohan concept was intended to provide standardized model to meet the demand for affordable housing. Le Corbusier designed two versions of the Citrohan House, both of which were intended to be prefabricated in order to provide cheap, rapidly constructed but permanent, highquality accommodation. Both versions had flat roofs and roof terraces with a doubleheight main living area, in which a double-height window, made from industrial glass, occupied one wall, flooding the interior with light. The second version was raised above the ground on cylindrical posts, or piloti, providing parking, garage and boiler-room space at ground level. There was also a large balcony, which wrapped around the front and sides of the building on the first-floor level, with an external staircase. Kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms and a maid’s room were located to the rear, with some sleeping accommodation provided on the gallery of the living room, accessed via an internal spiral staircase. The Citrohan Houses were intended, like automobiles, to revolutionize the housing market, not to provide minimum dwellings for those on the lowest incomes. http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/15/arts/architecture-view-le-corbusier-s-housing-project-flexible-enough-endure-ada.html Citrohan house design

The five points Pilotis; to life the house off the ground. The Free Plan; the framed construction of the building allowing the interior space to be organised as desired. The Free Facade; Since the external walls were not load- bearing, they could be divided up wherever necessary by windows or other apertures. The Ribbon Window; a long horizontal window The Roof Garden; Intended to replace the ground covered by the house and bring its inhabitants into direct relationship with nature. The main body of the house was to be away from ground level. Internal furniture was to be designed to be functional and not decorational. Pieces were to be built into the fabric of the building.

Ville Contemporaine To replace a chaotic unorganised mess with slums and a lack of nature, he proposed a zoned city where things like housing, industry and administration occupied specific areas. These would be connected by networks for cars, trains and planes. Concrete allowed to build high giving room for parks. In his city plan for 3 million at the heart was a traffic terminus, then high rise glass skyscrapers for the central commercial district. Then housing for those who worked in the towers. A green belt separates this from the manufacturing area and another divides the housing for those working in the factories. However this design was seen as elitist as it subordinates the workers to the outskirts of the city.

http://architectuul.com/architecture/ville-contemporaine Ville Contemporaine 1922 The Ville Contemporaine was an unrealised project to house three million inhabitants designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1922. The centerpiece of Corbusier's utopian, urban plan was a group of sixty-story cruciform skyscrapers built on steel frames and encased in curtain walls of glass. The skyscrapers housed both offices and the flats of the most wealthy inhabitants. These skyscrapers were set within large, rectangular park-like green spaces. At the center of the planned city was a transportation hub which would house depots for buses and trains as well as highway intersections and at the top, an airport. Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways, and glorified the use of the automobile as a means of transportation. As one moved out from the central skyscrapers, smaller multi-story zigzag blocks set in green space and set far back from the street housed the proletarian workers.

Pavillion suisse Pavillion Suisse was a residential student housing block that represented a movement into a new phase of design. It was a reworking of his 5 points where there was now a grander and more powerful architectural language. His design also changed eg, the Pilotis were now irregular. his approach to finding a completely modernist movement

Pavillion suisse In 1930, Le Corbusier was tasked with designing a dormitory that would house Swiss students at the Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris. At first the architect and Pierre Jeanneret, his partner at the time, refused to take on the project due to tensions with the Swiss after their handling of the architects’ proposal for the League of Nations competition. Eventually, however, they agreed to see it through and worked on a very limited budget, which led the building to become a summation of Le Corbusier’s modern principles, forcing him to focus on dwelling before all else.

Pavillion suisse The Swiss Pavilion, or Pavillon Suisse, employed the architect’s five points of architecture, building on them throughout the design. The building is elevated on pilotis that are close to its center, accentuating the ‘floating’ effect. The roof garden gives back to the city and serves the residents of the building, although it is not as animated as that of the Unite d’Habitation in Marseille. Three frames give the garden a view and reveal the unsophisticated structural elements. http://www.archdaily.com/358312/ad-classics-swiss-pavilion-le-corbusier/

Villa savoye 1929-30 The Villa Savoye is considered by many to be the seminal work of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. Situated at Poissy, outside of Paris, it is an iconic architectural example of early modernism, the so-called International Style. Construction was completed circa 1929 but fell into disrepair during World War II. It has since been fully restored and is open for viewing. The house addressed "The Five Points", his basic tenets of a new aesthetic of architecture: The pilotis, or ground-level supporting columns, elevating the building. A flat roof terrace reclaims the area of the building site for domestic purposes, including a garden area. The free plan, made possible by the elimination of load- bearing walls. Horizontal windows provide even illumination and ventilation. The freely-designed facade, unconstrained by load-bearing considerations, consists of a thin skin of wall and windows. http://www.ultimatehouse.tv/article.php?id=2

Significance This house in many ways defined the course that modern architecture was to take in the 20th Century. An early and classic exemplar of the "International Style", in which the mass of the building hovers above a grass plane on thin concrete pilotti, with strip windows, and a flat roof with a deck area, ramp, and a few contained touches of curvaceous walls. The last in a series of white houses designed by architect Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye was designed as a weekend country house for the wealthy Savoye family and is situated just outside of the small village of Poissy in a meadow surrounded by mature trees. The intention was to cause as little disturbance as possible to the existing natural surroundings. Le Corbusier put a lot of consideration into how people were to experience the house. The approach and initial experiences were of great importance, arriving by vehicle at the site would be integrated into the experience of the house. The house would appear majestically from behind a screen of thick trees, thus maximising the impact.

provenance The Savoyes lived in the house until 1940. During the Second World War the house was occupied first by Germans and then Allies, and seriously damaged. It came into possession of the town of Poissy in 1958, which used it as a youth centre and then considered demolishing it. However, after the protest of architects who felt it should be saved, and with support from Le Corbusier, the house was protected. In 1965 it became listed as a historic monument, and from 1985 through 1997 complete restoration work was undertaken. The restoration has included structural and surface repairs to the facades and terraces, rewiring, and installation of security cameras and lights. The original colours and fixtures and fittings reinstated where possible. The polychromatic interior was intended to create contrast with the primarily white exterior. Provenance is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of an historical object.

Function is paramount The design of the house goes against the traditional codes of residential architecture, instead it is a representation of a new vision in the form of functional architecture. Vertical circulation is facilitated by ramps as well as stairs and the geometry of the house is designed to ensure that as people move through the spaces they experience the harmony between the architectural forms and the play of light. http://www.archdaily.com/490048/ad-classics-weissenhof-siedlung-houses-14-and-15-le-corbusier-and-pierre-jeanneret/ Weissenhof