CorBuSIEr . STrEETS , ProMEnaDES , SCEnES anD arTEfaCTS (original) (raw)

Le Corbusier. Streets, Promenades, Scenes and Artefacts

Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 2016

The relationship of Le Corbusier with the street is complex and sometimes contradictory. Young Jeanneret seems to be persuaded by certain sites, which we may define as urban scenarios, during his visits to cities like Istanbul in his formative years. Unlike his hometown La Chaux-de-Fonds – identified by a regular set of streets – these places may have been a picturesque counterpoint activated by a significant topography. Streets meandering along a set of ‘Dom-ino’ houses in the Oeuvre Complete, as the tracking rails of a long shot recording, offer a changing viewpoint that may be considered in relation with such casual arrangements. The claim to kill the ‘rue corridor’ made in Précisions, together with his later writings, deeply contrast with his own comments on an empty Paris in the summer of 1942 – as published in Les Trois Établissements Humains – praising the same streets he pretended to erase by means of operations like the ‘Ilôt Insalubre No 6’. The objective of this paper is to highlight and discuss those contradictions, which can be illustrated by the technical machine-streets conceived for the Ville Contemporaine of 1922 versus the V4 streets formulated in 1947 to reconcile with traditional streets. . Xavier Monteys & Pere Fuertes (2016) Le Corbusier. Streets, promenades, scenes and artefacts, Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 40:2, 151-161, DOI: 10.3846/20297955.2016.1194606

Le Corbusier: Urban Visions Through Thresholds

Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 2016

In Le Corbusier’s work the threshold is represented like a revealing and enigmatic space that define the relations of the limit or boundary, the separation and the union between the buildings and the urban spaces, and the space that defines, qualifies and characterises the minimum condition of urbanity of any work of architecture, irrespective of its use or scale. Through an analysis of the draws based on the study of the six notebooks of The Voyage d’Orient (1911), and of the study of the urban settings visited, we verified that the threshold is, for Le Corbusier, a space or sequence of spaces organised under the idea of “plan” of variable thickness or extension, that includes both criteria and guidelines of order as well as solutions for managing the limits or boundaries in architecture, as well as its relation with space and the involvement with its surroundings, that is to say, we have also focused on highlighting how the architecture in itself, attends to an order that as well ...

Journal of Architecture and Urbanism Le Corbusier: urban visions through thresholds

Crossings: journey through Le Corbusier's Villa la Roche

1+1 of-nacia Acquisitions and Bibliographie Services 395 Wellington Street OttawaON K1AôN4 canada Bibliothèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions et services bibliographiques 395, rue wellingm OtraWaON K l A W canada The author has granted a nonexclusive licence aiiowing the National Library of Canada to reproduce, loan, distribute or sell copies of this thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats. The author retains ownership of the copyright in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts fkom it may be printed or otheMnse reproduced without the author's permission. L'auteur a accorde une Licence non exclusive permettant à la Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduire' prêter, distribuer ou vendre des copies de cette thèse sous la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement reproduits sans son autorisation.

From Rome to New York background to the urban proposals of Le Corbusier

Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 2016

The paper argues that urban proposals of Le Corbusier arise from the study of the history of architecture. Through a comparison of his journey impressions with his urban projects, this paper demonstrates that the ideas and perceptions that determined Le Corbusier proposals were extracted and interpreted from the study that the young architect carried out of the settlements and cities of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean in his well-known Voyage d’Orient.

In a Mediated Manner—Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye at Poissy

∆OME∑ (Domes) International Review of Architecture, 2007

If Le Corbusier's works are rather easily divided into two sorts--pre- Depression, slick and white; and post-Hiroshima, brutal and gray—it is the Villa Savoye that most often represents the early period. Yet Savoye is not the best work of this period, nor is it representative of Le Corbusier's larger concerns for individual buildings as candi- dates for a new urban order. Badly built, within a dozen years of its completion, the Villa Savoye was so dilapidated that it was used as a kind of storage barn by German troops occupying France. Its site is pastoral, removed from the urban environment and as such it stands as an indictment of, rather than solution to, urban conditions that Le Corbusier regularly condemned. A building in the round, the villa has neither the blank side walls nor the unadorned flat roof that allow a more typical Le Corbusier Twenties building to 'close- pack' into a larger, denser entity. (Fig. 1a, 1b) Because the villa so obviously fails to serve as solution to Le Corbusier's fundamental concerns, one wonders why it is persistently promoted as canonical. What are the conditions and qualities of the work that recommend elevation to this status? And what does the work signify if not Le Corbusier's convictions regarding the way we should build in the 20th Century?

From Bordeaux to Barcelona – Le Corbusier's creative journey that went unnoticed

The evolution of Le Corbusier's architecture from cuboid, slick and white forms, and the universality of Purism in the 1920s, to an earthy roughness, undeniable inspired by Mediterranean vernacular traditions after about 1930 is well-known. For example, the Weekend House represented a very obvious tectonic shift from Villa Savoye. Since they share the same basic unit form, the unbuilt Barcelona Residential Quarter (1933) seems to be a continuation of the housing estate in Pessac (1925), the only ground-level, multi-family scheme Le Corbusier ever built. This paper argues that it represented an equally radical rethink of the principles employed in the Pessac housing scheme, but that the differences are much more subtle. The aim is to search for, and analyse the factors that mediated in the transformation of the concept from Bordeaux to Barcelona, only eight years apart. Le Corbusier was a fierce proponent of high-rise "vertical garden cities" all his life. His decision to conceptualise the Barcelona Quarter as a low-rise complex is, therefore, unexpected especially considering that CIAM (of which he was a leading member) at that time was firmly committed to highrise slabs in park-like settings. But Le Corbusier himself alluded to his intentions when he declared that he wished to create "a delightful oasis of refreshing greenery". The word "oasis" reminds of his frequent visits to Algeria, and his observations are briefly reviewed in order to better understand the formative aspects of his experience. General layout drawings of the project were drawn on computer and these provided the data for the subsequent exploration of the urban framework and the design of the constituent dwellings. The influence of the Arab vernacular on both his urbanism and architecture became very apparent, but it seemed as if the vernacular served to enhance contextual, functional and aesthetic requirements, rather than being a dominantly formative force, as was the case at (say) Roqet-Rob in 1949.

LE CORBUSIER. PARÍS, 1915. CONSTRUIR DIBUJOS, CONSTRUIR CIUDADES

EGA, 2024

After writing the draft of La Construction des villes in 1910 - whose drawings in Germany were discussed in the previous issue of this journal- this project was put on hold until 1915, when he moved to Paris for seven weeks. At the Bibliothéque Nationale he prepared a series of files with texts and sketches and, above all, devoted himself to copying new drawings. Now the workmanship is fast, and rather than faithfully reproducing, he interprets what he sees through a new prism: classicism. There are other references: Blondel and Laugier as sources of authority, but also books and plates by Piranesi, Perelle, Riat, Patte, oriental architecture, historical maps of Paris and prints and engravings from the Cabinet des Estampes. That book was definitively abandoned, but a new conception of the city began to take shape in those days and was reflected in his urban proposals and in Urbanisme, where he published some of these drawings.

Re-Considering Le Corbusier's Unfinished Projects

2010

Whereas the architecture of Le Corbusier (1887-1965) is again on the neo-Modernist agenda as the so-called "unfinished project", he is also blamed for the alienation of the street as a public realm, and the dispersed nature of most contemporary cities. Critics ignore the fact that he relentlessly opposed the anti-urban paradigm, and that his urban objectives are entirely compatible with contemporary concerns. The paper investigates four unfinished projects. First is Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau of 1925, which remained a prototype at an international exhibition. The other three are the Housing Quarter in Barcelona (1933), and the La Sainte-Baume and Roq-et-Rob projects on the Côte d'Azur (1948, 1949). It explores the ways these projects achieve (1) walkability, (2) densification, and (3) private gardens. Analyses rely primarily on comparisons of computer-generated drawings. Finally, this paper concludes that reconsidering Le Corbusier oeuvre can enhance the current knowledge base and contribute towards more sustainable neighborhoods.

An Uncompromising Oeuvre. On the 50th Anniversary of Le Corbusier’s Death

Critique d’art, 2016

During the 1987 celebrations marking the centenary of Le Corbusier's birth, a Swiss draughtsman produced a caricature of him as a crazed giant, trampling on buildings in a traditional street, and pushing before him a terrified crowd in a scene of indescribable chaos. Not unwittily, the poster bore a title worthy of a bad B-movie: "Le Corbusier is Back!" The drawing referred as much to "the death of the street", words pronounced by Le Corbusier in the 1920s, as to the fantasies prompted by his work; it also illustrated the tidal wave of publications and exhibitions bestirred at that time by his anniversary. There is no exhaustive inventory of all the publications devoted to Le Corbusier, making it possible to define the outlines of the corpus of a historiographical study which still remains to be undertaken. Consulting the catalogue of the rich library of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) helps us to approach the scope of this publishing phenomenon, which publications marking the jubilee of his death, in 2015, do not belie.

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