Le Corbusier: Urban Visions Through Thresholds (original) (raw)
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Journal of Architecture and Urbanism Le Corbusier: urban visions through thresholds
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 as being articulated and unitary, is extended by means of doors, frames, courtyards, terraces, sheds and exterior spaces, that incorporate both the nearby urban landscape as well as the distant cityscape.
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
A dimension of landscape. Urban planning by Le Corbusier: infrastructure, contemplation, and poetics
UrbanisticaTre ISSN 1973-9702, 2019
On the topic of Landscape, in any form, certain projects by Le Corbusier (LC) may be said to have unquestionably maintained a sense of both development and continuity with the modern era. Projects such as the Rio de Janeiro and Algiers ones prove that certain concepts LC engaged with remain valid to this day and that current approaches to urban planning still rely on his same composition dynamics. Landscape may be natural, urban, industrial, etcetera; its importance is crucial in the process of architectural composition, whether on a large or small scale. LC’s writings are a source of instruction on how to directly confront landscape and enhance it through design that is mindful of urban context. An intimate poetic of landscape contemplation arises from his work, as well as a specific positioning of his constructions (and infrastructures) towards the best possible spot for observing the natural and urban context, so that it may pervade his residential buildings and thus be admired. At the same time, LC morphs landscape into a dynamic set for vehicle routes and itineraries, where the point of observation is endlessly shifting. Several of LC’s ideas continue to live on in the present, namely his principles for the creation of “urban condensers”, various examples of layered functions, and the idea of a diverse typology of roads as a means of improving both a neighbourhood’s outer perception, as well as its living conditions, without forcing discontinuities.
Giedion’s Figural Conception of Urban Space-Time & the Analysis of Le Corbusier’s Modern Urbanisms
Considering Research: Proceedings of the ARCC Spring Research Conference, 2011
Sigfried Giedion's presentation of three figures to analyze urban space-time in history can be used in turn to understand often overlooked aspects of early modernist urban schemes, like Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin, the Pavilon de L'Esrpit Nouveau, and the Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants. Giedion identifies a need for understanding the new scale of industrialized urban space-time with a synthetic frame of reference necessitating the movement and memory of a sentient viewer. This need had already been felt by avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century, with Cubist and Purist pictorial space presenting the viewer with a synthetic, simultaneous space by fracturing the picture plane and challenging the transparency of linear perspective. Recognizing that Le Corbusier utilized this synthetic viewing frame to produce hist paintings and organize his buildings, exhibits and texts allows for the construction of an alternative history of Modernism that may be more useful to contemporary urban planners than the usual recourse to oversimplified caricatures of a history governed by the static frame.
CorBuSIEr . STrEETS , ProMEnaDES , SCEnES anD arTEfaCTS
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 ...
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.
Le Corbusier, the city, and the modern utopia of dwelling
Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 2016
In Le Corbusier's urban plans, the conventional public space of the city is gradually dismembered until it coalesces with the natural surroundings, giving rise to the concept of tapis-vert. Its ultimate expression is found in the Athens Charter. By investigating Le Corbusier's formative years, this article aims to clarify issues of form and meaning involved in this process. The focus on this early period reveals that the territorial scale of the alliance between city and nature is a central theme of Le Corbusier's concerns with urban planning, preceding the influence of Latin America in the 1930s which is often seen as its underlying momentum. The focus on form and meaning reveals the inextricable links between this alliance and Le Corbusier's existential idea of unity. The tapis vert of the Athens Charter will thus be seen as a conceptual argument of the holistic world-view of Le Corbusier's urban visions: the binding element of meaningful architectural forms and natural world ultimately rooted in his attempt to realize the modern utopia of dwelling.
This article examines Le Corbusier's architectural design processes, paying special attention to his concept of "ineffable space". Le Corbusier related "ineffable space" to mathematics, arguing that both mathematics and the phenomenon of "ineffable space" provoke an effect of "concordance". He also argued that when the establishment of relations is "precise" and "overwhelming", architectural artefacts are capable of "provoking physiological sensations". For Le Corbusier, the sentiment of satisfaction and enjoyment that an architectural artefact can provoke is related to a perception of harmony. This article analyzes the reasons for which Le Corbusier insisted on the necessity to discover or invent "clear syntax" through architectural composition. He believed that the power of architectural artefacts lies in their "clear syntax". Particular emphasis is placed on the relationship of Le Corbusier's theories of space with those of Henri Bergson and the De Stijl movement. At the core of the reflections that are developed here are Le Corbusier's "patient search" ("recherche patiente") and the vital role of the act of drawing for the process of inscribing images in memory. For Le Corbusier, drawing embodied the acts of observing, discovering, inventing and creating. This article also relates Le Corbusier's interest in proportions and his conception of the Modulor to postwar Italian neo-humanistic approaches in architecture. It intends to render explicit how Le Corbusier's definition of architecture was reshaped, shedding light on the shift from defining architecture as clear syntax to defining architecture as the succession of events.
In this paper we will see, how the aesthetic contribution of the philosophy of intimate space in Gaston Bachelard is in tune with the creation of a space of "meditation" in Le Corbusier. Our main points will be focused on: 1) Bachelard's poetic space can relate to our everyday life, and 2) Le Corbusier's architecture serves as a concrete example of a philosophical and aesthetic contribution. At the same time, we will see how the man makes space, and consequently, Le Corbusier anthropocentrism, in the examples of the Couvent in Sainte-Marie La Tourette and the Cabanon, is represented by an apparently bare architecture that is revealed only when one inhabits it.