Le Corbusier: crap / not crap

[Cid]

He coined the often quoted phrase "a house is a machine for living in".

Which is probably one of the most abused quotations ever...

I wrote a post about this a while back, I'll dig it out because I can't be arsed to go through it again:

'Function' is a concept that goes far beyond its normal meaning when applied to architecture. Take the often quoted 'the house is a machine for living' (corbusier in vers une architure/toward an architecture), inevitably misinterpreted as a drive towards an utterly minimalist, ordered lifestyle. In fact the quotation is:

A house is a machine for living in. Baths, sun, hot water, cold water, controlled temperature, food conservation, hygiene, beauty through proportion. An armchair is a machine for sitting, etc.: Maple has shown the way: Ewers are machines for washing oneself, Twyford has created them.

Earlier in the same book he states:

The Lessons of Rome

Architecture is the use of raw materials to establish stirring relationships.

Architecture goes beyond utilitarian things.

Architecture is a plastic thing.

Spirit of order, unity of intention.

The sense of relationships; architecture organises quantities.

Passion can make drama out of inert stone.

The chapter of the 'machine for living' quotation is a response to 'styles', to 'decorators who don't know their era'. Corbu is referring to a propensity toward attempting to emulate the past despite being in 'the machine age'.

Think of all the names that are instantly associated with modernism; Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright will be the usual ones, then Mies, the Eameses, Aalto, Scharoun, Scarpa, Goldfinger etc. They don't build purely through function they build works that are at once fascinating and functional. Corbusier's 'machine for living' is a place that is able to bring comfort and enjoyment and yet embrace fully the devices of the machine age.

Take Scharoun's Berlin Philhamonie, not only is it an acoustic masterpiece, it is an incredible space; to hear a performance there is a stunning experience, the whole building works to create something which goes far beyond many other concert halls... Spaces are carefully planned to moderate the flow of the users; the stairs and transit landings have stark white handrails so people don't hang around on them, the auditorium is at once stunning and practical. It is a machine designed to create the maximum amount of enjoyment possible.

Up until fairly recently art has been extremely functional... Holbein's portraits are adverts displaying the property and personalities of nobles. Michelangelo's studio churns out various goods; from expressions of church power through to painted tea trays and bedsteads. Of course this misrepresents the artists, but in the same way it is easy to misrepresent architecture simply because it creates spaces that have functions.

In the second corbu quotation it's important to not the 'stirring relationships' bit, architecture must be a syntheses of all the senses. In a way it is hyper-artistic because it deals with so many factors and because the experience goes far beyond the visual. Their are a vast number of tiny subtleties that add to the experience of a space, but which most won't notice. In a sense Corbusier's modernism was a new kind of renaissance, he took the essence of the old styles and applied the artistic ideals behind them to modern materials and techniques... His reductionism is not a drive for the minimal, it is a reaction to imitation and tradition; why use a 1m thick wall when modern building materials mean that you no longer have to? He takes a huge amount of inspiration from Palladio in his ground plans... He explores the golden ratio and then creates a modern version in 'The Modular'.

He also draws extensively from regional cultures/techniques that are gradually being forgotten. His white exteriors are not simply blank facades but echoes of Mediterranean whitewashed buildings, his original chairs are upholstered in animal hides, echoing traditional cultures encountered on his travels... Inherently Corbu tries to find beauty and practicality and then translate that into modern, industrialised society (and is often very successful).

This is critical regionalism, which is actually kind of the dominant form of modernism up until people started obsessing about minimalism... It takes elements of the past and discards what no longer works or is simply impractical.

I've focussed on Corbusier because he's well known and I know a fair bit about him, he's also a very good artist (as in his paintings/drawings), but I think he saw architecture as a more practical form of expression. Anyway I could go on for hours but suspect I shouldn't since this post is probably only semi-coherent due to alcohol intake.

So err... in summary, architecture is art because it deals with human emotions and experience, it conveys ideas and attempts to change the way the user experiences space.

 

[Crispy]

Could you email that to me late 1999, so I don't get an E in my first essay at uni?

 

[teuchter]

He explores the golden ratio and then creates a modern version in 'The Modular'.

This is one of the bits of his theoretical stuff that I find the least convincing.

I find the whole thing about proportion and particularly the golden ratio / fibonacci series very interesting. It is appealing to many architects because it seems to offer a way of designing something inherently beautiful, simply by following some geometrical rules. The thing is that once you start to try and apply it in practise, nothing is as simple as it first seems, for all sorts of reasons, and actually you find yourself forced to make subjective decisions about the dimensions of things (unless you are going to be incredibly rigourous, and end up creating something unbuildable and simultaneously driving yourself crazy).

However, many architects aren't really that rigourous and use it in a kind of token manner, which is fine if it is useful as a sort of starting point but you are kidding yourself if you then think you've designed something with some kind of geometrical truth or logic to it. And I think Corb was one of these; if you analyse his "modular" stuff it really isn't as rigourous or profound as you might expect or he would have liked to pretend.

I've seen numerous examples of "analysis" of facades and plans and what have you, whether they are Palladio's or Corb's or traditional buildings or whatever where someone will draw a load of golden rectangles and diagonal lines all over it to "prove" how it has been composed according to these rules. But if you look carefully, the dimensions picked up in the analysis have been selected to fit the rules - if a window is a bit too short to be a golden rectangle, the measurement will be taken from the underside of the sill - that kind of stuff.

I didn't notice much detail about the "Modular" stuff in the barbican exhibition, come to think of it.

 

[pogofish]

I always took the Modulor to be Corbusier's attempt to position his form of modernism alongside the classical order-dominated styles that preceeded it?

 

[teuchter]

I always took the Modulor to be Corbusier's attempt to position his form of modernism alongside the classical order-dominated styles that preceeded it?

Maybe, but i'm not sure it's really all that useful, or as profound as he seemed to make out. Perhaps it was a more significant (at that time) challenge to the established ways than is easily apparent to us now though.

 

[G. Fieendish]

Ok, fair dos. I misunderstood.

And nor should we want to build a facsimile, imo. Horrible, regressive Charles Windsor view of the world.

You mean King George the 7th, as this is what our current Princes of Wales (Charles Windsor) wishes to be crowned as, after his mother's death, assuming he does'nt die before her...

 

[teuchter]

Corb fans may be interested in this:

Explore a 1:1 replica of the interior of Le Corbusier's Cabanon, the holiday house he built for himself on the Cote d'Azur.
Re-constructed for the first time in the UK, this 15 square metre pied-à-terre, which was attached to his favourite café, was the only structure Le Corbusier ever built for his own use. As such, the interior, decorated with murals and simple bespoke furniture and fittings, gives an intimate insight into his world. It was the place he retreated to every summer for over ten years and where, in the adjacent studio, he worked on many of his celebrated later projects.

http://www.architecture.com/WhatsOn/Exhibitions/At66PortlandPlace/2009/Spring/CorbCabanon.aspx



And Corb detractors may be interested to see how what he designed for himself compares with what he designed for others.

There is also an exhibition of his furniture designs at same venue.

 

[teuchter]

That's interesting. I'd like to visit that place some time.

Well, I had the chance to do this a few weeks ago and I'd recommend it. The town, Firminy is easily accessible by train from Lyon (about an hour).

There is the Corb-designed town hall/cultural centre which was covered in scaffold (they are renovating it at the moment) so I couldn't see much from outside but it was possible to have a look at a few of the bits inside:

This overlooks a running track and on the other side is a stadium which he also designed (finished partly posthumously if I remember correctly). This is looking a little bit run down but the cantilevered concrete canopy is quite impressive -

There is also a Unite, which you can see up on a small hill a little way from the centre. I didn't have time to go and look at this close up.

The main thing though, is the church which was mostly built in the last ten years or so as pogofish describes above. This is just behind the stadium. This is what it looks like form outside -

For this you have to pay to go in. In the various rooms of the undercroft there is a kind of exhibition about Corbusier and Firminy although it's nothing special really. But when you go up into the church itself (you enter from below, up a narrow staircase) - it's really quite stunning. Well I thought so, anyway. I can understand why it might irritate the purists who say that you can't build something like this posthumously because you have to make assumptions about how Corbusier might have done stuff (in most building projects there are changes made and details resolved during the period of construction) but the result is pretty impressive.

I'd definitely recommend a visit to anyone interested in modern architecture. There are guided tours, apparently, which take you round all the buildings (and into a flat in the Unite, which you can't visit by yourself). These run at various times on different days of the week - you're advised to call ahead.

Here are a couple of images from inside:

 

[Blagsta]

on top of the unite d'habitation, Marseille, June 09

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Has anybody mentioned his chairs?

They're not very comfortable.

 

[cybertect]

Take Scharoun's Berlin Philhamonie, not only is it an acoustic masterpiece, it is an incredible space; to hear a performance there is a stunning experience, the whole building works to create something which goes far beyond many other concert halls... Spaces are carefully planned to moderate the flow of the users; the stairs and transit landings have stark white handrails so people don't hang around on them, the auditorium is at once stunning and practical. It is a machine designed to create the maximum amount of enjoyment possible.

His Staatsbibliothek for Berlin across the way made a bigger impression on me, but I've not yet got to sample a concert at the Philharmonie.

Scharoun's a much underrated architect IMO. He and Aalto present the best and ultimately the most human(e) face of mid-20th century modernism.

[/derail]

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

If I had to actually sit in a Bauhaus chair, I think I'd go for this one:

 

[kyser_soze]

Has anybody mentioned his chairs?

They're not very comfortable.

The armchair isn't, but the sofa is.

You have to get a well made one tho - there are loads of immo Corb chairs, most of which are shoddily made. Same thing goes for Eaemes chairs too.

 

[untethered]

If I had to actually sit in a Bauhaus chair, I think I'd go for this one:

Corbu wasn't at the Bauhaus.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Corbu wasn't at the Bauhaus.

His furniture is lumped in under the rubrick 'Bauhaus Furniture', though.

 

[untethered]

His furniture is lumped in under the rubrick 'Bauhaus Furniture', though.

Only by people that can't tell or don't know the difference.

Are we talking about "Bauhaus furniture" or '"Bauhaus" furniture' or "Bauhaus-style furniture" or any Modern (or even modern) furniture?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Only by people that can't tell or don't know the difference.

Are we talking about "Bauhaus furniture" or '"Bauhaus" furniture' or "Bauhaus-style furniture" or any Modern (or even modern) furniture?

I'm talking about Bauhaus Furniture.

 

[Diamond]

Nice idea, shame about the rest.

 

[untethered]

I'm talking about Bauhaus Furniture.

Which other designers from outside the Bauhaus does that include? I find this all terribly confusing.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Which other designers from outside the Bauhaus does that include? I find this all terribly confusing.

Go to Google, and type in 'Bauhaus Furniture'.

 

[untethered]

Go to Google, and type in 'Bauhaus Furniture'.

The first result takes me to a page with furniture by, among others, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Rietveld, Eames and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Is this "Bauhaus Furniture" an academic term for a coherent movement or just a convenient keyword stuffer for furniture shops to sell anything vaguely "modern" through Google?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The first result takes me to a page with furniture by, among others, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Rietveld, Eames and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Is this "Bauhaus Furniture" an academic term for a coherent movement or just a convenient keyword stuffer for furniture shops to sell anything vaguely "modern" through Google?

You're asking the wrong person. I didn't make up the name.

 

[untethered]

You're asking the wrong person. I didn't make up the name.

And did the people who made up the name intend to include Dutch, Scottish and American work from before the Bauhaus opened to long after it closed?

Are there any Bauhaus Furniture designers working today in Japan?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

And did the people who made up the name intend to include Dutch, Scottish and American work from before the Bauhaus opened to long after it closed?

Are there any Bauhaus Furniture designers working today in Japan?

Japan? She-it, I don't know.

 

[untethered]

Japan? S-, I don't know.

You entertain the possibility?

 

[teuchter]

And did the people who made up the name intend to include Dutch, Scottish and American work from before the Bauhaus opened to long after it closed?

Are there any Bauhaus Furniture designers working today in Japan?

Corb was not a member of or lecturer at the Bauhaus even though his work and theory was an important part of their reference (and probably vice versa too). So, Bauhaus furniture, in the most pedantic terms, does not include designs by Corb. However, the difference in design approach between Corb and most Bauhaus members is probably not much greater than differences amongst the Bauhaus members themselves. So to include certain items of Corb furniture in the broad definition of "Bauhaus furniture" doesn't trouble me too much, whereas the inclusion of a FL Wright or Mackintosh piece would.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

You entertain the possibility?

That Japanese designers are designing furniture in the Bauhaus style?

 

[teuchter]

Over Easter I went to have a look at the priory of La Tourette, a Corbusier building that I know well from looking at plans and photos but seeing something in the flesh really makes a big difference. Certainly a worthwhile trip.

Every Sunday at 3pm there is a tour; you are shown round by one of the monks. You can also stay the night there (I didn't do this); the number of monks in residence is less than it used to be and some of the spare cells are offered as accommodation. It's a fairly easy day trip from Lyon.

I would just like to express special thanks to some of the other people on the tour for bringing their screechy kids with them because it really helped re the serene monastic atmosphere.

 

[teuchter]

 

[yardbird]

*Off Topic Warning*

The first result takes me to a page with furniture by, among others, Charles Rennie Mackintosh*, Rietveld, Eames and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Is this "Bauhaus Furniture" an academic term for a coherent movement or just a convenient keyword stuffer for furniture shops to sell anything vaguely "modern" through Google?

*Charles Rennie Mackintosh

For those in London, there is a pub just round the corner from Turnham Green underground that is totally Rennie Mackintosh at its rear.
Well worth a visit.

Apologies - back to topic