LE

CORBUSIER

―I prefer
drawing to
talking.
Drawing is
faster, and
leaves less
room for
lies.‖

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SEMESTER-IV , BATCH –
A

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Documentation
Le Corbusier
Architect, Artist (1887–1965)

“HOUSE IS A MACHINE FOR LIVING IN”

Le Corbusier –

 INTRODUCTION AND EARLY LIFE

 EARLY CAREER: URBANISM, IMMUEBBLES VILLAS, CITROHAN AND THE
CONTEMPORARY CITYTHE RADIENT CITY, PLANNING OF THE CITY
CHANDIGHAR
 IDEAS: FIVE POINTS OF ARCHITECTURE, THE MODULAR, THE OPEN
HAND
 WORKS: MILL OWNER‘S ASSOCIATION BUILDING, VILLA SAVOYE, HEIDE
WEIBER MUSEUM, CHURCH AT FIRMINEY, UNITED NATIONS
HEADQUARTERS, PALACE OF ASSEMBLY, PALACE OF JUSTICE, NOTRE
DAME DU HAUT

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INTRODUCTION AND EARLY LIFE
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, who was better known as Le Corbusier
(October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer,
painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of modern
architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in
1930. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed
throughout Europe, India, and the Americas.
Born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris on October 6, 1887, Le Corbusier was
the second son of Edouard Jeanneret, an artist who painted dials in the
town‘s renowned watch industry, and Madame Jeannerct-Perrct, a musician
and piano teacher. His family's Calvinism, love of the arts and enthusiasm for
the Jura Mountains, where his family fled during the Albigensian Wars of the
12th century, were all formative influences on the young Le Corbusier.

At age 13, Le Corbusier left primary school to attend Arts Décoratifs at La

Chaux-de-Fonds, where he would learn the art of enamelling and engraving
watch faces, following in the footsteps of his father.

There, L‘Eplattenier, whom Le Corbusier called ―my master‖ and his only
teacher taught him art history, drawing and the naturalist aesthetics of art
nouveau. Perhaps because of his extended studies in art, Corbusier soon
abandoned watchmaking and continued his studies in art and decoration,
intending to become a painter. L‘Eplattenier insisted that his pupil also study
architecture, and he arranged for his first commissions working on local
projects. His architecture teacher in the Art School was the architect René
Chapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusier's earliest house
designs.

After designing his first house, in 1907, at age 20, Le Corbusier took trips
through central Europe and the Mediterranean, including Italy, Vienna,
Munich and Paris. His travels included apprenticeships with various
architects, most significantly with structural rationalist Auguste Perret, a
pioneer of reinforced concrete construction, and later with renowned
architect Peter Behrens, with whom Le Corbusier worked from October 1910
to March 1911, near Berlin.

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EARLY CAREER
These trips played a pivotal role in Le Corbusier‘s education. He made three
major architectural discoveries. In various settings, he witnessed and
absorbed the importance of
 The contrast between large collective spaces and individual
compartmentalized spaces, an observation that formed the basis for
his vision of residential buildings and later became vastly influential;
 Classical proportion via Renaissance architecture
 Geometrical forms and the use of landscape as an architectural tool.

In 1912, Le Corbusier returned to La Chaux-de-Fonds to teach alongside

L‘Eplattenier and to open his own architectural practice. He designed a series
of villas and began to theorize on the use of reinforced concrete as a
structural frame, a thoroughly modern technique.

Le Corbusier began to envisage buildings designed from these concepts as

affordable prefabricated housing that would help rebuild cities after World
War I came to an end. The characteristics of floor plans of the proposed
housing were -
 open spaces,
 leaving out obstructive support poles,
 freeing exterior and interior walls from the usual structural
constraints.
This design system became the backbone for most of Le Corbusier‘s
architecture for the next 10 years.
Later in 1911, he journeyed to the Balkans and visited Serbia, Bulgaria,
Turkey, and Greece, filling nearly 80 sketchbooks with renderings of what he
saw—including many sketches of the Parthenon, whose forms he would later
praise in his work Vers une architecture (1923) ("Towards a New
Architecture").

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Urbanism
For a number of years, French officials had been unsuccessful in dealing with
the squalor of the growing Parisian slums, and Le Corbusier sought efficient
ways to house large numbers of people in response to the urban housing
crisis. He believed that his new, modern architectural forms would provide
an organizational solution that would raise the quality of life for the lower
classes.
His Immeubles Villas (1922) was such a project, calling for large blocks of
cell-like individual apartments stacked one on top of one another, with plans
that included a living room, bedrooms, and kitchen, as well as a garden
terrace.

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Citrohan and the Contemporary City
His proposals included his first city plan, the Contemporary City, and two
housing types that were the basis for much of his architecture throughout
his life: the Maison Monol and, more famously, the Maison Citrohan, which
he also referred to as ―the machine of living.‖
Le Corbusier envisioned prefabricated houses, imitating the concept of
assembly line manufacturing of cars, for instance.
Maison Citrohan displayed the characteristics by which the architect would
later define modern architecture:
 support pillars that raise the house above the ground, a roof terrace,
 an open floor plan,
 An ornamentation-free facade and horizontal windows in strips for
maximum natural light.
 The interior featured the typical spatial contrast between open living
space
 Cell-like bedrooms.

The Radiant City

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Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City) is an unrealized urban master plan by Le
Corbusier, first presented in 1924 and published in a book of the same
name in 1933. Designed to contain effective means of transportation, as well
as an abundance of green space and sunlight, Le Corbusier‘s city of the
future would not only provide residents with a better lifestyle, but would
contribute to creating a better society. Though radical, strict and nearly
totalitarian in its order, symmetry and standardization, Le Corbusier‘s
proposed principles had an extensive influence on modern urban planning
and led to the development of new high-density housing typologies.

In accordance with modernist ideals of progress (which encouraged the

annihilation of tradition), The Radiant City was to emerge from a tabula rasa:
it was to be built on nothing less than the grounds of demolished vernacular
European cities. The new city would contain prefabricated and identical high-
density skyscrapers, spread across a vast green area and arranged in a
Cartesian grid, allowing the city to function as a ―living machine.‖ Le
Corbusier explains: ―The city of today is a dying thing because its planning is
not in the proportion of geometrical one fourth. The result of a true
geometrical lay-out is repetition; the result of repetition is a standard. The
perfect form.‖

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At the core of Le Corbusier‘s plan stood the notion of zoning: a strict
division of the city into segregated commercial, business, entertainment and
residential areas. The business district was located in the centre, and
contained monolithic mega-skyscrapers, each reaching a height of 200
meters and accommodating five to eight hundred thousand people. Located
in the centre of this civic district was the main transportation deck, from
which a vast underground system of trains would transport citizens to and
from the surrounding housing districts.

The housing districts would contain pre-fabricated apartment buildings,

known as ―Unités.‖ Reaching a height of fifty meters, a single Unité could
accommodate 2,700 inhabitants and function as a vertical village: catering
and laundry facilities would be on the ground floor, a kindergarten and a
pool on the roof. Parks would exist between the Unités, allowing residents
with a maximum of natural daylight, a minimum of noise and recreational
facilities at their doorsteps.

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These radical ideas were further developed by Le Corbusier in his drafts for
various schemes for cities such as Paris, Antwerp, Moscow, Algiers and
Morocco. Finally, in 1949 he found a state authority that provided him with a
―free hand‖ - The Indian capital of Punjab.

In Chandigarh, the first planned city in liberated India, Le Corbusier applied

his strict zoning system and designed the central Capitol Complex,
consisting of the High Court, the Legislative Assembly, and the Secretariat.
Due to economic constraints, the master plan was to be realized in two
phases, catering to a total population of half a million. Phase-I consisting of
30 low density sector spread over an area of 9000 acres (Sector 1 to 30) for
1,50,000 people whereas Phase-II consisting of 17 considerably high density
Sectors ( Sectors 31 to 47) spread over an area of 6000 acres for a
population of 3,50,000.

The primary module of city‘s design is a Sector, a neighborhood unit of size

800 meters x 1200 meters. It is a self-sufficient unit having shops, school,
health centers and places of recreations and worship. The population of a
sector varies between 3000 and 20000 depending upon the sizes of plots
and the topography of the area. The shops are located along the V4 street
(shopping street), which runs North-West to South-East across the sector.
Every sector is introvert in character and permits only 4 vehicular entries into
its interior.

The shopping street of each sector is linked to the shopping street of the
adjoining sectors thus forming one long, continuous ribbon like shopping

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street. The central green of each Sector also stretches to the green of the
next sector

The Legislative Assembly and the Secretariat in Chandigarh.

Perhaps the largest realization of Le Corbusier‘s ideas can be witnessed in

the conception of Brazil‘s capital, Brasilia, which was constructed on a vacant
site provided by the President of Brasil. Upon this tabula rasa (which Le
Corbusier would have coveted), Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer designed a
perfectly geometrically ordered city that segregated the monumental
administration zones and the identical housing districts, owned entirely by
the government. By implementing Le Corbusier‘s principles, Costa and
Niemeyer hoped to create a city that materialized equality and justice.

Construction of Brasilia, 1956 .

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The Radiant City‘s influence was not exclusive to the world of urban
planning. In 1947, Le Corbusier designed the Unité d'Habitation in
Marseille, which - inspired by The Radiant City‘s Unités - contained 337
apartments in a single building, along with public facilities on the roof and
ground floor. Due to the costs of steel production in the post-War economy,
the Unité d'Habitation was constructed of exposed concrete and heralded the
arrival of brutalist architecture. In the years that followed, four similar
buildings were erected in France and Germany. This typology which provided
an answer to the Post-War housing shortage, was further adapted around the
world in countless housing projects.

Unité d'Habitation in Marseille.

Today, in the aftermath of Modernism, Le Corbusier‘s built cities are hardly

ever described as Utopias. Brasilia, for example, has been harshly criticized
for ignoring residents' habits or desires and for not providing public spaces
for urban encounters. In addition to this, the Unité-inspired apartment
blocks, which lie on the outskirts of nearly every major city today, have
become incubators of poverty and crime; most have been thoroughly
remodeled or demolished.
Nevertheless, the idea of proposing order through careful planning is as
relevant now as when Le Corbusier first published The Radiant City. Issues of
healthy living, traffic, noise, public space and transportation, which Le

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Corbusier - unlike any architect before him - addressed holistically, continue
to be a major concern of city planners today.

The pruitt-Igoe social housing development, built in 1954 and demolished in

1972.

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IDEAS

Five points of Architecture

First, Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting
it by pilotis, reinforced concrete stilts. These pilotis, in providing the
structural support for the house, allowed him to elucidate his next two
points: a free façade, meaning non-supporting walls that could be designed
as the architect wished, and an open floor plan, meaning that the floor space
was free to be configured into rooms without concern for supporting walls.
The second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows
that allow unencumbered views of the large surrounding garden, and which
constitute the fourth point of his system. The fifth point was the roof garden
to compensate for the green area consumed by the building and replacing it
on the roof.

Modulor

Le Corbusier explicitly used the golden ratio in his Modulor system for the
scale of architectural proportion. He saw this system as a continuation of the
long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man", the work of

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Leon Battista Alberti, and others who used the proportions of the human
body to improve the appearance and function of architecture. In addition to
the golden ratio, Le Corbusier based the system on human measurements,
Fibonacci numbers, and the double unit. Many scholars see the Modulor as a
humanistic expression but it is also argued that: "It‘s exactly the opposite
(...) It‘s the mathematicization of the body, the standardization of the body,
the rationalization of the body.‖

He took Leonardo's suggestion of the golden ratio in human proportions to

an extreme: he sectioned his model human body's height at the navel with
the two sections in golden ratio, then subdivided those sections in golden
ratio at the knees and throat; he used these golden ratio proportions in the
Modulor system.
Le Corbusier's 1927 Villa Stein in Garches exemplified the Modulor system's
application. The villa's rectangular ground plan, elevation, and inner
structure closely approximate golden rectangles.

Le Corbusier placed systems of harmony and proportion at the centre of his

design philosophy, and his faith in the mathematical order of the universe
was closely bound to the golden section and the Fibonacci series

Open Hand Monument

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The Open Hand Monument is a symbolic structure located in the Indian
Union Territory of Chandigarh, India, designed by the architect Le Corbusier.
It is the emblem or symbol of the Government of Chandigarh and symbolizes
"the hand to give and the hand to take; peace and prosperity, and the unity
of mankind".The largest example of Le Corbusier's many Open Hand
sculptures, it stands 26 metres (85 ft) high.
The metal structure with vanes is 14 metres (46 ft) high, weighs 50 short
tons (100,000 lb), and was designed to rotate in the wind.

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WORKS

 Mill Owners' Association Building

A ceremonial ramp makes for a grand approach into a triple height

entrance hall, open to the wind. Arrival is on the first floor, where (as per
the original design) the executives‘ offices and boardroom are located.
The ground floor houses the work-spaces of the clerks and a separate,
single-story canteen at the rear.

On the third floor is a high, top-lit auditorium with a roof canopy and a
curved, enclosing wall, in addition to a generous lobby. The east and west
facades are in the form of sun breakers or brise-soleil, one of Corbusier‘s
many formal inventions, which, while avoiding harsh sun, permit visual
connection and air movement. While the brise-soleil act as free facades
made of rough shuttered concrete, the north and south sides, built in
rough brickwork, are almost unbroken.

On the second floor of the Mill Owners‘ Building, the lobby is treated as
―an open space defined by harsh, angular forms and the auditorium as an
enclosed space delineated by soft, curvilinear forms …two contradictory
elements that both need the other in order to exist.‖
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 Villa Savoye

Le Corbusier is famous for stating, ―The house is a machine for living.‖ This
statement is not simply translated into the design of a human scaled
assembly line; rather the design begins to take on innovative qualities and
advances found in other fields of industry, in the name of efficiency.
It is thoroughly tailored to Corbusier‘s Five Points.
Villa Savoye is arguably Le Corbusier‘s most renowned work, and a prime
example of Modernist architecture. The sleek geometry of the white living
space, with its elongated ribbon windows, is supported by a series of narrow
columns around a curved glazed entrance – and topped with a solarium.
Completed in 1931, this building was revolutionary: the use of reinforced
concrete required for fewer load -bearing internal walls, allowing for open-
plan design.
The simplistic, streamlined result born out of innovative engineering
techniques and modular design had influenced Corbusier‘s spatial planning
and minimalistic aesthetic.
Upon entering the site, the house appears to be floating above the forested
picturesque background supported by slender pilotis that seem to dissolve

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among the tree line, as the lower level is also painted green to allude to the
perception of a floating volume.

The lower level serves as the maintenance and service programs of the
house. One of most interesting aspects of the house is the curved glass
façade on the lower level that is formed to match the turning radius of
automobiles of 1929 so that when the owner drives underneath the larger
volume they can pull into the garage with the ease of a slight turn.
However once inside, there becomes a clear understanding of the spatial
interplay between public and private spaces. Typically, the living spaces of a
house are relatively private, closed off, and rather secluded. Yet, Le
Corbusier situates the living spaces around a communal, outdoor terraced
that is separated from the living area by a sliding glass wall.

This notion of privatized areas within a larger communal setting is a

common thread later on in Le Corbusier‘s housing projects.
Both the lower level and the upper living quarters are based off an open plan
idea that provokes the inhabitant to continuously meander between spaces.
As an architectural tour de force, Le Corbusier incorporates a series of ramps
moving from the lower level all the way to the rooftop garden, which
requires the inhabitant to slow down and experience the movement between
spaces. Villa Savoye is a house designed based on the architectural
promenade. Its experience is in the movement through the spaces.

 Centre Le Corbusier (Heidi Weber Museum)

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Iconic for its floating steel roof and brightly colored panels, the Pavillon Le
Corbusier is the last building Le Corbusier designed before his death in
1965. Completed in 1967, the building stands as a testament to Corbusier‘s
renaissance genius as an architect, painter, and sculptor. It does so both
intentionally, as it is an exhibition space for his life‘s work, and naturally, as
it is a building masterfully designed. Interestingly, the building diverges in
some ways from the style responsible for his renown – concrete, stone,
uniform repetition, etc. It celebrates the use of steel, with which he explored
prefabrication and assembly, and a freedom through modularity, in which
the plan is completely open but infinitely adaptable.

Heidi Weber, a successful interior designer and so called ‗great patron‘ of

Corbusier, commissioned the building in 1960 to be both a small home for
herself, and a building to house Le Corbusier‘s artwork, which she had
already spent years patronizing (most notably, his chaise longue). The
project, then, was to be a ‗complete work of art,‘ or a ‗Gesamtkunstwerk‘ as
it were, where Corbusier would design a building for the sake of his own art.
This was a fitting task for Corbusier as, according to Sigfried Giedion, ―It is
essentially the synthesis of the arts that was expressed so strongly in
everything he created.‖

The building is composed of two major volumetric elements: a floating

parasol roof-structure and beneath it, a two-story rectilinear volume sitting
on a concrete pavilion floor. Modular steel frame cubes with a standard
dimension of 226cmx226cmx226c m (about 7.5 cubic feet) make up the
structural framework of the base volume. Two sets of these cubes are
stacked on top of one another to achieve the two-story height of the
building. All necessary elements, including walls, windows, doors, etc., are
bolted into these frames. The nature of these prefabricated cubes make for a
completely open ground plan that can be divided at will, a convenience well
attuned for a hybrid exhibition/dwelling space. In this way, ―Le Corbusier
used standardized parts to create individual forms instead of uniform
repetitions,‖ a technique Jorn Ützon famously explored.

The roof structure, which stands on four rectangular supports, consists of

two 12mx12m square elements made of welded steel sheets. Each square is
in the shape of a parasol, one facing up and the other down. The entire
structure is prefabricated: produced by the steel manufacture, brought to the
site in the biggest possible pieces, assembled to its final state on the
ground, and finally lifted into place. The two parasols provided cover from
sun and rain during construction and continue to provide cover for the entire
pavilion, while also acting as a dominant aesthetic element of the building.

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Enamel panels in primary colours and glass envelope the main volume of the
building. In the language of the rest of the building, the panels are of a
standard dimension, one-third the size of the steel cubes. The panels and
their respective colours are distributed throughout the building‘s exterior
with a perceptible rhythm.
Pivoting doors and windows that open to the outside help to blur the
boundary between outside and inside; and a roof garden beneath the parasol
structure allows for appreciation of its beautiful site, which includes a small
pond adjacent to the pavilion.
Initially he called for an entirely concrete building but then decided to design
predominantly in steel with some amount of concrete, but only for the
vertical circulation. This consists of only two structures: the i nterior staircase
in the two-story studio space, and the exterior ramp, both of which go from
the ground to the roof garden.

 Church at Firminy

This church also carries special significance, as it was the last major work of
Le Corbusier and was left unfinished upon his death in 1965. It was finished
forty-one years after his death in 2006, keeping his essence alive.

Standing in the old mining and industrial city of Firminy, the Church of
Firminy was one of a set of community buildings designed by Le Corbusier;
among these are an Olympic stadium, youth club and cultural center,
standard housing complex, and finally Unite-d'Habitation.
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Recognizing the small congregation of the city, the architect wanted to
embrace and celebrate the miners and steel workers that produced most of
the goods of the area, which explains his use of concrete. He hoped that this
material would also give him control over the volume and spaces in his
overall goal of giving light a true meaning.

As can be expected by the architect, he fused many of his core architectural

ideas from previous projects into his newer design, while also leaving room
to be inspired by religion. Le Corbusier stated that the space must be "vast
so that the heart may feel at ease, and high so that prayers may breathe in
it."
Natural light floods in through light boxes and through a series of organized
openings that are a direct reference to the constellation Orion. The light
boxes are designed in a way that will bring light to the alter on specific
religious holidays, like Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Corbusier uses the spirituality of geometry to create the overall form; a
square base that projects upwards to a circle depicts the metamorphosis and
transition from earthly to spiritual realm, and the cosmological basis is
revealed in the constellation windows and angle of the roof towards the sun.
The building was completed in 2006 by French architect Jose Oubrerie, who
studied under Corbusier for many years.

 United Nations headquarters le

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Niemeyer collaborated with the French architect Le Corbusier to create the
scheme that was ultimately chosen for the final design of the UN
headquarters in New York. Surrounded by the skyscrapers of New York, this
building needed to stand out: blue-tinged glass reflects the water below,
while the two windowless concrete walls give the building a refined status of
solidarity and endurance, key aspects of the United Nations.

Le Corbusier conceived a tall central building that would house all the
Secretariat offices. Oscar Niemeyer made a significant decision to separate
the Assembly Hall from the rest of the complex.

 Palace of the Assembly / Le Corbusier

One of Le Corbusier's most prominent buildings from India, the Palace of the
Assembly in Chandigarh boasts his major architectural philosophies and
style. Le Corbusier's five points of architecture can be found within the
design from its open plan to the view of the Himalayan landscape. The
program features a circular assembly chamber, a forum for conversation and
transactions, and stair-free circulation.

The first of Le Corbusier's architectural ideals is the use of pilotis to lift the
structure off of the ground. Reinforced concrete columns are utilized in a
grid throughout the Palace of the Assembly and are slightly altered to raise a
large swooping concrete form high above the entrance.

This form represents the second point of Le Corbusier‘s list a free facade.
Pilotis allow the form to express the grandiose release of space precisely as
Corbusier intended. The other various facades of the building also bestow
the free facade via brise-soleil formed from the golden ratio.

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Le Corbusier's desire for views is then apparent from all facades. The sun-
shading along the offices provides a frame for inhabitants into the
surrounding site while the portico opens to the adjacent landscape and the
distant Himalayas.

Inside, the Palace of the Assembly houses an open plan structured by the
grid of reinforced concrete columns. Again, this structural pattern allows Le
Corbusier to manipulated the program freely and place offices and other
private programming along the outside of the plan and leave the centre open
for public use. Intersecting that open space, is the circular assembly
chamber that is contradictory in form to producing good acoustics.
On top of the building lies an accessible roof supported by the pilotis.
Providing usable space on the roof of a structure complies with Le
Corbusier's fifth ideal of architecture by giving occupants vertical means of
connecting to nature and compensating for the habitat removed by the
building.

 Palace of Justice, Chandigarh

The colorful structure of the Palace of Justice is a prime example of Le

Corbusier‘s work in India. With a curving roof similar to Notre Dame du Haut,
the regularity of the arcade gives the building gravity and solidity. The
geometric apertures of the windows resemble traditional Indian fretwork,
creating a texture that contrasts with the smooth faces and tactile curves of
the roof. Red, yellow and blue, combined with the colors of the Indian flag,
complete this a balanced and harmonious building.

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  Notre Dame du Haut, Romchamp

Iconic Notre Dame du Haut is one of the earliest Modernist churches. It is not
a total departure from traditional church architecture, with its stained glass,
tower and high ceilings symbolically drawing the eye – and the mind –
towards heaven. However, the southern wall is most remarkable, beginning
as a narrow point on the eastern edge and expanding outwards to 10 feet of
thickness as it curves around. Each window is cut through the wall in
different sizes and angles, scattering ethereal colored light across the room.

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