# Le Corbusier: crap / not crap



## teuchter (Mar 3, 2009)

I'd be interested to know what the popular opinion on Le Corbusier is ... and what this is based upon.

This thread is partly spurred by the major exhibition currently at the Barbican in London (previously in Liverpool).


If you've never heard of him, he was a Swiss-French architect who came to prominence in the 20s and 30s, as one of the main proponents of what became known as the "International Style", one of the main strands of Modernism which continues to have a strong influence on architecture now.

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

This was the kind of thing he was doing at that time:








Later in his career he developed a more sculptural and idiosyncratic style, designing stuff like this church:










As well as his architectural work he had an interest in town planning ... proposing for example to do this to the centre of Paris:






His Unite de Habitation:






were a kind of prototype for the tower blocks built the world over in the following decades, although this mass-built stuff built by others in most cases ignored many of the features of Corbusier's original designs.

He was also a tireless self-promoter producing many books and publications throughout his career.

You can read a bit more about him here:

http://www.time.com/time/time100/artists/profile/lecorbusier.html

http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Le_Corbusier.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier


and there's a thread about his project at Chandigarh in India here

I'd be interested to hear what people think, especially those who have been to the exhibition. Poll to follow.


----------



## spanglechick (Mar 3, 2009)

I'm with him up until the tower blocks.  you only have to drive past / through the aylesbury estate between peckham and elephant and castle to see how wrongheaded it all is.


----------



## dodgepot (Mar 3, 2009)

not crap.


----------



## fogbat (Mar 3, 2009)

He made great cognac, too.


----------



## teuchter (Mar 3, 2009)

spanglechick said:


> I'm with him up until the tower blocks.  you only have to drive past / through the aylesbury estate between peckham and elephant and castle to see how wrongheaded it all is.



He would probably have been horrified to see those too, though.

Not to say that his Unite towerblocks (and most certainly his town planing ideas) don't have their flaws, but there are many differences between those and what was built by others in the years after.

Check out what the roof terrace is like on the Marseilles Unite de Habitation for example:


----------



## ohmyliver (Mar 3, 2009)

I think aesthetically they are fantastic, but functionally terrible. So in short a superb architect so long as humans don't have to go anywhere near them.

*eta* I may be conflating him and neo-brutalism tho


----------



## teuchter (Mar 3, 2009)

ohmyliver said:


> I think aesthetically they are fantastic, but functionally terrible.



Which ones in particular and in what way?


----------



## quimcunx (Mar 3, 2009)

From what vague knowledge I thought I had of him and the top couple of pics - not crap.
From that exhibition - crap. two time.


----------



## zenie (Mar 3, 2009)

spanglechick said:


> I'm with him up until the tower blocks. you only have to drive past / through the aylesbury estate between peckham and elephant and castle to see how wrongheaded it all is.


 

That is only one housing estate, I don't think you can write all tower blocks/high rises off because of one example. 

Don't forget the council left it and it's tenants to rot! 

I like him, but I love that style of architecture, and I love tower blocks


----------



## teuchter (Mar 3, 2009)

quimcunx said:


> From that exhibition - crap. two time.



What was is that you saw in the exhibition that disturbed you so?


----------



## teuchter (Mar 3, 2009)

zenie said:


> That is only one housing estate, I don't think you can write all tower blocks/high rises off because of one example.
> 
> Don't forget the council left it and it's tenants to rot!
> 
> I like him, but I love that style of architecture, and I love tower blocks



You probably like the Barbican then. That is an example of a fairly successful tower block type development that takes a fair bit of influence from Corbusier. It's not perfect of course and I know it's really easy to get disorientated but aside from that, I think it works pretty well. Partly due to the design and partly because it's taken care of properly by its owners, unlike many council estates.


----------



## pogofish (Mar 5, 2009)

I would have to say that I voted 1 & 2 - Visionary & Loon.  As is often the way with architects from that period.

Try reading some of his original works & you will see why.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Mar 5, 2009)

His smaller buildings are absolutely stunning. 

His ideas for large estates are basically sound, I think, but the problem is that this kind of building is very bad if done on the cheap, which is how examples such as Elephant were done. Also, an estate is not just the tower blocks – it is the amenities, the green spaces, the views. That's why the Barbican works so well, imo – money is spent on its upkeep and the amenities are superb.


----------



## danny la rouge (Mar 5, 2009)

In Scotland, where it rains every day, the International Style is the Wrong Shape.


----------



## kyser_soze (Mar 5, 2009)

Glad you made it multi choice, cos I voted for both visionary and loon.



> You probably like the Barbican then.



My only issue with Barbican is the external finish - I simply don't like lumpy concrete! The flats themselves are remarkable (FWIW, the flats attached to the low rise bit of Centrepoint are pretty damn  as well).

I think my main quibble is that the misapplication and misunderstanding of his work has meant that in the UK (and many other places) much of the egalitarianism of his design philosophy has been lost, and it's made him and residential tower blocks a whipping boy for tedious 'heritage' types.


----------



## untethered (Mar 5, 2009)

Inspired the worst buildings and planning in the history of human settlement.


----------



## kyser_soze (Mar 5, 2009)

As if by magic, I make a comment about heritage types and look who pops up


----------



## untethered (Mar 5, 2009)

kyser_soze said:


> As if by magic, I make a comment about heritage types and look who pops up



You can have Milton Keynes. I'll have Bath.

That suits me just fine.

By the way, Modernism _is _heritage these days.


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

danny la rouge said:


> In Scotland, where it rains every day, the International Style is the Wrong Shape.



Well - it was in the 1950s, but flat roof systems are a lot more reliable these days so this objection is less valid now.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 5, 2009)

littlebabyjesus said:


> That's why the Barbican works so well, imo – money is spent on its upkeep and the amenities are superb.



The barbican works so well because it's full of rich people


----------



## danny la rouge (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> Well - it was in the 1950s, but flat roof systems are a lot more reliable these days so this objection is less valid now.


If a house is a machine for living in, it needs to function.  And no matter how good a flat roof is, it just makes more sense for roofs to be pitched if there's a lot of rain.  It's basic physics.


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

pogofish said:


> I would have to say that I voted 1 & 2 - Visionary & Loon.  As is often the way with architects from that period.





kyser_soze said:


> Glad you made it multi choice, cos I voted for both visionary and loon.



I made it multiple choice so that I could also vote for both.



> My only issue with Barbican is the external finish - I simply don't like lumpy concrete!



I do. I think it works well in the barbican. Especially where you can see it on the interior. One of the advantages is that streaking and stains are less obvious than on smooth concrete.

I seem to remember that that bush-hammered finish was created entirely by hand. Very labour-intensive, which is probably why you don't see it that often.




> I think my main quibble is that the misapplication and misunderstanding of his work has meant that in the UK (and many other places) much of the egalitarianism of his design philosophy has been lost, and it's made him and residential tower blocks a whipping boy for tedious 'heritage' types.



Yes.

Although his town planning ideas were a bit bonkers in the first place, it's not just that they've been misunderstood since.


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

danny la rouge said:


> If a house is a machine for living in, it needs to function.  And no matter how good a flat roof is, it just makes more sense for roofs to be pitched if there's a lot of rain.  It's basic physics.



No, if the system is reliable it doesn't matter. Pitched roofs use more material and create a lot of wasted space. And you can't use them for things like roof terraces or green roofs. 

In any case, "flat" roofs aren't actually flat. They are slightly pitched, at an angle which means the water runs off them at a rate that ensures their reliability.


----------



## danny la rouge (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> In any case, "flat" roofs aren't actually flat. They are slightly pitched, at an angle which means the water runs off them at a rate that ensures their reliability.


Indeed.  However, my best friend is a roof felter, and he tells me he'd never have a flat roof.  He has 25 years experience of flat roofs in Scotland.


----------



## Dillinger4 (Mar 5, 2009)

fogbat said:


> He made great cognac, too.



You mean Courvoisier.


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

untethered said:


> You can have Milton Keynes. I'll have Bath.



You miss the point entirely.

Bath was built a couple of hundred years ago.

We can't afford to build the same thing now.

The important discussion is about what we should build now, when we build new. The question being whether we should build things that imitate, cosmetically, things designed for different purposes, or build things that are suitable for what we want them to do now.


----------



## danny la rouge (Mar 5, 2009)

Dillinger4 said:


> You mean Courvoisier.


No, he was an Italian tenor.


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

danny la rouge said:


> Indeed.  However, my best friend is a roof felter, and he tells me he'd never have a flat roof.



Why not?


----------



## Crispy (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> I seem to remember that that bush-hammered finish was created entirely by hand. Very labour-intensive, which is probably why you don't see it that often.



Yep. Cast smooth, then battered with hammers, by hand, to expose the aggregate 
But then a lot of things are extravagent about that place. It's built to last (500 years or something crazy like that, in the _spec_) and all the fittings and finishes are high quality - all the bronze metalwork alone must have cost a fortune.


----------



## danny la rouge (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> Why not?


Because he spends his life mending them, and they just don't work.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 5, 2009)

Well that is the case with old ones. the technology has improved _a lot_


----------



## danny la rouge (Mar 5, 2009)

Crispy said:


> Well that is the case with old ones. the technology has improved _a lot_


What's the new technology?


----------



## untethered (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> The important discussion is about what we should build now, when we build new.



True.



teuchter said:


> The question being whether we should build things that imitate, cosmetically, things designed for different purposes, or build things that are suitable for what we want them to do now.



That's the ghost of Corbu speaking. _Everything is different now, so we need to build differently._

At the planning level, things _are _different to how they've been perceived to be for the past fifty or so years. We are returning to a society where mobility of both people and goods is expensive and becoming more so.

At the architectural level, a lot of it is fashion and always has been. Different people like different styles. I don't see why we can't build to suit a variety of tastes while sticking to broad planning objectives around relatively dense, mixed-use settlements that reduce transport dependency.


----------



## kyser_soze (Mar 5, 2009)

> It's built to last (500 years or something crazy like that, in the spec)



That's sus-fucking-stainable housing!


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

danny la rouge said:


> Because he spends his life mending them, and they just don't work.



If his job is to mend the ones that fail, then obviously he is going to have a distorted view. Presumably he spends most of his time repairing roofs that were done 10 or 20 or more years ago, when the technology was a bit ropey.

Felt roofing (if that is literally what he does) is now quite an old-fashioned way of waterproofing roofs. Modern membrane-type systems are much more reliable; they are much less prone to blistering and splitting if exposed to the sun for example. Generally they will come with a twenty-year guarantee if properly specified.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 5, 2009)

Nothing special really. Just better materials, better design, quality control by using all-in-one roof design and build companies.


----------



## danny la rouge (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> Felt roofing (if that is literally what he does) is now quite an old-fashioned way of waterproofing roofs.


Well, I can't speak for what he actually uses, because I don't know, but he says that they never last, and that his answer to the question "what can I do to stop this from keeping on happening?" is: get a pitched roof.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> Bath was built a couple of hundred years ago.
> 
> We can't afford to build the same thing now.


Can't we? As a country, we're much richer than 200 years ago.

There's a lot of false economy about the horribly unambitious building that goes on at the moment – we're making houses that almost certainly won't be around in 100 years' time. We're already knocking down and rebuilding stuff that was only put up in the last 50 years, and we're making the same mistakes again with what we're putting up. 

I would say that it is closer to the truth to say that the current economic system makes it unprofitable to build the same thing now – more 'won't do' rather than 'can't do'.


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

untethered said:


> True.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yes, the town planning ideas promoted by Corbusier have proven to have been misguided. I have already said this.


----------



## zenie (Mar 5, 2009)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Can't we? As a country, we're much richer than 200 years ago.
> 
> There's a lot of false economy about the horribly unambitious building that goes on at the moment – we're making houses that almost certainly won't be around in 100 years' time. We're already knocking down and rebuilding stuff that was only put up in the last 50 years, and we're making the same mistakes again with what we're putting up.
> 
> I would say that it is closer to the truth to say that the current economic system makes it unprofitable to build the same thing now – more 'won't do' rather than 'can't do'.


 
Of course we can afford to build decent housing!  Spend money on houing not arms for a start


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Mar 5, 2009)

Crispy said:


> Nothing special really. Just better materials, better design, quality control by using all-in-one roof design and build companies.


This is the point, isn't it? Good concrete buildings are expensive, and the terrible examples of social housing built out of concrete were done on the cheap.


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

littlebabyjesus said:


> Can't we? As a country, we're much richer than 200 years ago.
> 
> There's a lot of false economy about the horribly unambitious building that goes on at the moment – we're making houses that almost certainly won't be around in 100 years' time. We're already knocking down and rebuilding stuff that was only put up in the last 50 years, and we're making the same mistakes again with what we're putting up.
> 
> I would say that it is closer to the truth to say that the current economic system makes it unprofitable to build the same thing now – more 'won't do' rather than 'can't do'.



I'm not saying we can't build something equally as good. Just that we can't build a facsimile.

In more detail... this thread and particularly these two posts:

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=8646783&postcount=132

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=8644234&postcount=112


----------



## pogofish (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> Modern membrane-type systems are much more reliable; they are much less prone to blistering and splitting if exposed to the sun for example. Generally they will come with a twenty-year guarantee if properly specified.



They have been saing "modern flat roofing is better" as long as I've ever had anything to do with buildings!  

Yes & we have just ripped out & entirely replaced at vast cost, the super-expensive, environmentally efficent, high-tech, membrane & grass flat roof that planners foisted on us for one of our new buildings about five years back, so they could look good environmentally & so the local laird could retain an uninterupted view of his estuarine estate policies.  

Then there was the much-vaunted "Upside Down" roofs on our labs that have been the laughing-stock of our planning & building community for many years now.  Many contractors have got rich on those bloody things over the years.

I may like flat roofed designs but I am fully aware of the numerous disadvantages.

Don't even start me on our egyptian-life & death motif inspired neo-brualist concrete collumns & structural buildng motifs - Several of them are held-on by the builder's equivalent of string & chewing gum, whilst the amount of spalling on that concrete, esp around the reinforcing rods gave me many sleepless nights when I was charged with general responsability for the building fabric when my last boss was off long-term sick - with stress!   

Saying that, there are very few architects, modern or otherwise whose work has literally moved me to tears in the way that a better Corbusier building in its element can.  Truly remarkable work.


----------



## danny la rouge (Mar 5, 2009)

pogofish said:


> "Upside Down" roofs


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

pogofish said:


> Yes & we have just ripped out & entirely replaced at vast cost, the super-expensive, environmentally efficent, high-tech, membrane & grass flat roof that planners foisted on us for one of our new buildings about five years back, so they could look good environmentally & so the local laird could retain an uninterupted view of his estuarine estate policies.



What went wrong with it and at whose expense? Was it not covered by a warranty?


----------



## pogofish (Mar 5, 2009)

The exotic & specialised strain of grass specified by the architects/engineers as the only thing died after a good cold blast off the North Sea.  Nothing would get it to take again despite several attempts at reeseeding.  It then started growing bloody bushes & a good crop of whatever the farmer was planting in the next field.

The roots then started working their way through the membrane & into all the strangest places, so it started pissing through constantly - Which is great when you are trying to maintain near clean room status & have hugely expensive & unique electronics packages & camera/optical systems lying open underneath.

There was hell to pay over maintainence as nobody wanted ro risk climbing up work on it (only grows to 3 inches, my arse!) and the union dug its heels-in.  My suggestion of roping a couple of goats up there did not go down well!

The builder/warranty issues were dealt with by our estates people but I have a feeling they could have done that better.

Anyway, its not my problem anymore & I truly pity the guy who now has to deal with it all.

We now have cammo aluminum, curved - ick!


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> I'm not saying we can't build something equally as good. Just that we can't build a facsimile.


Ok, fair dos. I misunderstood.

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


----------



## Crispy (Mar 5, 2009)

most of those 'green' roofs are a sham


----------



## pogofish (Mar 5, 2009)

danny la rouge said:


>



Exactly - Guess where I'm usually standing!


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

Crispy said:


> most of those 'green' roofs are a sham



In what way?


----------



## Crispy (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> In what way?


1. They're as thin as possible, which means that only scrawny bollocks will grow on them
2. That scrawny bollocks often dies and what you're left with is essentially 'brownfield' and it just gets colonised by weeds

If you want a truly 'green' roof, then you have to go the full distance - a proper depth of soil, a wide range of plants, and of course the large increase in structure to support it all.


----------



## pogofish (Mar 5, 2009)

Ours had a fair depth of soil and some form of sealed insulation as well as membranes - Which certainly contribured to its fairly impressive environmental credentials.

However, once the roots got at it , it became a bloody great sponge, which added greatly to the leakage problems & made it next to impossible to determine where the water was getting in.  Then nicely fertilised by all the seagull shite, it was colonised by a variety of mould & fungi.  Which smelled nice!


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

Crispy said:


> 1. They're as thin as possible, which means that only scrawny bollocks will grow on them
> 2. That scrawny bollocks often dies and what you're left with is essentially 'brownfield' and it just gets colonised by weeds
> 
> If you want a truly 'green' roof, then you have to go the full distance - a proper depth of soil, a wide range of plants, and of course the large increase in structure to support it all.



It's the difference between a sedum roof and a full-on green roof.

I'm also a bit sceptical of sedum roofs for the reasons you mention.


----------



## Crispy (Mar 5, 2009)

Yep. We've put one on a project that's just finishing on site right now (by client request) and when I look at it in photos, my first reaction is "that looks like industrial scrubland. therefore I expect it to be colonised by scrub"

The project does have solar heating and water reclamation though, so it's not all bad


----------



## pogofish (Mar 5, 2009)

This guy has some shots of that Corbusier abbey& Firminy - the French new town that features many late period buildings, some still incomplete IIRC:

www.flickr.com/photos/vladimirvulenin/


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

pogofish said:


> This guy has some shots of that Corbusier abbey& Firminy - the French new town that features many late period buildings, some still incomplete IIRC:
> 
> www.flickr.com/photos/vladimirvulenin/








That's the church that was built just a couple of years ago, based on what drawings still existed.

Some have questioned whether it's really right to do that - given that any building's design changes somewhat during the construction period and this was particularly the case with Corbusier. In other words, if it had been built while he was still alive, he might have tweaked it a bit and ended up with something a bit different. Still looks good though; I'd like to visit it some time.

There is a nice big model of it in the Barbican exhibition.


----------



## littlebabyjesus (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> Some have questioned whether it's really right to do that - given that any buildings' design changes somewhat during the construction period and this was particularly the case with Corbusier. In other words, if it had been built while he was still alive, he might have tweaked it a bit and ended up with something a bit different. Still looks good though; I'd like to visit it some time.


That seems silly to me. Of course it would have looked different if he'd been alive to tweak it. But he's dead, so he can't. That's no reason not to build something based on an idea of his that you think is good.


----------



## teuchter (Mar 5, 2009)

littlebabyjesus said:


> That seems silly to me. Of course it would have looked different if he'd been alive to tweak it. But he's dead, so he can't. That's no reason not to build something based on an idea of his that you think is good.



I guess it falls into the same category as arguments about re-mastering albums posthomously.


----------



## pogofish (Mar 5, 2009)

teuchter said:


> That's the church that was built just a couple of years ago, based on what drawings still existed.
> 
> Some have questioned whether it's really right to do that - given that any building's design changes somewhat during the construction period and this was particularly the case with Corbusier. In other words, if it had been built while he was still alive, he might have tweaked it a bit and ended up with something a bit different. Still looks good though; I'd like to visit it some time.
> 
> There is a nice big model of it in the Barbican exhibition.



Err - IIRC the church was contemporary with Corbusier's other work in Firminy.  Which of course as one of his last projects, did end-up as a mainly posthumous scheme.  

The concrete shell was poured & largely complete to the roof but sat derelict for many years due to some dispute - I remember various campaigns/calls from architectural groups to finish it from the early 80s onward.

ETA - Here we go.  The foundation stone was laid in 1970 and construction continued in a stop-start manner after that.  Indeed, the entire project seems to have been marred by partners blowing hot & cold, then pulling out & sometimes reinvolving themselves plus various financial problems & disputes.  Even Corbusier himself seems to have quit at one point.

Chronology here:

http://www.sitelecorbusier.com/en/chronologie.php

The rest looks interesting too.  

http://www.sitelecorbusier.com/

Also interesting to see that it has not been finished as a church internally nor consecrated - The French State being forbidden to fund religious projects.  It is now a venue with a Corbusier museum in the offices beneath.


----------



## teuchter (Mar 6, 2009)

pogofish said:


> Err - IIRC the church was contemporary with Corbusier's other work in Firminy.  Which of course as one of his last projects, did end-up as a mainly posthumous scheme.
> 
> The concrete shell was poured & largely complete to the roof but sat derelict for many years due to some dispute - I remember various campaigns/calls from architectural groups to finish it from the early 80s onward.
> 
> ...



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


----------



## Cid (Mar 6, 2009)

teuchter said:


> 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.
> 
> ...



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 (Mar 6, 2009)

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


----------



## teuchter (Mar 6, 2009)

Cid said:


> 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 (Mar 6, 2009)

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 (Mar 6, 2009)

pogofish said:


> 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 (Mar 9, 2009)

littlebabyjesus said:


> 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 (Mar 13, 2009)

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 (Oct 2, 2009)

teuchter said:


> 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 (Oct 2, 2009)

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


----------



## Johnny Canuck3 (Oct 4, 2009)

Has anybody mentioned his chairs?

They're not very comfortable.


----------



## cybertect (Oct 6, 2009)

Cid said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

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


----------



## kyser_soze (Oct 6, 2009)

Johnny Canuck2 said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

Johnny Canuck2 said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

untethered said:


> Corbu wasn't at the Bauhaus.



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


----------



## untethered (Oct 6, 2009)

Johnny Canuck2 said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

untethered said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

Nice idea, shame about the rest.


----------



## untethered (Oct 6, 2009)

Johnny Canuck2 said:


> I'm talking about Bauhaus Furniture.



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


----------



## Johnny Canuck3 (Oct 6, 2009)

untethered said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

Johnny Canuck2 said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

untethered said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

Johnny Canuck2 said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

untethered said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

Johnny Canuck2 said:


> Japan? S-, I don't know.



You entertain the possibility?


----------



## teuchter (Oct 6, 2009)

untethered said:


> 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 (Oct 6, 2009)

untethered said:


> You entertain the possibility?



That Japanese designers are designing furniture in the Bauhaus style?


----------



## teuchter (Apr 12, 2010)

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 (Apr 12, 2010)




----------



## yardbird (Apr 12, 2010)

**Off Topic Warning**



untethered said:


> 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


----------



## cybertect (Apr 12, 2010)

yardbird said:


> 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.



Not The Tabard Inn, surely? That's Norman Shaw.


----------



## cybertect (Apr 12, 2010)

Despite the noise and banding, I love this.


----------



## Ich bin ein Mod (Apr 12, 2010)

Completely turned off him during the very short time I spent studying architecture. Good 10 years at least I think before I can begin to give a reasoned opinion of his work as a whole.


----------



## teuchter (Apr 12, 2010)

Ich bin ein Mod said:


> Completely turned off him during the very short time I spent studying architecture.



Why? Forced down your throat too much?


----------



## brix (Apr 13, 2010)

Thanks for that Teuchter, very interesting.  There are some hints in the pics that the building needs a bit of tlc.  Is that right?  Or are the metal fences evidence of tlc being currently applied?


----------



## 100% masahiko (Apr 13, 2010)

Not crap


----------



## teuchter (Apr 13, 2010)

brix said:


> Thanks for that Teuchter, very interesting.  There are some hints in the pics that the building needs a bit of tlc.  Is that right?  Or are the metal fences evidence of tlc being currently applied?



No, they are doing restoration work on it at the moment as suggested by the bits of fencing and stuff you have spotted. There is scaffolding to a large part of the internal courtyard. I could see that some work had been done on other parts because it was noticeably less scruffy than what I'd seen in photos before.

Actually you have reminded me that I was going to check up on what exactly they are doing / have done. I noticed for example that there are some areas of white render which aren't in older photos. I was wondering whether this was something that was intended in the original plans but never carried out, or whether it all fell off or something, or whether it has been adopted as a way of dealing with deteriorating concrete. 

Eg if you look at the white panel here in my photo (top right):







You can see it isn't there in this one I've nicked from the internet:


----------



## pogofish (Apr 16, 2010)

teuchter said:


> I noticed for example that there are some areas of white render which aren't in older photos. I was wondering whether this was something that was intended in the original plans but never carried out, or whether it all fell off or something, or whether it has been adopted as a way of dealing with deteriorating concrete.



I serously doubt that a corbusier building of that  scale/period would be rendered. 

In fact, my first thoughts on seeing your pics were *"they have harled the place!"* 

This must be to protect deteriorating/leaking/spalling concrete IMO.


----------



## teuchter (Apr 16, 2010)

There's frustratiungly little to be found online giving any detail on the scope of the "restoration" works.

Possibly someone with better French than mine would have more success.


----------



## teuchter (Apr 16, 2010)

pogofish said:


> I serously doubt that a corbusier building of that  scale/period would be rendered.



As far as I know the white render at Ronchamp has been there since the beginning. That was just a few years earlier, and wasn't one of his purist international modern type schemes either.


----------



## pogofish (Apr 16, 2010)

Yes - but that is a project on a very different scale and with a number of significant departures from his other work of the period.  

It was also commissioned earlier than La Tourette and is maybe the most site-sensitive/inspired of all his later work.

Most if not all of the large Corbusier projects from that era were finished/patterned by the concrete shuttering - he had a lot to say about why in one of his books IIRC but it has been a long time since I read any.

Except maybe the Berlin Unite, which was finished in some pus-coloured smooth render but again, that project was largely dominated by other architects in its latter stages.


----------



## pogofish (Apr 16, 2010)

Johnny Canuck2 said:


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



Corbusier and the Bauhaus are two sides of the same coin really but I certainly would not be linking them directly.  There was a fair difference between their basic methodologies.

Although it is true that Corbusier knew the Bauhaus founders early in his career and that his ideas were a significant influence on its students, his relationship with the active Bauhaus was strained and often ambivalent.  Also, when the Bauhaus was at its zenith, Corbusier's main interest was urban planning rather than individual building/component design.

In fact CIAM's (Corbusier's platform) response to the Nazi's closure of the Bauhaus was a bit lacklustre.  More of a "we oppose this for the sake of modernism as a whole" rather than an outright condemnation of the act itself.

Then there is the matter of history drawing a veil over his his active support of Petain and his participation with the Vichy government.  Although he was forced to retreat/retire from that when he came to be considered too "Bolshevik" for them.


----------



## Ich bin ein Mod (Apr 16, 2010)

teuchter said:


> Why? Forced down your throat too much?



Definitely. At the time, couldn't see anything in him. Now, I can see he had some good ideas, but all to often woefully misapplied.


----------

