Le Corbusier

“I prefer
f drawing
d i to
t talking.
t lki Drawing
D i iis faster,
f t
and leaves less room for lies.”
LLe Corbusier
C b i (1887-1965),
(1887 1965) b born Ch
Charles
l
Edourad
Jeanneret, played the most central role in the
development of modern architecture.
Corbusier
Co bus e was as as a
an a
architect,
c ec , u urbanist,
ba s ,
theorist, painter and writer.
Villa Savoye
• Designed in 1931, is to be considered
an architectural icon.
• Also said to be one of the last purest
Villas built with a reinforced concrete
frame. This structure is based on his
new architectural five point system.
• The Entire volume is raised on pilotis,
sheathed by simple planes
disengaged from the columns within.
• A single, elemental window dominates
each side of the facades.
• The Free plan culminates in the roof
plan He considered this to be an
plan.
object- type villa refined and
standardized for the elite.
Five Principles for a New Architecture:

1. Pilotis elevating the building.

2
2. Free plan
3. Free façade
4. Long horizontal windows
5. Roof garden
Unite d
d’Habitation
Habitation
General Info
• Architect: Le Corbusier
• Location: Marseilles, France
• Building Type: Multifamily
housing
• Construction System: Concrete
• Style: Modern
• Date: 1945-52
• 18 stories
• 337 apartments
• For 1,600 people
• Still in service
Why was it built?
• It was built to alleviate a severe
postwar housing shortage.
• Inspired
I i d by
b socialist
i li t id
ideals.
l
• Le Corbusier chose the ocean liner,
which housed, fed, and entertained
thousands of passengers in a very
restricted space to help him create
Unite d’Habitation.
• His goal was a total environment,
enhanced with all the amenities of
civilization, so one would never need
to leave.
 Exterior
• The Unite block is set in a landscaped
p park
p and
raised on pilotis.
• The apartments are designed to have frontage on
both east and west side.
• Balconies have deep overhangs for sun
protection and surfaces are painted different
colors to enliven the bleak mass of concrete.
• The concrete is rough, marked with knots and
grain of its wood forms.
• Th strong
The t pilotis
il ti create
t circulation
i l ti space
beneath.
• The roof, offers space for recreation and
relaxation in its gymnasium, 300m track, outdoor
stage, and children
children’ss play area.
• Single and double story balconies.
Exterior
Exterior
Exterior
 Interior
• 15 floors are residential.
• Floor 7 and 8 are communal levels where
you find commercial services to provide
daily needs such as shopping, laundry,
catering, medical offices, and hotel rooms
for guests.
guests
• The units are offset in this pattern,
forming a series of vertical interlocking
“L” shapes.
• The apartments are very narrow,
particularly when they are divided into hall
like bedrooms.
• Corridors are where you find less quality,
they are dark, and the only light sources
are the lights above every front door.
• The corridors run through the center of
the building every third floor.
Interior
Inspirations - Deities
Chapel of Notre Dame-du-Haut
• Constructed in 1955 in Lure,
France.
• This chapel is dedicated to the
Virgin Mary and is very sculptural.
• This chapel is not given
gi en away
a a as
a place of worship but the shapes
used to design this, evoke the
earliest form of ancient deities.
• Many architects were shocked
and saw this chapel as an
irrational, expressionist
aberration.
Ronchamp Chapel, 1950
Plan for the City of Chandigarh,
India 1957-65
India,
Design of the Capitol and the
buildings
CHANDIGARH – CITY PLAN
Assembly Building (Parliament)
• It was built in 1961 for the Indian
government.
• The forms for this building g came from
both Indian culture and the
conceptualization of the functions of a
government assembly.
• In plan, the u-shaped office blocks
and front portico together form the
perimeter of the concourse.
• The general assembly room is a
circular space contained inside this
volume, and the governor’s council is
two cubes that rise through the
building to the roof.
• This he thought would “make a great
space for favorable encounters
among law-givers.”
THE ASSEMBLY
THE SECRATARIATE
In India

Corbusier was commissioned a total of five buildings in

Ahmedabad, two institutions and three residences, of which
one was not built.

The Mill Owners’ Association Building, as it is known, was

the first commission to be completed in 1954.
Villa Shodhan, Ahmedabad, India, 1957
Shodan House - 1952-1956
• certain kind of three-
dimensional mathematical
puzzles
• seven stories are hidden under
an umbrella (roof) of concrete
• floors connected by a ramp
connects several levels and
this also creates a kind of
architectural walk.
• The rooms are on the main
floor, this spacious villa is on
three independent but
interconnected apartments.
apartments
Shodan Hiuse – Climatic Factors
• The double roof covers the entire
top (of the parasol roof), with
hanging gardens,
gardens cooling and
shading the lower zone which is
used as a terrace.
• There are plenty of shaded areas to
protect the exterior protected
midday sun (40 degrees) and look
over the gardens and pool.
• The use of brise-Soleils in façades
provide breaks from the sun is a
feature used extensively in the
g of Le Corbusier in India
buildings
utlilizar drafts to cool
Museum at Ahmedabad
-The building stands on the pylons
- Concrete framed with brick in filled panels
- Initially the design was based on a square spiral
- The
Th entry t is
i by
b ramp where
h the
th ramp leadsl d from
f the
th ground
d
floor to the central core of the first floor
Sarabhai House, Ahmedabad

• Cubical concrete
structure with
separate kitchen
bl k
block
• It is a horizontal
building in which the
interior and exterior
flow with each other.
Mill Owner's Association Building - Ahmadabad
• The building is located on Ashram
Road, in the western part of the city,
overlooking the river Sabarmati
• 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.
• Its many walls (with windows in It was the textile industry which gave Ahmedabad
between) slant, and there are trees its economic, and consequently, political
importance and in housing the business activities
importance,
actually growing out of the side of it
of the captains of the textile industry, the
• the drainage system is built into the architecture of the Mill Owners’ Association
handrails of the balconies Buildingg is a tribute to this notion.
• 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
brise soleil act as free facades made
of rough shuttered concrete, the north and
south sides, built in rough brickwork, are almost
unbroken.
unbroken
His concepts of an international style of
architecture responsive to local
climate and culture,
culture and the honest
expression of materials, were most
subtly expressed in his India projects.
projects
 Le Corbusier and Post
Modernism
• Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris was designing his most powerful work in the
1920’s, after he took on his pseudonym Le Corbusier.
• At this time he took his p
place among
g one of the most infamous post-
p
modernist architects in Europe.
•During the 1930’s and 1940’s Le Corbusier was highly disliked for his stark
forms and radical cubed shapes.
p
• Postmodernism was the return to classical architecture which at the time was
very unpopular with many critics and underwent severe persecution.
 Le Corbusier as a Purist
• Le Corbusier was deeply involved in the purist movement which focused on
seeing objects in the world and rendering them exactly as they appear in their purest
forms.
• At this time the purist movement went hand in hand with the post-modern style
of architecture and suited Le Corbusier for a short period of time while he developed
his theories on the layout of urban dwelling known as Unite d’habitation.
• This was the architects way of rationalizing his unique style of housing. Much of
his radical design was centered on the basic shape and form of the cube.
 The effects and influences of Le Corbusier’s work

• Le Corbusier has influenced many by the use of manipulating light and his
concept of Unite d’Habitation, a large housing complex in Marseille.
• His influence with light can be found in a church he designed in Ronchamps
and in the work of Joost van Santen.
 Technological Innovations
• Le Corbusier Revolutionized the world
of Architecture by applying The
G ld S
Golden Section
ti iinto
t hi
his Work.
W k
• By using varieties of vertical and
horizontal planes and arranging them
according to human proportions,
proportions he
brought Architecture closer to
humans .
• Also all of his work is mounted on to a
flat ground plane keeping a certain
distance from all nature elements to
emphasize the significance of human
in Architecture.
Architecture
• He also introduced a technique of
building without using load-bearing
walls but jjust simple
p dividers to
created the separation between
spaces.
 Non-Architectural work of Le Corbusier
• Le Corbusier was an artists as well as a sculptor in edition to being an
architect. From a young age, Le Corbusier was involved in the arts, working as a
clock painter in the local clock shop.
• He soon attended art school where he developed his own personal
styles Le Corbusier’s
styles. Corbusier s ideas expressed in his art are Purist in nature utilizing
geometry and sketch as tools of conveying space and form.
• While studying at art school, he permutated ideas of looking to nature
for inspiration into ideas of looking at nature as a source of patterns as well as
utilizing certain governing rules as systems of applying order as well as variety
variety.
• Subdividing his work allowed him to organize his work according to
the elements in the subject of the work; a practice he began in in 19191.

La Femme a L’Accordeon
Une Biche Nature Morte Images from 35works of Le corbusier et le Coureur
Furniture of Le Corbusier
• Le Corbusier is perhaps some of the most influential work of the early
nine-teen hundreds. Unlike other furniture from the period or prior to, Le
Corbusier designed his furniture with the general framing systems as
metal and on the exterior.
• The cushions are free of any type of connection to any other element
of the whole. Le Corbusier also incorporates Golden Section into his
armchair and Grand 2 seat sofa
sofa, a practice also evident in his
architecture.2

Table
Resting Chair

Images from
www.sunsetsettings.com and
Arm chair www.modernliving.com
Works Cited
1 35 Works by Le Corbusier. Sotheby. London: 1987. 429. 420, 412, 414

Baker, Geoffery H
Baker H. Le Corbusier – The Creative Search
Search, The Formative Years
of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret. Van Nostrand Teinhold, New York:
1996 247 – 263

Gans Deborah.
Gans, Deborah The Le Corbusier Guide.
Guide Princeton Architectural Press,
Press
New York: 1987.

Lyon, Dominique. Le Corbusier Alive. Vilo Publishing, Paris: 1999.

LC10 – P <http://www.modernliving.com/meda/lc10.pdf> accessed on

3/17/2004

2 <http://www.sunsetsettings.com/furniture/cassina/corb_grand_armchair.html>
accessed on 3/17/2004
Work Cited (cont.)
http://westworld.dmu.ac.uk/architecturenew/express/express.
Html accessed on 2/17/04

http://home.wanadoo.nl/
htt //h d l/~jjoostvansanten/RONCHAMP/roncha
t t /RONCHAMP/ h
.htm accessed on 2/17/04

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/l
ecorbusierc2.shtml accessed on 2/17/04

http://www.bwk.tue.nl/architectuur/dmw/group4/le%20corbu
sier%20unite.htm accessed on 2/17/04

http://www.chbooks.com/online/eastwest/046.html accessed
on 2/17/04