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Le Corbusier, the Brise-Soleil, and the Socio-Climatic Project of Modern Architecture, 1929–1963

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Le Corbusier, the Brise-Soleil, and the Socio-Climatic Project of Modern Architecture, 1929–1963 LE CORBUSIER, THE BRISE-SOLEIL, AND THE SOCIO-CLIMATIC PROJECT OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE, 1929–1963 daniel a. barber Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00128 by guest on 23 September 2021 DANIEL A. BARBER Le Corbusier’s “vernacular turn” in the formative years—from the influence of the 1930s has been a point of much discussion for regionalist painter Charles L’Eplattenier, architectural historians. Why the shift away through his 1911 travels in the Balkans and from purism? Concerns about the climatic direct experience of a “pre-modern” culture, to performance of a building, it turns out, were his engagement with the German Werkbund paramount—not only to Le Corbusier’s shift, in the late teens and twenties—Passanti writes: but also to the direction modern architecture would take in subsequent decades. By empha- HE HAD BEGUN WITHIN A MOVEMENT sizing the place of climate in the historiogra- SEEKING TO INVENT A REGIONALIST phy of Le Corbusier’s turn, we can also indi- STYLE, AND HE HAD ENDED BY cate that climate-based design methodologies, ARGUING, WITH LOOS AND MUTHESIUS, addressed to problems of shading, ventilation, THAT MODERN CULTURE IS BEST and interior comfort, are an important and DESCRIBED BY THE WORK OF THOSE under-recognized aspect of the reception of ANONYMOUS PEOPLE, NOTABLY modern architecture as a social project. ENGINEERS, who don’t trY TO In order to analyze these developments, INVENT A NEW AESTHETIC.1 the historical significance of thebrise-soleil will be traced—first, locating it in relationship The integration of “found,” or vernacular, to the historiography of Le Corbusier’s knowledge and of the practices of anonymous vernacular turn, second, connecting this engineers, Passanti continues, was central to discourse to interactions between architectural the modern architectural project: and climatic sciences in 1930s Brazil, and third, placing the brise-soleil and shading AS A CONCEPTUAL MODEL THIS strategies in relationship to the “bioclimatic NOTION OF THE VERNACULAR WAS regionalisms” and “tropical architectures” IMPORTANT, BECAUSE IT COULD OPEN of the 1950s. From this perspective, Le ARCHITECTURE TO REDEFINITION. ... THRESHOLDS 40 Corbusier’s vernacular turn initiated an THE VERNACULAR MODEL INSISTED important moment both in the interaction ON CONNECTING ARCHITECTURE TO of architectural design with the expanding SOMETHING EXTERNAL TO IT, THE technological demands of modern living, IDENTITY OF SOCIETY; AND IT FURTHER and also in the contribution of design INSISTED THAT SUCH A CONNECTION strategies to the cultural, technological, and BE NOT INVENTED BUT FOUND. ... bureaucratic regime of global environmental IN THE CASE OF LE CORBUSIER, THE management—a socio-climatic project of VERNACULAR MODEL PROVIDED modern architecture that has had long-lasting A CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE FOR and multivalent effects. INTEGRATING THE NEW INPUTS INTO THE DISCIPLINE OF ARCHITECTURE AND FOR BROADENING ITS VOCABULARY CONCEPTUAL CONSTANTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES.2 In his essay “The Vernacular, Modernism, Passanti proposes that the “conceptual model” and Le Corbusier,” Francesco Passanti argues of the vernacular was “a constant, articulating that the strength of early architectural the persistent hope for a natural and organic modernism was its potential to integrate modern society, and for a natural relationship traditional design concepts with the new forms of modern society and architecture;” a and materials emerging from the processes constant, Passanti insists, because it persisted of industrialization. Tracing Le Corbusier’s through his turn from purism.3 22 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00128 by guest on 23 September 2021 LE CORBUSIER, THE BRISE-SOLEIL, AND THE SOCIO-CLIMATIC PROJECT The structure of this vernacular model ambitions. At the same time, Porteous sees the is also significant to our understanding of the contemporaneous Immeuble Wanner (1928- conceptual and methodological importance 1929), an unbuilt project for Geneva, as even of the brise-soleil. The emergence of modern more innovative and transformative in this architectural shading techniques can be regard, organizing the five points in creative mapped onto Passanti’s model in three ways. combination to productively address climatic First, the brise-soleil was a “vernacular” impacts. The Wanner project led to a different object insofar that it followed on the use of design for the same client in the Immeuble overhangs and other methods of shading in Clarté (1932–1933), to which I will return. folk or so-called primitive architectures— including, significantly, the pre-modern architecture of Brazil. Second, it was “found” CLIMATE AND THE by Le Corbusier in Brazil and in other regions VERNACULAR TURN peripheral to the western European discourse as a “native” response to the twentieth-century Amidst these conceptual constants— problem of building multi-story concrete of climate and the vernacular—there is structures with glazed facades. Third, the nonetheless a significant shift in the treatment quasi-scientific architectural and sociological of form, materials, and building processes discourse generated by the proliferation of evident in Le Corbusier’s work of the 1929- the brise-soleil after World War II operated on 1936 period. Kenneth Frampton proposes Passanti’s terms—as a form of architectural that the turn away from purism and the integration of “new inputs.” Such inputs crystallization of a new direction was first developed in concert with other concerns over evident in the unbuilt Maisons Loucher socio— climate, providing a mechanism for both the (1929). The Loucher project had a combined dynamic expansion of architectural vocabulary structural system of pilotis, a steel frame, and and for the delicate insertion of architectural a local rubble-stone party wall, intended to methods into the new responsibilities of the be built by local masons. The trend continued economic, industrial, and environmental in the Maison Errazuris (1930), a project for management of the post-colonial global South. a coastal site in Argentina, which is cited by If the vernacular model is a constant in the development of modern architecture chez Le Corbusier, so is a general concern for 1 Francesco Passanti, “The Modern, the Vernacular, Le Corbusier” in Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalization, interior climatic comfort. The development of and the Built Environment, ed. Maiken Umbach and Bernd the brise-soleil and the broader dissemination Huppauf (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 153. 2 Ibid., 156. of shading techniques can be seen as part 3 Passanti continued: “As Mary McLeod has shown, what of a general concern with ventilation, light changed was the sense of where to seek the fulfillment of such a hope. During the 1920s, Le Corbusier sought it in and air, and other health-related issues that the rationalist and abstract organization of industry and its framed the theories and practices of the products; later, disillusioned by them, he sought it in a more direct and holistic connection of people with people, and 4 early modern movement. Colin Porteous people and techniques.” Ibid., 155. has recently emphasized that at least three 4 See Paul Overy, Light, Air and Openness: Modern Architecture Between the Wars (London: Thames and Hudson, 2008), which of Le Corbusier’s “Five Points” of 1926 relate discusses the importance of these concerns to the Central directly to producing a salutary relationship European developments of modernism. 5 Colin Porteous, The New Eco-Architecture: Alternatives from between internal and external climatic the Modern Movement (London: Taylor and Francis, 2002), conditions.5 Porteous reads the Villa Savoye 51-55. For Porteous, the plan libre and façade libre enable spatial configurations that “promote routes for natural thermo- (1928) as central to Le Corbusier’s inter-war circulation”; the fenetre en longeur and the related pan de production because it realized his climatic verre allow for deep light penetration. The fourth point, the jardins suspendu, further amplified the salubrious effects of as much as his formal and constructive these various elements. 23 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00128 by guest on 23 September 2021 DANIEL A. BARBER Frampton as the point “in which Le Corbusier made a total break with the Purist machine aesthetic in that the double-height volume of the house was to be covered by monopitched roofs sloping inwards toward a central gutter.”6 As Frampton describes it, through these and other examples, Le Corbusier’s “turn” was conditioned by the possibility of integrating traditional practices and materials with 7 modern methods and designs FIG. 1. FIG. 2 — Le Corbusier, Cité des Refuges, Paris, 1933 (model).” to harness the materials, resources, and sites necessary to further the project of the modern office building as a climatic management 8 object FIG. 2. In both of these projects, Le Corbusier’s vision was focused on an active climatic strategy he called respiration exacte, one of the more prominent early proposals for a complete system of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. As Frampton described it: A BUILDING WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HEATED AND COOLED BY TEMPERED AIR BEING DISTRIBUTED THROUGHOUT VIA AN ALL- ENVELOPING PLENUM, INTEGRAL WITH THRESHOLDS 40 ITS OUTER SKIN. THESE “nEUTRALIZING WALLS,” aS [LE CORBUSIER] CALLED THEM, WERE TO BE MADE UP OF AN INNER AND OUTER GLASS MEMBRANE, WITH AN
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