Le Corbusier's Town-Planning Ideas and the Ideas of History

Le Corbusier’s town-planning ideas and the ideas of history Gerald Steyn Tshwane University of Technology E-mail: [email protected] Since Le Corbusier so forcefully propagated a new urban and architectural dispensation, there is a misconception that he disregarded history and that he conceptualised projects rationally and without preconceived ideas. Focusing on his town-planning schemes, this article provides substantiation that Le Corbusier’s urban ideas are intrinsically connected to ideas essentially derived from historical sources. Key words: Le Corbusier, urbanism, modernist town-planning Le Corbusier se idees aangaande dorpsbeplanning en geskiedkundige idees Aangesien Le Corbusier so kragdadig gepropageer het vir ’n nuwe stedelike en argitektoniese bedeling, heers daar ’n wanbegrip dat hy geskiedenis verontagsaam het en dat hy projekte sonder vooropgestelde idees rasioneel gekonseptualiseer het. Met ’n fokus op sy dorpsbeplanningskemas bied hierdie artikel stawing dat Le Corbusier se stedelike idees wesenlik gekoppel is aan idees wat hoofsaaklik aan geskiedkundige bronne ontleen is. Sleutelwoorde: Le Corbusier, stedelikheid, modernistiese dorpsbeplanning e Corbusier (1887-1965) was one of the most prominent architects of the 20th century. He was also a self-proclaimed town-planner, but whereas his building designs are Lcertainly entrenched and celebrated in architectural history and theory, his critics have been considerably less flattering in their comments on his city planning. In fact, Le Corbusier is frequently blamed for the monotonous, single use zoning and car-dependent developments immediately after the Second World War. Baker (1996: 294, 303) writes that “the inadequacies of Le Corbusier’s town-planning strategies are now well known” and speaks of his city schemes as “excruciatingly boring” and “regimental”. That judgment is particularly puzzling considering the astonishing scope, diversity and volume of his urban projects and their associated architectural forms. One reason is that, whereas his buildings are being subjected to continuous rigorous assessment, evaluations of his urban projects are rare and mostly highly subjective. This could be because his buildings can be experienced in situ, while Chandigarh, his only realised city, is not a common traveller’s destination. Another reason is that his critics are mostly fixated only on his early projects (Contemporary City, Plan Voisin and Radiant City). This article hopes to contribute to the journal’s editorial theme by exploring the connections between Le Corbusier’s town-planning ideas and the ideas he derived from historical sources and, by implication, precedent. It focuses simplistically and narrowly on shape and form and for that purpose twelve of the most geometrically distinctive plans were selected (figure 1). SAJAH, ISSN 0258-3542, volume 27, number 1, 2012: 83-106 1952 – Chandigarh 1955 – Meaux 1964 –Venice Hospital 1937 – Paris plan 1946 – Saint-Dié 1948 – La Sainte-Baume 1933 – 1930 – Algiers Stockholm 1933 – Barcelona 1914 – La Chaux-de-Fonds 1922 – Contemporary City 1930 – Radiant City Figure 1 A selection of Le Corbusier’s urban typologies (drawing by the author, not to scale). As the undisputed leader of the Modernist Movement there is a perception that he rejected ideas from history. His Purist work (1917-1929) especially seems to have had no historical connections, but he writes during that period that “there is no reason why we should bury Old Europe” (1929: xxvii). He makes his position quite clear (1929: 39): So, to begin with, man [sic] needs a dwelling and a town. The dwelling and the town will result from the spirit of today, the modern spirit, this irresistible force, overflowing and uncontrollable now, but derived from the slow efforts of our forefathers. And concludes (1929: 264): “Past history provides us with innumerable and forceful examples. Foresight and control are essential”. Both his first seminal books are testimony to his appreciation of the past. In Towards a new architecture (1927) he allocates 70 out of 289 pages, about 25 per cent, to historical issues, a proportion that increases to nearly 30 per cent, or 85 out of 300 pages, in The City of Tomorrow (1929). Curtis (1986: 228) suggests that “along with nature and geometry, Le Corbusier’s other great inspiration was tradition … [trying] to penetrate to the generating principles”. Tzonis and Lefaivre (1985: 7) are blunter: “Le Corbusier plundered history and the work of his contemporaries in order to grasp, control and transform the given modern reality. He searched 84 constantly for those elements with which one would have to construct the appropriate urban instrument”. Early influences Le Corbusier was born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in the small Swiss town of La Chaux-de- Fonds. By 1905 he had started his architectural training under the mentorship of a local architect. He was an avid reader and a keen observer, and two years later he also became an enthusiastic and life-long traveller. His travels, especially to the Mediterranean, South America, North Africa and the United States, exercised a number of profound influences on his views of architecture and town planning. First, while touring the Mediterranean he became profoundly impressed by Greek, Roman and Turkish aesthetic and spatial ideals. Second, after visiting Brazil he adopted curvilinear, geometrically less precise forms. Third, from North Africa he learned about the rougher vernacular of the Maghreb and about Arab architecture in particular. Fourth, the United States reinforced his belief in freeways, tall buildings and larger street blocks. The Carthusian monastery of Ema in Tuscany (figure 2) made a lasting impression on him. He would later admit that his “basic measures of urbanism, determination of the cellular [dwelling] unit, the network of roads and transportation lines” were all part of “a process of fundamental architectural organization which he had already experienced … at the Charterhouse of Ema”, notable for its “individual freedom and collective organization” (1951: 28). He visited the monastery again in 1911. Figure 2 Le Corbusier’s sketches of the Carthusian monastery of Ema in Tuscany (source: Baker 1996: 75). Although his initial physical experiences were the famous sites of Greek and Roman antiquity, together with the architecture of Byzantium monasteries and that of Istanbul (then part of the Islamic Ottoman Empire), as a devoted reader, his knowledge reached much further than these venues. In The city of tomorrow he notes two types of city structures. One is “a progressive growth, subject to chance, with resultant characteristics of slow accumulation and gradual rise”. 85 The other is “the construction of a city as the expression of a preconceived and predetermined plan embodying the then known principles of the science” (Le Corbusier 1929: 92). He evidently recognises a clear distinction between organic and planned cities. Examples of the former in his books include a few irregularly shaped medieval cities, and of the latter – which he thereafter vehemently propagated – regular planning examples such as Khorsabad, the Forbidden City in Beijing, Timgad, a French bastide, a fortified Renaissance town and Washington. He also illustrated his narrative with illustrations of monumental French buildings like the Place des Vosges, the Louvre and Versailles. Le Corbusier worked for six months under Josef Hoffman in 1907 in Vienna, and intermittently for Auguste Perret from July 1908 to November 1909 in Lyons (where he also met Tony Garnier), as well as attending a history course at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He travelled extensively inside Germany in 1909 and 1910, also working for Peter Behrens for five months. During that period he met Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. La Chaux-de-Fonds (1914) Back in his home town Le Corbusier designed a number of houses in what can be roughly termed a tempered Classical idiom. In 1912, at age 25, he directed the courses in architecture and furniture design at the Art School of La Chaux-de-Fonds. In 1914 he designed a village of 120 freestanding and attached houses just outside La Chaux-de-Fonds. Since he admired the British garden suburbs of Letchworth and Hampstead at that stage (Baker 1996: 132-3), designed by Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin in 1902 and 1906 respectively, it is reasonable to assume he would use them as a precedent, adhering to the principles of symmetry and the central park (figure 3). But the plan form is fundamentally different, and resembles an organic vernacular village on a sloping site more than it does a planned garden city. In that regard it seems as if he, instead, adopted Ruskin’s aesthetic philosophy, with which he was familiar. The village was never built, and it is perhaps noteworthy that Le Corbusier makes no mention of this project in his Oeuvre complete. It nevertheless demonstrates an early ability to interpret the unselfconscious historical building traditions of the region and an appreciation for context, rather than be seduced by the formalism of Ebenezer Howard’s diagram, which was so popular at that time. Figure 3 La Chaux-de-Fonds compared (drawing by the author). 86 Contemporary City (1922) His admiration for Ruskin and Sitte, garden cities and medieval towns underwent a change soon after he settled in Paris in 1917. Whereas La Chaux-de-Fonds was a prosperous watch-making town in the Jura region of Switzerland, Paris – similar to most Western cities after the First World War – was obliged to face two serious issues: A severe housing shortage and an increase in the use of private vehicles in cities designed for horse-drawn traffic. Densities in Paris were as high as 1,070 persons per hectare (Rowe 1993: 50). Teige (1932: 52) describes the overcrowding which prevailed in most European cities in a particularly grim manner: A room whose dimensions are suitable for accommodating one to two persons becomes occupied during the night by six to ten persons with children. People in these hovels sleep in two shifts just as they work two shifts in the factory, and beds crowded with two to three persons never cool down: after the night shift has left the bed, the day shift arrives to get its sleep.

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