I thought I'd start up a new thread continuing on what was started in the Mies thread. I don't believe that Corb ruined lives and societies with his work. I believe that architects doing a poor man imitation of what they thought was his work/design has led to the troubles you are referring to. The Unite d'Habitation -esp. the one in Marseille is one of the best precedent for unit design in the world, esp. when you consider its age. I've stayed in the building, and it is amazing. For those who wish to judge without ever seeing the work, maybe I can convince you to take a look at this site. There are lots of photos and some discussion on the design concepts and how he did not have contempt for people- he in fact was designing FOR the people. Please take the time to go through it all- and then let me know your opinion.
just what i was going to say. talentless hacks imitating him are what gives him a bad name. real corbu buildings are astonishingly human and uplifting, but there are 20 soulless imitations for every one of those. and even at that, it's easy these days to blame problems in the projects on the architecture instead of more complex reasons... a generation grew up in that postwar housing just fine... and once they knock down the towers and replace them with new mundane and "human" buildings, i'm afraid they'll find they've solved... nothing. that plan was only provocation. he never intended to be taken seriously, he only wanted to incite debate about what a city really is, should or could be. remember also his tongue-in-cheek loi ripolin* (white paint law) roughly: "all citizens must remove all wallpaper and chintz and draperies from their habitation, to be replaced by a solid coat of white paint. one cleans up one's home... and one cleans out one's mind". « Chaque citoyen est tenu de remplacer ses tentures, ses damas, ses papiers peints, ses pochoirs, par une couche de Ripolin blanc. On fait propre chez soi... Puis on fait propre en soi... »
i liftedthis from the mies thread but i'll comment here... you, me and perhaps even corbu are all glad this never happened... at least not as a replacement for the city of light! the plan voisin was, as i said above, only to provoke debate. but at least it gets 3 million souls into an area where public tranport, bikes or even walking can get people from one place to another, and still leaves room for parks, playgrounds, birds trees, clean air and light... contempt for people you say? perhaps this... shows less contempt for people? because that's what you get if you completely ignore the plan voisin. and whereas, rightly or wrongly, you can dynamite buildings and rethink dense planning (as is being done all over these days) once you get the kind of sprawl most US cities large AND small are blessed with these days, you're USCWAP. there is no unravelling spaghetti junction. on the streetcar thread (where perhaps i should take the rest of my rant, these are all kind of incestuous threads) it's pointed out that public transport will never be viable in the states. sadly, i must agree. because cars and sprawl are an infernal spiral, and american planning (what planning?) is about 3 or 4 coils too far gone to ever come back to anything remotely sane.
I took this from the Mies thread as it was getting just slightly off topic for that thread........ Losty boy, if you think I've paraphrased you inaccurately- let me know. I'm not going to get into a town planning argument with you, as if you think that America is the pinnacle of town planning, then its pointless. I'm here to argue the architectural merits of Corb's buildings. I'm assuming that you have been to a lot of Corb's work, spent days amongst his work, lived in his building's, explored them to come up with your opinions? To experience his work is something to behold, and its a pity that those who have never visited the unite can make comments so ignorantly- I'm not saying this is you, as I dont know if you have been into Corb's work- but others on here who have been so dismissive of his work, but yet have no experience to comment really annoy me. I'll let you respond before I go further......... the soap box is yours
El Capitano, after I've seen the dribble you put under my name, rather than contest what I actually said, it is unsurprising you further seem content in replacing the real with objects of your own whimsy. If only Reality was so pliant a wench Let's take your opus, below, freshly enumerated for your convenience. Thanks, El Capitan, and now to the "counterpoint" [r1] It would be terrible to see what happens to those who dare to go more than slightly off topic [r2] If you think you've paraphrased me within a parsec or two of what I actually said [in the Mies thread with which all this began] let the officials in Bedlam know. [r3] Well, if you had actually read my post, rather than replace it with your Baby Jabberwockianisms, you could not with a straight and honest face write what you just did. I refer readers to my post on the Mies thread. If that is too daunting a task, then say so and I'll repeat the part relating to this issue. C'mon, El Capitan, isn't an officer supposed to possess a dab or two of honor? [r4] Yes, I have visited the works of Le Corbusier. Yes, I have spent days in, at, exploring his works. In France, in Germany, and in India. The experience was a great aid to forming my opinion of them. No, I have not lived in his works. But, then, I actually did bother to talk to people who did, or had, lived in them, as well as observe the recorded testimony from previous eras. And also took them into account in shaping my opinions. My apologies, a priori, for failing to adhere to "your" absolute solipsism . [r4] An initial aside; if you so love the number four that it must be used in multiplicity then I warn you against buildings in China. With "To experience his work is something to behold" I am in complete agreement with you. I can understand why you would be irked with those who offer an opinion of Le Corbusier's work but have never studied it for themselves. May we assume you are also irked by those who procalaim on what it might mean to live in a habitat designed by Le Corbusier yet disdain the evidence of those who lived in those habitats year after year? [r5] So, respond I have. Now better get off the soap box for tonight before I slip and crack my noggin into a deeper sleep than Aesculapius would recommend.
Fair enough then Losty, you've formed your own opinion and its based upon real observations, (it might be wrong but that up to you!) so we'll agree to disagree! I've actually talked to a few residents as well, and they actually loved living in the building, I'm not sure whether it was the 'trendiness' factor, of living in a famous architects building, but they loved the flow through apartments, the double storey living areas and the internal shopping level. Most had renovated the kitchens, as they didnt like the format of the kitchens from back then, but one couple had kept everything as originally designed and that was fantastic to see. So yeah, its obvious that we wont agree, so I'm going to call it quits. Its the people who have never actually been to his work but still call him the anti-christ which get up my goat the most- so you'll keep.
with the discussion about Corb... His ideas about Paris weren't serious? The whole radiant city thing of drab 20 story buildings and superhighways and no real pedestrian friendly spaces...that was all a ruse?
i'm a bit taken aback by the reaction to my post. though le père jeanneret was a batty old cove in many ways, wanting to shoot him is a bit extreme... and now it seems lost uni would like to shoot me too. i didn't realize an emoticon would be necessary to point out the hyperbole in "300%" so... 284,7% ... is that better? by complete generation i mean there are people who were born in the cités and have lived there to adulthood, people who arrived as young adults there, founded families and are still there in their old age. incomplete generations would be waves and waves of people staying there for just a few years. admittedly the banlieues have both, and the latter is increasingly the norm. you're wrong to think i'm looking at social housing from a comfortable distance. i've lived in east palo alto, in the tenderloin of SF, in projects in amsterdam, in lelystad, in cités universitaires, in ZUPs and in ZACs. as for my present "neatly fashioned rondissement" the mermoz quarter of lyon (where i live) is perhaps the WORST case one could find. a few highrise apartment buildings with no balconies surrounded not by greenery but by parking lots, decorated with preformed vaserelyesque cladding that does nothing but date them, and very unfortunately too. more common though are prefabricated rabbit hutches which have exceeded their expected 15 years lifespans by (careful here guignol)... 173.33%. they're 3 or 4 stories tall, about 30 apartments each... what's called the human scale today. throw a flyway through the middle and you've reached a horror of urbanism very hard to match... outside the united states that is. paradoxically (or not) the only part of the place that resembles anything at all, and gives a reasonable quality of environment, is an ensemble towards blvd pinel which is exactly the kind of thing you're vilifying. are the banlieues nice places to live? no. is the architecture responsible for that? to some extent, but not for their uniformity or their verticality per se, more for their dreariness, their exiguity and their lack of upkeep. between la maison du fada and the cages aux lapins in les minguettes no comparison is possible. but let's not forget that unemployment, drugs, lack of education, racism, and crime have roots elsewhere than in architecture. if only society were that simple. what do today's djeunes hate about the apartments they live in? above all that they're not big enough and there aren't enough of them. that at 20 they can't even have their own room, much less their own place. the city of lyon is undertaking massive renewal of a well known cité on the top of the hill called la duchère... one huge barre has been dynamited, the rest will soon follow, and will all be replaced by "the human scale". but these smaller buildings are imo far more soulless and sterile than what they're replacing. mostly they resemble the horrid little stucco boxes on the private market, and the "postmodern" scattered around it will be just as dated in 20 years as vasarely is now. la duchère will be a more sought after place to live after renovation, but that won't necessarily be a good thing. the second buzzword after échelle humaine these days is mixité sociale. this can be a very good thing, as i experienced in my former neighborhood; in place of a ZUP (classic social housing project) they made a ZAC (zone d'aménagement concerté) where a percentage of apartments in a building is reserved for rental to modest incomes instead of being sold on the market. but that was making more space for social housing where none existed. at la duchère, the total number of residences will be more than halved, and of these more than half will sold on the market. that leaves precious few apartments for those who live there today. this "renewal" is just pushing them off that very juicy location with its greenery and magnificent views to hand it over to the moneyed. where will the unwashed go? givors? tarare? or just further overcrowd cités that haven't been gentrified yet? long live free enterprise! well, that wasn't germaine to the topic of le corbusier, just a riposte. i think what really gets free uni's goat is not architecture at all but socialism and anything that smells of it. on this it's clear we will never agree, but it would be nice to be civil about it. le corbusier was a queer old cove as i said. he hated the street and its promiscuity (the tenements of a "free society" can be just as foul as any project) and thought people should be, and given the right machine à habiter would be, like him. his loi ripolin was only half in jest, and it may illustrate a fatal failure to communicate between an intelligentsia that likes white walls and the hoi polloi that likes chintz. but his thinking was no more flawed than freud's or einstein's... or marx's. what has been done by others with their ideas shouldn't lead us to throw the baby out with the bathwater, even if there is so much of it, and it is so very dirty, that it's tempting to do so. more importantly, his buildings, for those who like white walls and perhaps even for those who don't, are very nice stuff indeed. i've visited several of them, and recently spoken to the inhabitants of one of his last, and best pieces: le couvent de la tourette up in arbresle. they like it very much... they're monks. i wonder if that makes their opinion less valuable, or more.
I had the pleasure of living with those monks at La Tourette for a few days, sleeping in modular dimensioned cell, eating with them, and I must say that it was a blast! The thing that would surprise those who have never gone to Corb's work is the use of light & colours, esp inside the chapel. Looking from the outside, you would not have a clue except for the conical shaped conc elements sticking out of the ground. Underneath that is a space that would blow you away!
a ruse? there's nothing underhanded about provocative ideas. it's important to make the distinction between his ville contemporaine and the plan voisin. the first is his idea of what the rational city of the future could (and to him should) look like, the second is parts of that superimposed on the center of paris. the ville contemporaine's "superhighways" are no more superhighways in our XXI century sense than FDR drive was before it was called FDR. le corbusier couldn't have known in the 20's how the automobile would come to weigh on our cities and our planet (for that matter if daimler, renault or ford had known it )... or could he? because the idea of those "superhighways" was to channel cars out of the place without invading the entire tissue of the city. that to him was the definition of pedestrian friendly spaces. not the street (which i for one love, but corbu hated) but the park: trees, birds, fresh air, whatnot... in his "hang corbu from a lamppost" post on the mies thread, lost university says "free societies" (whatever they may be) have done that sort of thing much better with central park (and paris has the bois, in lyon we have the parc de la tête d'or, &c...), and that's all well and good if you can afford an apartment in the dakota, but not many can. le corbusier wanted everyone to live on the park. the plan voisin is the ultimate paradox for those who blame the banlieues on old man jeanneret. destroying the historic center of paris? small beer to him compared to the criminal nonsense of parking people out on the periphery. the cités had to be integrated into the city, not isolated from it. of course even in his most haussmannian fantasies le corbusier knew nothing like the 1925 plan would ever be adopted in the heart of paris. so when it became clear that its provocation was lost on those who held the reins, and that la défense and nanterre were really going to happen, he put some water in his wine and came up with a more realistic version in 1937 which sought above all to integrate itself harmoniously in the city of light: an administrative center that would basically be a rational la défense but in the center where it belonged (where we now find that silly monstrosity called les halles), and the îlot n°6, a cité radieuse to replace what were then some very decrepit neighborhoods. when you look at what the center of paris has become now, you can think that maybe the plan voisin was exactly what was necessary to SAVE paris. first from the automobile, and second from the dullards who design housing for the private sector. because what would have been "sacrificed" by le corbusier has since have been all torn down by bits and pieces anyway, to be replaced by the most obscene kind of kaufman&broad cookiecutter crap.
Were LC's designs really as functional as they're made out? Wasn't the Villa Savoye (amongst others) a complete structural disaster?
As far as I know the only major problem with the actual design was the 'flat' roof, which leaked, as was typical with all of those designs from that period from architects such as Mies, Corb, Gropius, Behrens etc. Struturally, of course you're going to have issues with something built out of reinforced concrete 88 years ago, but thats wear rather than bad design. Check out this for some images. I took some of my own ten years ago, but as we didnt have digital back then, I'm still yet to scan them in! Also, if you ever make it to Stuttgart check out the Weissenhof Estate, built in 1927. Its an exhibition village consisting of building from those guys mentioned above and more, all in that style, and all still standing there!
an interesting little piece of news: an apartment in the unité d'habitation in marseilles can be seen for sale in the real estate section of the nouvel observateur this week. the description makes little case of it being designed by le corbusier, and concentrates on the high ceilings, the sunlight and airiness, the high quality of the period fixtures, the views... in short it's presented as a luxury apartment. which it is. the price? 390K€, which is a fortune for 93m² outside of paris. pretty ironic for what was designed as low-cost housing!