L06 Le Corbusier 2022-2023

[ARCH33H]
THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)
Le Corbusier
(1887–1965)
A Symphony in Concrete…
[ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)

Marianne Nabil, PhD
Who is Le Corbusier?
• Original Name: Charles Edouard Jeanneret
• Birth Date: October 6, 1887
• Birth Place: Switzerland
• Came from an artistic family
• Father: an artisan who enameled boxes and watches
• Mother: teacher that gave piano lessons
• Intended to be a painter.
• Studied art in La-Chaux-de-Fonds Art School.
• His Master : Charles LEplattenier, a teacher at
the local art school
[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)

Who is Le Corbusier? (cont’d)
• Le Corbusier wrote later that

LEplattenier had made him "a man of
the woods" and taught him painting
from nature.
• His father took him frequently into the
mountains around the town. He wrote
later, "we were constantly on
mountaintops; we grew accustomed to
a vast horizon."
• Large influence from his master:
Insisted by his master to study
architecture, after he studied a course
on decorative arts.

Rites of passage:
• His travels: to experience history of
architecture and classical aesthetics
• Between 1907 and 1911, he
traveled throughout Europe and the
Mediterranean
• He was carrying an
array of drawing
supplies and
documenting all
that he saw:
classical ruins,
details of interiors,
vibrant landscapes,
and the people and Barn in landscape, Jura, Switzerland, "Study of the facade of the Duomo of Pisa with details of arches and
objects that October 15, 1902. Pencil and watercolor on
paper, 4 3/4 by 6 1/4 inches.
columns, 1907" by Le Corbusier (Courtesy Foundation Le Corbusier)
populated them.
Rites of Passage,….. (cont’d)
• He was intensely curious, constantly
traveling, drawing, painting, and writing, all
in the pursuit of becoming a better designer.
• As a result, he found intellectual ways to
connect his historical foundations with what
he learned from his contemporaries. The Acropolis, Athens, September 1911; reproduced in
Voyage d’Orient, Carnet 3, p. 123. Pencil on paper.
• He grew from drawing nature to copying 14C
Italian painting to leading the Purist
movement.
• He was making connections between nature,
art, culture, and architecture that eventually
gave him a foundation for thinking about
design.
Cathedral façade and details, Siena, Italy, 1907. Pencil, ink,

[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2) and watercolor on paper, 10 by 13 5/8 inches.
• Travel was considered necessary to
expand one’s mind and understanding
of the world.
• To his repertoire of perspective
drawings of landscapes, beautifully
detailed in watercolour, he added
analytical sketches that captured the
core of spatial forms and became a
means of shorthand visual note taking.
• He frequently returned to old and
familiar subjects to study them through
different lenses in order to “see.”
• Worked: When he worked in Paris , he
got fascinated by the RC capabilities,
he studied it to exploit this capabilities
Versailles, France, 1908–1909. Ink and watercolour on paper, 12 1/4 by 15 3/4 inches.
and assist him to realize his dreams.
• In Vienna and Paris, his interest shifted to
interiors, to medieval urbanism, and to
cityscapes as landscapes.
• In Germany he studied public squares, urban
spaces, and the iconic buildings that anchored
them.
• By the time he set off on his Journey to the East,
he had enlarged his attention to the culture and
urban spaces of the entire city, as if he were
seeing it from ten thousand feet above.
• Yet his youthful curiosities remained: he drew
peasants’ houses, people, food, simple pots, German house, 1910; reproduced in Les Voyages d’Allemagne, Carnet
plants, animals, insects, and furniture. 2,pp. 125–126. Pencil and watercolour on paper.

Paris: Painting, Cubism, Purism and
L'Esprit Nouveau (1918–1922)
• Le Corbusier moved to Paris in 1917
• He began his own architectural
practice with his cousin, Pierre
Jeanneret (1896–1967),
• In 1918, Le Corbusier met the Cubist
painter Amedee Ozenfant, who
encouraged him to paint, and the two
began a period of collaboration.
• Rejecting Cubism as irrational and
"romantic", the pair jointly published
their manifesto, Après le cubisme and
established a new artistic movement,
Purism.
Le Corbusier, 1920, Guitare verticale
Paris: L'Esprit Nouveau (1918–1922)
• Ozenfant and Le Corbusier began writing for a
new journal, L'Esprit Nouveau, and promoted
with energy and imagination his ideas of
architecture.
• In the first issue of the journal, in 1920,
Charles-Edouard Jeanneret adopted Le
Corbusier (an altered form of his maternal
grandfather's name, Lecorbésier) as a
pseudonym, reflecting his belief that anyone
could reinvent themselves.
• Adopting a single name to identify oneself
was the prevailing fashion by artists in many
fields during that era, especially in Paris. Le Corbusier, 1922, Nature morte
verticale (Vertical Still Life),
Influences ….
• French architect ;LC worked with him in 1908

Auguste • Pioneered the use of reinforced concrete
Perret
• German exponent of 'industrial design'.

Peter • mass production, logical design, and function over style
Behrens
• 'Maison Dom-Ino' plan of 1915.

New • This house would be made of reinforced concrete and was intended for mass production, but was also flexible:
architectur none of the walls were load-bearing and so the interior could be re-arranged as the occupant wished.
al idea

Influence of materials
• “Reinforced concrete provided me with
incredible resources.”
• This model proposed an open floor plan
consisting of concrete slabs supported by
a minimal number of thin RC columns,
with a stairway providing access to each
level on one side of the floor plan
• He described it as "a juxtapose-able
system of construction according to an
infinite number of combinations of
plans. This would permit, he wrote, "the
construction of the dividing walls at any
point on the façade or the interior." Domino House (1914–15)
…..the birth of an idea
• The structure did not have to appear
on the outside, but could be hidden
behind a glass wall.
• The interior could be arranged in any
way the architect liked.
• He refined the idea in his 1927 book
on the Five Points of a New
Architecture.
• This design, which called for the
disassociation of the structure from
the walls, and the freedom of plans
and façades, became the foundation
for most of his architecture over many Maison-dom-ino-realised-at-venice-architecture-biennale
years.
Vers une Architecture (1920–1923)
• Toward a New Architecture (1920–1923)
• He argued that a house was “ a machine for
living in “, it should provide:
• “A house is a machine for living in. Baths, sun,
hot-water, cold-water, warmth at will,
conservation of food, hygiene, beauty in the
sense of good proportion. An armchair is a
machine for sitting in and so on.”
• Free of all decorations, clear, transparent,
modelled on the forms of aeroplanes and
ships.

Toward an Architecture (1920–1923)
• Le Corbusier devoted himself to advocating his new concepts of
architecture and urban planning in a series of controversial articles
published in L'Esprit Nouveau (in English:The new spirit).

Towards an Architecture (1920–1923)
• In his new journal, Le Corbusier vividly
denounced the decorative arts: "Decorative
Art, as opposed to the machine phenomenon,
is the final twitch of the old manual modes, a
dying thing.“
• A house, he wrote, "is a cell within the body of a
city. The cell is made up of the vital elements
which are the mechanics of a house ...Decorative
art is anti-standarizational.
• “Our pavilion will contain only standard things created by Esprit Nouveau Pavilion
industry in factories and mass produced, objects truly of the
style of today...my pavilion will therefore be a cell extracted from
a huge apartment building.“
• Esprit Nouveau Pavilion, built for the 1925 Paris International
Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, representing
his idea of the future urban housing unit.
Maison Citrohan
(1920 concept- 1927 built)
• This prototype already reflects

its name from the clear
objectives that guided its
design.
• Le Corbusier Citrohan called
home, and also referred to as
“machine for living”.
• A way of referring to the main
concern in relation to that cell,
that could be built in series as
cars.
[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2) https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/maison-citroehan/

Maison Citrohan
• They even proposed

prefabrication, which
reduced its “utillage” or the
minimum necessary
equipment for the benefit
of the living spaces.
• Le Corbusier’s plan for the
Citrohan house to mimic not
only the car’s efficiency but
also its method of
production

Maison Citrohan

Maison Citrohan (cont’d)
• The visual experience of a space : two
parallel walls double height including a
mezzanine standing and has a large
light into its free end.
• This is simple formulation allowing a
wealth section, adding freedom
gained ground in their previous work
with Domino structure, pillars and
beams of reinforced concrete, free
with no drilling ladder forging,
following a strict constructive logic.

https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/maison-citroehan/
• Le Corbusier proposed a three-
floor structure, with a double-
height living room, bedrooms
on the second floor, and a
kitchen on the third floor.
• The roof would be occupied by
a sun terrace.
• The house used a rectangular
plan, with exterior walls that
were not filled by windows but
left as white, stuccoed spaces.

• On the exterior Le Corbusier
installed a stairway to provide
second-floor access from ground
level.
• Here, as in other projects from this
period, he also designed the
façades to include large
uninterrupted banks of windows.

Maison Cook (1926)
• The Cook was a terrace house, an almost perfect prototype for a small,
single-family urban dwelling, employed several of Le Corbusier's ideas.

Maison Cook (1926)
• The ground floor was almost
entirely open;
• It contained:
• parking space for a car,
• a small-enclosed entry
• stair hall,
• a paved and planted open
terrace.

Maison Cook (1926)(cont’d)
• The upper floors
were supported on a
few concrete pilotis.
• Extremely free
handling of
partitions. On every
floor level Le
Corbusier made a
point of curving his
partitions to make it
quite clear that they
were entirely
independent of all
structural supports.
The Five Points of Architecture
1. Pilotis: Replacement of supporting walls by a grid of reinforced concrete columns

that bear the structural load is the basis of the new aesthetic.
2. Free façade: The free design of the façade, the exterior of the building from its
structural function, sets the façade free from structural constraints.
3. Ribbon horizontal windows: it cuts the façade along its entire length, lights
rooms equally.
4. Free plan: The free designing of the ground plan, the absence of supporting
walls, means the house is unrestrained in its internal use.
5. Roof garden: on a flat roof can serve a domestic purpose while providing
essential protection to the concrete roof.
Villa Stein (1927)
Villa Stein possessed:
• A sculptured stairs and
suspended entrance canopies,
• The long Uninterrupted ribbon
windows.
• Also, both its short end walls are
blank, or almost blank, as
Garches was designed again as a
unit in a repetitive block of
'superimposed villas'.
http://www.greatbuildings.com/cgi-bin/gbc-drawing.cgi/Villa_Stein.html/Villa_Stein_Plan.html
https://divisare.com/projects/199431-le-corbusier-cemal-emden-villa-stein
http://www.puntaweb.com/artexarte/feb2000/pintura4.htm
Villa Stein (1927) (cont’d)
• Pilotis supporting a part of the ground
floor ; a hollowed-out, two storey outdoor
cube;
• The system led to practical advantages as
well as spatial and formal flexibility.
• Freely curved partitions on every floor;
• a 'Golden Section' system of façade design;
• A roof garden on top.
• The villa was another
contribution towards Le
Corbusier's central
objective - to create
prototypes for a
vertical city.
http://www.greatbuildings.com/cgi-bin/gbc-drawing.cgi/Villa_Stein.html/Villa_Stein_Plan.html
https://divisare.com/projects/199431-le-corbusier-cemal-emden-villa-stein
http://www.puntaweb.com/artexarte/feb2000/pintura4.htm
Weissenhof House (1927)
• The 2 Houses Le Corbusier built at
Weissenhof Siedlung in Stuttgart
(1927), were an experimental
building to the modern suburb.
• Le Corbusier felt fully justified in
making his Weissenhof buildings a
kind of summary of all his
convictions concerning an
industrialized architecture.
• The first Weissenhof building was a
precise and beautifully
proportioned version of his
Citrohan project of 1922.
• It repeated the clearly defined roof
garden on top, and free facade
glazed by large rectangles of glass,
like an abstract painting.
Weissenhof House (1927) (cont’d)
• The second building was an actual
apartment house. The building had
single-level apartments on the second
floor, and a roof garden on top.
• The stair towers were treated as
separate elements, projecting out from
the 'pure prism' of the apartment block.
• A ribbon of glass consisting of
horizontally sliding windows extended
across the full length of the building.
• All partitions inside consisted of
prefabricated storage walls, and all
furniture, apart from chairs and tables,
was built in also.
Culmination of the ‘Five Points of Architecture’
Villa Savoye (1928-1931)
• Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of • Once inside the ground floor, one can
the structure off the ground, promenade through either by a ramp or a
supporting it by pilotis, RC curving staircase.
stilts. • Characteristic elements such as the entrance
ramp cutting through the middle of the grid.

Culmination of the ‘Five Points of Architecture’
• These pilotis (1st point), in providing the structural support for the
house, allowed him to clarify his next two points:
• A free façade, meaning non-
supporting walls that could be
designed as the architect wished,
and an open floor plan, meaning
that the floor space was free to
be configured into rooms without
concern for supporting walls.

[17ARCH10I] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)
• The first floor of the Villa Savoye
includes long strips of ribbon
windows that allow non-restricted
views of the large surrounding
garden, and which constitute the
fourth point of his system.
• Direct contact with the surrounding
landscape is achieved by various
openings, views are framed like a
picture.

• The fifth point was the roof garden to
compensate for the green area consumed by
the building and replacing it on the roof.
• A ramp rising from ground level to the third-
floor roof terrace allows for an architectural
promenade through the structure.
• The white tubular railing recalls the industrial
"ocean-liner" aesthetic that Le Corbusier
much admired.
• Characteristic elements: the curving walls of
the solarium

A Realization of the 'five points’:
Roof
Terrace
Ribbon
windows
Pilotis
A Realization of the 'five points‘: (cont’d)
Free Facade

A Realization of the 'five points‘:
Villa Savoye
(1928-1931)
Free plans

The Swiss Pavilion 1930
• 1930, Le Corbusier designed a dormitory for
Swiss students at the Cité Internationale
Universitaire in Paris
• A summation of Le Corbusier's modern principles, forcing him to focus on
dwelling before all else.
• The Swiss Pavilion, or Pavillon Suisse, employed the architect's five points of
architecture, building on them throughout the design.
• The building is elevated on pilotis that are close to its center, accentuating the
'floating' effect.

The Swiss Pavilion
• Le Corbusier was forced by the client to accommodate the public functions
on the ground floor, a requirement he chose to respond to by separating the
elevated student homes and creating an attached building on ground level
for the common activities.
• In certain cases we also witness the ribbon windows becoming vertical
curtain walls, one of the steps of transitioning the five elements from the
scale of a villa to that of a vertical housing block, the epitome of which was
the Unite d'Habitation, completed two decades later.

The Swiss Pavilion
• The roof garden gives back to the city and serves the residents of the
building.
• He manages to hold onto his free facade and open plan.
• Several moments in the project reveal a transparent skin with the structural
support standing behind it, always maintaining the continuity of the
elevations.
• Moreover, the open plan is controlled with architectural elements such as
stairs as well as furniture, whether fixed or loose. View and light
penetration also have their impact on the organization of the open plan,
having been controlled by the free elevation.

The Swiss Pavilion
• The building sits lightly in its surrounding, a purist prism engulfed by
greenery.
• Le Corbusier manages to use a budget constraint to develop his most
basic principles, never sacrificing the beauty of space.
• The Pavillon Suisse comes as a development of the Villa Savoye in a
sense, bringing the architect's principles to a larger and more lively
structure, one closer to the city and the people.

Unite D’Habitation a Marseille (1947-1952)
• To build buildings 15 to 20
meters thick Le Corbusier
extends the apartment in the
direction perpendicular to the
facades.
• The apartment is "in depth". It
crosses the thickness of the
building and opens at both
ends on the East and West
facades.
• The long longitudinal axis of
the building is oriented North-
South.

• One of the levels of the house
is at this street and serves as
access, the other level passes
above or below the street
level. The floors are also
formed of three levels, that of
the street, the one above, the
one below.
• At each level each apartment
facade is extended to the
outside by a loggia. The
apartment is a villa
suspended above the ground.

• The two large facades are one to the east and the
other to the west and receive the sun in the
morning or afternoon.
• On the south facade are
possible shallower
apartments.
• The houses of a new
type are accessible by
long and wide corridors
called "inner streets",
served by a battery of
lifts.

• By narrowing the units and allowing
for a double height space, Corbusier
is capable of efficiently placing more
units in the building and creating an
interlocking system of residential
volumes.
• At each end of the unit there is a
balcony protected by a brise-soleil
that allows for cross ventilation
throughout the unit flowing through
the narrow bedrooms into the
double height space;
• emphasizing an open volume rather
than an open plan

• The idea of the “vertical garden city” was based
on bringing the villa within a larger volume that
allowed for the inhabitants to have their own
private spaces.
• But outside of that private sector they would
shop, eat, exercise, and gather together.
• The roof becomes a garden terrace that has a
running track, a club, a kindergarten, a gym, and
a shallow pool. Beside the roof, there are shops,
medical facilities, and even a small hotel
distributed throughout the interior of the
building.
• The Unite d’Habitation is essentially a “city within a
city” that is spatially, as well as, functionally optimized
for the residents..
• Façade constructed from reinforced rough cast
concrete=the least costly in post-war Europe.
Interpreted as materialistic implementation aimed at
characterizing the conditional state of life after the war -
rough, worn, unforgiving.

Palace of Assembly (Chandigarh) (1952-61)
(UNESCO world heritage site in 2016, a monument to modernity)
• A design "unrestrained by the traditions of the

past, a symbol of the nation's faith in the future".
• Every detail had to be planned for the whole to
function. From the sculptures outside the
monumental high court and to the door handles in
the offices within.

Palace of Assembly (Chandigarh)
3:40 to 7:44

3:40 to 7:44


Notre Dame du Haut ,Ronchamp (1954-55)
• Ronchamp sits among a wooded
terrain secluded from the rest of the
commune; the chapel is placed atop
a hill on the site setting itself on a
metaphorical pedestal giving
Ronchamp added importance.
• Unlike most of Corbusier’s other
works consisting of boxy, functional,
and sterile volumes, Ronchamp is
more of an irregular sculptural form
where the walls, the roof, and the
floor slope.
• Stylistically and formally it is fairly
complex; however,
programmatically it is relatively
simple: two entrances, an altar, and
three chapels.
https://www.archdaily.com/84988/ad-classics-ronchamp-le-corbusier
Notre Dame au Haut ,Ronchamp (1954-55)
• Ronchamp it sits in the site as a
sculptural object.
• The inability to categorize
Ronchamp has made it one of the
most important religious buildings of
the 20th Century, as well as
Corbusier’s career.
• It does not seem as a part of
Corbusier’s aesthetic or even that of
the Internatonal Style.

[17ARCH10I] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2) https://www.archdaily.com/84988/ad-classics-ronchamp-le-corbusier
The Modulor
• Le Corbusier based the system on human measurements, and Fibonacci
numbers.
• His faith in the mathematical order of the universe was closely bound to the
golden section and the Fibonacci series, which he described as "rhythms
apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another.

The Modulor
• Fibonacci sequence.
• (0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55
89,144,233……)
• (a,a+b,…
• A sequence of numbers
where the first number of
the sequence is 0, the
second number is 1, and
each subsequent number
is equal to the sum of the
previous two numbers of
the sequence itself.

Examples of the Modulor

… & Furniture
• Le Corbusier also designed innovative new furniture in steel and
leather with which to furnish his light, bright interiors.
• These have become design classics, and originals can command very
high prices at auction: Famous designs include the “Confort ” chair and
the lounger, seen on the right

… & Art

Some of LC quotes:
• “A house is a machine for living in.”
• “Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the
light.”
• “I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.”
• Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they
need bread or a place to sleep.
• “A house is a machine for living in.”
• “You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and
palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart,
you do me good, I am happy and I say: This is beautiful. That is Architecture. Art enters
in.”
• “I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.”
• “To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects.“
• The home should be the treasure chest of living.
• “Decor is not necessary. Art is necessary.”
• “Architecture or revolution.”
Thank you
Architect, theorist, urban planner, painter, designer, sculptor.
Le Corbusier is an artist.
This architectural portrait of Le Corbusier is by

Louis Hellman, a very witty architectural cartoonist.

L06 Le Corbusier 2022-2023

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[ARCH33H]

THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)

[ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)

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• Le Corbusier wrote later that

[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)

Cathedral façade and details, Siena, Italy, 1907. Pencil, ink,

[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)

• French architect ;LC worked with him in 1908

• German exponent of 'industrial design'.

• 'Maison Dom-Ino' plan of 1915.

[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)

[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)

[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2)

• This prototype already reflects

[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2) https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/maison-citroehan/

• They even proposed

[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2) https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/maison-citroehan/

[21ARCH33H] -THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE (2) https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/maison-citroehan/

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1. Pilotis: Replacement of supporting walls by a grid of reinforced concrete columns

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• A design "unrestrained by the traditions of the

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This architectural portrait of Le Corbusier is by

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