Le Corbusier, the Surrealist.

By Jordan Grant

Le Corbusier, a name inescapable in the study of architecture, is the topic of this next post- or, rather, to be more exact, his work on a Parisian apartment for eccentric millionaire Carlos de Beistegui. This work stands out from the fabric of Corbusier’s body of work as extremely unique since its design heavily relies on the eccentricities of the client, so it is important to understand Beistegui first before discussing Le Corbusier as a surrealist.

Beistegui came from a rich family with a history in art collections- his uncle’s collection is now displayed in the Louvre. He was a world traveler, well-studied and at the center of the social scene in Paris during his lifetime. He’s often regarded as one of the most flamboyant figures of the 20th century and his parties were considered some of the best Paris has ever seen. By the 1930s when Beistegui contacted Corbusier in regards to designing his penthouse apartment, he has already obtained a large number of surrealist portraits in his art collection, and perhaps his apartment itself can be considered one of the greatest works of surrealist art that the collector ever obtained.

Surrealism was a movement that began in the early 1920s with Paris regarded as the most important center of surrealist works.  This philosophical movement centered on the concepts of unexpected juxtapositions, non sequitur, and surprises. It sought to uncover the creative potential of the unconscious mind. As Salvador Dali mentioned himself, "Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision." When the concept is applied to architecture, it is allowed to break out of what is considered normal or necessary and become a work of art that creates an environment that removes the shackles that are limiting our vision.

Now, keeping both the client and the client's love of surrealism in mind, take a deeper look in to Corbusier’s work for Beistegui. I don't claim to be an expert of any sorts- rather, these are my own observations and ventures into guessing what they may mean. Perhaps the story is best told through photos; from the winding narrow staircases to the mirrors to the furniture, it’s surely a surrealistic experience. Corbusier’s intricate and technologically advanced additions to the house include a camera obscura in the form of a telescope and a movie screen for projection that lowers as a chandelier rises. However, the rooftop garden has always been considered the highlight of the penthouse, which is rumored to have been helped in the design by none other than famous surrealist Salvador Dali.

One of the first similarities that appears is the sparseness of landscape. The rooftop garden of the penthouse has been designed so that only two monuments appear in the skyline, something not often seen (especially from such great heights). It's similar to some of the works by Dali, in which a limited skyline is shown. The images below show the similarities of the limited skyline:

Another recurrent items is mirrors, a popular subject of surrealists. Whether the mirrors were placed by Beistegui or Corbusier I know not, but they strengthen the ties to surrealist art- where heads are often shown disconnected from the bodies similar to how a head appears to be floating in a mirror.

While I've only begun my research on Beistegui and his apartment, which is difficult to find as it is one of Corbusier's most underrated projects, I believe that it is a fascinating topic that ties together art and architecture of the time in the 1930s.

Sources:

http://www.rasa.net/writings/corbubeistegui.html

http://mondo-blogo.blogspot.it/2010_10_01_archive.html

Planning Social Change

By Shawna Hammon
Lecture - "Moving Landscapes: Promenade"

A comparison of Le Corbusier’s plans for Algiers and Paris.

Plan Obus for Algiers

Plan Voisin for Paris

At first sight we wonder how two very different city plans could come from the same architect?  Despite the stark differences in form – one is curvilinear while the other is strictly geometric – the plans share the same architectural concepts and the cities were searching for the answer to the same question: how to deal with the development of slums that have led to an urban housing crisis.  Le Corbusier believed that modern forms of architecture and new construction technology and materials like steel, glass and concrete, would elevate the quality of life for tenants of lower incomes.  He offered newer programmatic solution that did not allow for community social interaction and celebrated the development of the automobile with a transportation hub at the center.  Both projects were designed on the premise that the historic city would be destroyed to make way for his new utopian and fanciful ideals. Unfortunately, Le Corbusier’s ego trumped these projects as his designs were meant to make money for the cities; very little was designed with the occupants in mind. 

"From right to left, from east to west, you see the 'great East-West throughway of Paris' which embodies the future of Paris and offers the City Council the chance to launch a gigantic financial enterprise, a 'money-making' enterprise = a source of wealth.   Since 1922 (for the past 42 years) I have continued to work, in general and in detail, on the problem of Paris. Everything has been made public. The City Council has never contacted me. It calls me 'Barbarian'!" - Le Corbusier

In 1922 Le Corbusier developed a scheme for 3 million residents titled Ville Contemporaine (Contemporary City).  At the center was a group of 60-storey skyscrapers built of steel and curtain wall glass – a new material at the time.  He envisioned a transportation hub at the center and thought airplanes could be flown between buildings.  Pedestrian paths were completely separated from roadways and the car was a celebrated part of the scheme.

Three years later Le Corbusier’s 1925 Plan Voisin for Paris consisted of twenty 60-storey skyscrapers that covered the city center, similar to those he proposed for his “Contemporary City" scheme.  His plan was stark and it segregated tenants based on income.  He did not gain the support of French industrialists as he had hope, although the project was originally sponsored by an automobile manufacturer.

Le Corbusier spent the next several years reformulating his ideas about the urban landscape.  In 1935 he published Radiant City, which organized tenants based on family size rather than social class.  However, he still took no care of the past in order to build what he thought was a better future.  It was over this ten year period that he designed Plan Obus for Algeirs.  The plan was composed of a business center at the docks while the residents were housed in a curved, 15 km, fourteen story apartment block with a highway on top that stretched around the bay.  His plan would have housed a staggering 108,000 people.

Although Le Corbusier was distinctly out of touch with the needs of society surrounding him, we can still applaud him for his ideals of architecture as a motivator to social change.  His visions of a city were prophetic in that we see many of these high rise elements in today’s cityscape and there is certainly a strong sector of our industry that believes architecture is a vehicle for social change.  

Sources:

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=961

http://www.designbuild-network.com/features/feature54191/

http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/art-history-le-corbusiers-2

Breaking and Creating

By: Emma Lyne Pouch


           In a building each room has reason and serves a specific purpose. It breaks down a large space to make it useful and give meaning. We even see this on a greater scale in city planning, a dividing of space to provide significance. With all of this organization it would only make sense to continue it into the landscape design of the surround areas. That is were a landscape architect comes into the picture. In today’s modern landscape designs we see an emersion of large spaces being broken down to create different views and surroundings. Particularly in the large cities it is nice to have a place to get away, to lose sight of the big city and have an escape. It Europe’s contemporary architecture we see the movement coming to life in places such as Paris, Bordeaux, and Amsterdam.

Masterplan of Parc Citroen

            In 1992, Gilles Clement completed the Parc Citroen project that involved breaking down 60 acres into two greenhouses, one central park area and 8 smaller gardens. Although the large open parks are what most people associate with Parc Citroen, it is the smaller parks that bring character. Each garden was assigned a metal, a planet, a day of the week, a state of the water, and a sense and then it is referred to by a color. All these factors come together to create different experiences, some soothing and peaceful, others filled with the sound of rushing water and movement. They are fabricated to produce the sense of being in a secret garden and traveling from one to another with free organic motions. But when we zoom out to see the master plan we find a clear, formal pattern with the center space reflecting the very geometric gardens in an 18^th century style. Clement broke down this sizeable open land and assembled a space filled with many emotions and experiences.

Ariel view of Cultuurpark Westergasfabriek

            Over a decade later Catherine Mosbach designs the Jardin Botanique project in Bordeaux with a similar idea and yet different approach to the concept of breaking up and dividing spaces. On this long promenade we find a mix of wet and dry land with varying types of plants. The geometric concrete path along a pond of water is broken up into many small pieces just big enough for people to weave through that each contains a different species of plant. Mosbach designs a field of cultures, individual miniature gardens that show the landscape of France over the seasons. This space is all about interacting with the space and being able to learn from it.

            Another example of dividing and repurposing spaces is the Cultuurpark Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. The park designed by Kathryn Gustafson in 2004, takes an old industrialized area and transforms it into a green environment meant for reflection and learning from the past as well as a culture center. Similar to Parc Citroen we find a central axis that links the small spaces and sites the stretch down the large acreage. Gustafson’s design also resembles the Jardin Botanique in the dynamics of vegetation and it’s use throughout the park. What is most successful about this collection of three varying parks is the breaking down of spaces. The designs are able to create different experiences within a setting that make the land more interesting and keep the people utilizing the space. 

OMA Versus Tschumi: The Parc de la Villette

By Jordan Grant

Last week I wrote about the brilliant design of Rem Koolhaas in Berlin at the Netherlands Embassy; this week is dedicated to a competitor of OMA for the winning design of the Parc De La Villette in Paris- Bernard Tschumi Architects.

First, a bit of history about the site itself- the Parc De La Villette was put forth as a design competition by the city of Paris in 1982-1983. The site had previously been a place for slaughterhouses, but the clearing of the structure put the largest remaining empty space back on the map in Paris. As you might imagine, architects worldwide jumped at the opportunity to submit their entries, and over 470 international entries we received.

Among those entries were works from both OMA and Bernard Tschumi Architects. These two plans were extremely different in almost every imaginable way; it’s interesting to imagine what the space would have been like had Tschumi not been chosen as the architect of one of Paris’ largest parks.

OMA’s submittal for the Parc De La Villette is extremely complex; the plan itself consists of five different stages to develop the site. As OMA’s website describes the project, “The program by the city of Paris was too large for the site, leaving no space for a park. The proposed project is not for a definitive park, but for a method that - combining programmatic instability with architectural specificity - will eventually generate a park.”

The five steps laid forward by OMA were 1) to organize the major programmatic elements in horizontal bands across the site, 2) to place kiosks, playgrounds, barbeque pits, and other facilities mathematically on grid points, 3) the addition of a round forest as an architectural element, 4) to provide connections between the points, and finally 5) to introduce superimpositions.

It’s not surprising that the OMA entry was disregarded when a closer look is taken at that of Tschumi. The winning entry can be described quite simply, as Bernard Tschumi Architects’ website does- “La Villette could be conceived of as one of the largest buildings ever constructed — a discontinuous building but a single structure nevertheless, overlapping the site’s existing features and articulating new activities. It opposes the landscape notion of Olmstead, widespread during the 19th century, that ‘in the park, the city is not supposed to exist.’ Instead, it proposes a social and cultural park with activities that include workshops, gymnasium and bath facilities, playgrounds, exhibitions, concerts, science experiments, games and competitions, in addition to the Museum of Science and Technology and the City of Music on the site.”

This concept of a cultural park rather than the garden-like parks of the past, but instead it was exciting and new and most likely helped this entry stand above the rest. The park today is famous for the red follies (a folly is a building that is constructed primarily for decoration, or is overly ornate or exaggerated compared to its purpose) that are arranged in a grid over the site. The Parc is also noted as one of the first pieces of deconstructivist architecture since Tschumi was greatly influenced by deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida.

The Parc has received its fair share of both praise and criticism, yet no matter what opinions are shed upon the space it is an undeniable fact that Tschumi has created an iconic and successful space in Paris that attracts almost 8 million visitors a year. 

Information and photo sources: http://www.tschumi.com/projects/3/#, http://oma.eu/projects/1982/parc-de-la-villette