An earlier blog entry of mine, “Genealogy of Influence,” promised a series of posts about the architects and theorists who influenced my architectural world view. This is the latest post in the series.
Today, more than a half-century since his death, the Swiss-French architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (1887-1965)—more widely known by his pseudonym Le Corbusier—remains a complex and polarizing figure when the subject of 20th century modern architecture is discussed. He is justly praised as one of the pioneers of the modern movement and as a prolific and wholly original polemicist of unwavering principle. He is also reviled for promoting abandonment of historical patterns of development in favor of a radically different and transformative models of urban life.
Jane Jacobs, among many others, regarded Le Corbusier’s vision of the “Ville Radieuse” as fundamentally wrong and ruinous for the cultures of cities. History has long since proven Jacobs right. Le Corbusier’s urban vision was simplistic, reductionist, and inflexible. He extolled the automobile as a symbol of modernity and believed architects had much to learn from their design, production, and use. His impassioned and provocative writings would influence an entire generation of city planners, to devastating effect. With the 1950s and 1960s federal policy of urban renewal, many U.S. cities embarked upon rebuilding their downtowns and constructing massive housing projects along the radical lines of Le Corbusier’s concept. Generations later, those cities continue to repair the damage done.
Given the disapprobation many historians have for significant aspects of his legacy, why do I consider Le Corbusier personally influential? There are several reasons: 1) his larger-than-life persona and commitment to his beliefs; 2) his generation of novel and subversive architectural languages; and 3) my early exposure to his work.
My reading of the book Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture by Charles Jencks shortly after its third printing in 1976 was my initial exposure to a second “hero architect,” the first being Frank Lloyd Wright years before. In the same fashion that stories of Wright’s fervent iconoclasm had enthralled me, I likewise found Jenck’s portrayal of Le Corbusier as an architect and artist perpetually at struggle with the world fascinating. Le Corbusier’s architecture and his empathy for a tragic Nietzschean view of the human condition greatly influenced his work. It’s clear now that as a young student of architecture, I was captivated by tales of architects as messianic prophets and by mercurial promises of utopian futures.
Jencks referred to Corbu as “protean,” meaning a tendency or ability to change frequently or easily. The great architect was variously and serially the leader of the “heroic period” of Modern architecture, the founder of “Purism,” a leading thinker of a new and unfortunate urbanism, and later the originator of “Brutalism.” My own perception of Le Corbusier favors viewing him as passionately and consistently committed to fundamentally changing how humans interacted with buildings. Unlike Philip Johnson, who famously declared “I do not believe in principles” and flitted effortlessly and without conviction between superficial styles, Le Corbusier appeared consistent in his belief in moral absolutism and its implications for modern life, architecture, and urban design.
Of all the significant buildings found in Le Corbusier’s oeuvre, it is the enigmatic chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut at Ronchamp that is most appealing. Regrettably, while I did visit his Villa Savoye in Poissy-sur-Seine, the Cite’ de Refuge in Paris, the Fondation Suisse (also in Paris), and the Pavilion Le Corbusier in Zurich during my 1979 backpacking trip through Europe, I failed to make the pilgrimage to the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte region in the east of France to see what I consider my favorite Corb building. When the expressionistic design was first publicized, critics were taken aback by what they viewed as a marked shift away from the spare, functionalist forms of modernism Le Corbusier had earlier promoted; however, as Charles Jencks noted, there was nothing really new about the chapel insofar as Corbu’s rational approach to design is concerned. Jencks regarded Ronchamp as the “most religiously convincing building of the twentieth century.” Though he was an atheist, Le Corbusier’s attitude toward “cosmic truth and natural law” was “in every way as serious and profound as the attitudes of conventional religion.”
Few of Le Corbusier’s many followers would ever come close to matching his mastery of the austere aesthetics he pioneered. Taken in small doses, the best work in his idiom is poetic, viscerally emotional, and—yes—beautiful. Unfortunately, too many inferior examples of “Corbusian” designs were produced by architects of far lesser talent. The lesson here is one even Corbu (or Wright) failed to appreciate: the outsized influence of genius has its limitations and cannot effectively be replicated.
2 comments:
Hi! Greetings from London, UK...
I recall there was an American Architect who's early work was referred to as 'more Corb than Corb'...I think he then converted to postmodernism..
But I can't recall his name: perhaps you can help?
I believe you may be thinking of Michael Graves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Graves
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