Stylish Timber Solutions with Stack Panel Other News The Architectural Agenda An extended look at Hover House Biography Le’Corbusier
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Table of Contents
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V
VI
VII
VIII
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I Editorial p2
IV Interview Renzo Piano p10
VII Product Review Stack Panel p38
II Events The Architectural Agenda
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V Feature Article Hover House p20
VIII Book Review 101 Things I learned
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VI Feature Article Mosman Bay House
IX Feature Designer Le Corbusier p42
III Product Review Aquabocci: Pool and Balcony
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p40
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Upcoming Events
The Architecural Agenda
2016
Overview
A Japanese Constellation Toyo Ito, SANAA, and Beyond
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A Japanese Constellation focuses on thenetworkofarchitectsanddesigners that has developed around Pritzker Prize winners Toyo Ito and SANAA. Providing an overview of Ito’s career and his influence as a mentor to a new generation of Japanese architects, the exhibition presents recent works by acclaimed designers, including Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata, and Junya Ishigami. One of Ito’s pivotal works, the Sendai Mediatheque, completed
in 2001, as well as SANAA’s 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2004), the 44 featured designs range in scale from small houses to museums. With its idea of a network of luminaries at work, A Japanese Constellation is intended as a reflection on the transmission of an architectural sensibility, and suggests an alternative model to what has been commonly described as an individuality-based “star-system” in contemporary architecture.
When 13/03/2016 - 04/07/2016
Organizer MoMA
Where Museum of Modern Art New York, NY, USA
Links w w w. m o m a . o r g / c a l e n d a r / exhibitions/161
Overview
Young Architects Competition University Island
In one of the most charming places in the world, a few kilometers far from San Marco’s bell tower in Venice, a fascinating authentic island skimmed by waters, emerges shyly: Poveglia. YAC is launching University Island, a project to transform Poveglia into a dream university campus; a place of training, leisure and relax for the many students gathering in Venice. How to transform a desert island into a spearheading study and research center? Which architecture should be
integrated in one of the most delightful locations in the Venetian Lagoon in ordertocreateaninternationalcampus to equal the value of one of the most stunning cities in the world? On these questions, YAC lays the foundations for University Island inviting all the designers to feel completely fascinated by the magnificence of one of the most breathtaking places of the Venetian Lagoon.
When 03/06/2016 - 15/12/2016
Organizer Young Architects Competition
Where Poveglia Venice, Italy
Links yacsrl.jc.neen.it/competition
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Renzo Piano
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Overview Manhattan is currently undergoing a construction boom so extensive that not since the skyscraper rush of the 1920s has the city’s skyline been faced with the potential for so much massive transformation. But we are living in a new Gilded Age, and not surprisingly, most of the pencil-thin, sky-high constructions rising from the street, and designed by the latest international “starchitects,” are reserved for the world’s billionaires. In other words, these superstructures remain inaccessible to most of the city’s populace. But one justcompleted construction, opening this month along the Hudson River in the Meatpacking District, proves to be a thrilling exception: Renzo Piano’s dynamic, hyper-industrial, asymmetrical, glass and steel building floating above the ground alongside the High Line. It is the new Whitney Museum, an explicitly public cultural institution complete with an open-air largo, or square, on the street level that invites people into this shared zone of contemporary art.
Piano might be the master of our time at building vital connective tissue in his open, environment-permeating structures. After all, he was only in his early thirties when he and Richard Rogers began working on the jarring, iconoclastic Centre Pompidou in Paris, with its trademark structural elements—pipes, cables, and escalator bank—appearing on the outside like the exoskeleton of a living mammal. And perhaps that’s what Piano does best: He makes buildings that are alive, available, transparent, participatory. In his five decades of rethinking
the bones of public institutions, he’s transformed a wide variety of monumental and quietly majestic places: the expansion and renovation of New York’s Morgan Library (2006), Houston’s Menil Collection (1986), San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences (2008), Amsterdam’s NEMO science center (1997), Osaka’s Kansai International Airport Terminal (1994), the New York Times building (2007), the renovation and expansion of the Harvard Art Museums (2014), and Paris’s Pathé Foundation (2014), just to name a few.
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An Interview with In honor of the new building, Piano’s longtime friend, the great sculptor Mark di Suvero, stopped by the architect’s workshop, not far from the new Whitney, in March, and over lunch and a bottle of Malbec, talked about the shock of the new and the optimism of building monuments that could last forever. Mark Di Suvero: Renzo, I have some questions for you. I would like to ask you why you do so many museums? [laughs] Renzo Piano: I don’t know why. Because they ask me. Also, Mark, really, I do much more than museums. What I really long to do are public buildings. I love that—a concert hall, a school, a library, a hospital. Everything that is public makes a city a better place to be. Because you make a place where people share values: they come, they stay together. It’s much the same as a museum. Di Suvero: But the museums that you’re known for ...
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Piano: Museums tend to do a better job. It’s about wondering. Di Suvero: And imagination too? Piano: Yes, it’s about imagination. But take, for instance, something I was working on this morning: We’re making a big building for Columbia University for the Mind Brain Behavior Initiative. It’s about the structure of brains, and we’re working with the scientists there. And those people are equally queer, like artists. Di Suvero: They have comparatively very little imagination, though. Piano: The scientists I’m talking about have Nobel Prizes, like Richard Axel and Eric Kandel. They have open minds. Di Suvero: So it’s not just museums you do. Piano: Museums are especially interesting because it’s about beauty, it’s about art, it’s about wondering, it’s
about discovery, it’s about exploring. Also, the museums are never the same. If I take the last ten museums I’ve made, there’s not one like the other. They’re all different. The Whitney is like a monolith landing in the middle of New York. Di Suvero: It’s not a monolith, it’s multifaceted. But I remember you once telling me a story of how you were hit in the face with a tomato when you proposed Pompidou. They don’t do that to you anymore. [laughs]
Piano: That’s a long time ago. We were young bad boys, both Richard and myself. I was 33. You know why we were able to do that building? Because nobody understood what we were doing. Di Suvero: You were turning the building inside out. And they love it now. Piano: The opening day we got kings and princesses coming from all over the world, and half those people thought it was still to be finished,
“Ah, so, Finito? Very interesting!” But we knew what we wanted to do. We wanted to break the logic of it in its position and in its intimidation. Don’t forget, we proposed it only three years after May ‘68. After the ‘60s, museums were a fantastic place, but they were only for the elite. Nobody really went to the museum except people in love with art. So, as bad boys, we thought, “We must bring art to anybody, even people who don’t care about art.” So we had to break that sense of intimidation, break the monumental—like stone, like marble, like steps, like cold. We thought, “Maybe we do something that looks more like a factory, an open space, accessible.” Someone would stand there and say, “It’s a factory.” And we were very happy about that, because that’s much better than a monument. This was the idea that a museum must be a place for people. If you are not a cultivated person, you will become one, because that’s what art makes. Art makes a miracle. I’m not talking about artists; I’m talking about art.
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It makes people more curious, more demanding. And that’s what is interesting about the museum: Just as art makes people better, a building for art makes a city a better place to live. Di Suvero: Yes, it’s true. Piano: And for centuries to come, this becomes a place for someone to go. I mean, why live in a city? You live in a city because they have interesting places.
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Di Suvero: The whole world is going into cities now, right? Piano: I’m not sure if that’s good news or bad news. But in Italian, città and civiltà are practically the same—city and civilization. Cities are a human invention, they don’t exist in nature. So it’s the idea of staying together and both sharing values and accepting diversity. And cities are more interesting if you can find places like museums in a city.
Di Suvero: There’s a moment in the new Whitney building where you see the Hudson and you feel like you’re flying over the water. I think the building is great because it has the capacity to show what one never knew before about the city. When you walk up there, you see the Village in a new way. I think that everyone is very happy with the building. Other times they throw tomatoes at you.
We thought, “Maybe we do something that looks more like a factory, an open space, accessible.” Someone would stand there and say, “It’s a factory.” And we were very happy about that, because that’s much better than a monument. Piano: You know what people who have seen the building go on about? They say it’s like the Whitney—like the Breuer building. People loved that building. And when something’s loved, you have a big duty to perform if you build a new one. And I think artists love it too, because it’s a space for art; it’s unpretentious and open and flexible and also still a bit rough. We didn’t make the floor rough with stone like in the Breuer building. We did it with pine. So it is a bit like the
old Whitney. But it’s much bigger, of course—bigger exhibition space and bigger galleries. Di Suvero: How much space is it? Piano: It’s almost double, and very open. And where it is situated, you see east and west. Di Suvero: There are views of the east that have never been seen before.
Piano: I was talking to you about something similar once with terraces for a building I was designing in Genoa. We talked about the fact that every time you have a factory or you have a studio, then you have a backyard space. And I love to call it the testing floor, because every factory has a space outside where you put things together. So we wanted those terraces—one, two, three, looking at the city—but they are also galleries with sky. And because they step down, they break the scale, and you have this gallery between the interior and the city. And there’s a funny staircase on the east side. That’s about the idea that you actually fly above the city. Of course, you can also take elevators. But this is about being able to walk into the city. It’s kind of flirting with the city and the river. Di Suvero: The river is great. Piano: Yes, you see the river, and if you look carefully, you can see L.A. You have to look carefully, but you’ll find it.
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Piano: Can we talk about ladies? About food? Di Suvero: No, not about food. Piano: You may not remember, Mark, but we talked a lot in the beginning when I was designing the space. Di Suvero: Oh, I remember. And I thought it was terrible, the way the neighborhood treated it at first. They didn’t want art potential here. Piano: But in my opinion, Gertrude Whitney started this whole adventure downtown. She made the pub for artists in 1914 in Greenwich Village [the Whitney Studio]. And then somebody got the brilliant idea to bring the adventure uptown. That was probably not the most intelligent move, because the Breuer building is fine, but the context is not very fine. So, actually, it is coming back home. Di Suvero: Down here is a very strange place. You have the meat market and the Standard, which is not standard at all. The whole neighborhood is
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changing. And you have the High Line, this link to the industrial past that has now blossomed into a park, which the tourists and citizens love. Piano: So this is the other thing that I’m very keen about: I hope this will become a natural place for people to come and enjoy a coffee, to stay together, eventually to go out to see art. But this is exactly what I always try to do. Di Suvero: People meet outside the Pompidou. Piano: And then they go see the art. And art is a kind of secret garden. It must be done in such a way that people fall in love with it sooner or later. Di Suvero: Oh, I like that. [laughs] Piano: I can see people coming, enjoying the piazza underneath for maybe many, many years without really thinking about art. But sooner or later they will fall in the trap. Di Suvero: It’s not a trap!
Piano: It’s not a trap, of course. It’s pleasure. Di Suvero: How is the project going in Australia? Again, I tried to work with you there but they don’t like Americans. [laughs] You’re doing a museum there, yes? Piano: Not a museum, a tower. Di Suvero: You’ve done the Aurora Place tower [in Sydney, Australia], already. Piano: A long time ago. Now I’m making another one in a different place, just by the Botanic Gardens, the Barangaroo South residential tower. Di Suvero: The Botanic Gardens are gorgeous. They have these fruit bats that fly around. It’s terrifying, but they don’t attack the people. So what other museums are you doing? Quanti museums? Piano: We finished the museum for the art center for Harvard a few months ago.
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Becoming an Architect
A Guide to Careers in Design
A quick review...
Overview What do architects do? What are the educational requirements for architects? What does an architectural internship involve? How does one become a licensed architect? What is the future of the architectural profession? If you’re considering a career in architecture, start with this highly visual guide to preparing for and succeeding in the profession. Through fascinating interviews with working professionals in the field, Becoming An Architect, Second Edition gives you an inside view of what it takes to
Lee W. Waldrep November 2009
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be an architect, including an overview of the profession, educational requirements, design specialties from which to choose, the job search, registration requirements, and the many directions in which a career in architecture can go. Expanded and revised to include the most current issues that are impacting architects’ work, such as BIM and integrated practice, this essential guide will prepare you for successfully entering this competitive yet rewarding profession.
Reviews
Author Information
“At the risk of sounding redundant about a newly released Wiley reference-based publication, I must admit that if were in a classroom environment, at least 2 copies of Becoming an Architect would be made available to my students. Once again, Wiley Press has hit the bullseye in producing textual material designed to comprehensively inform a segment of the industry seeking to make educated choices about their career direction.”
Lee W. Waldrep, PhD, the assistant director of undergraduate student services in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, has more than fifteen yearsofexperienceinhighereducation with an emphasis in academic affairs and the career development field of architecture students. Waldrep holds a Ph.D. in counseling and development from The American University and a master of architecture from Arizona State University. A frequent lecturer on the topics of careers in architecture, he has previously been
—ChicagoArchitectureToday
associate executive director of the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), associate dean at the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at the University of Maryland, and assistant dean at the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology.
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Hover House by Bower Architects
Hover house is a residence in beachside Mt. Martha (Victoria, Australia) re-imagining the single dwelling courtyard on a rear battle-axe block. The project brief was for a tranquil, sustainable and private home filled with natural light, warmth and texture. As privacy and outlook were limited the concept sought to create a captivating internal focus in the form of a central courtyard, providing a strong link between key spaces. In order to maximise natural light and privacy a simple sectional gable shape was extruded through the east-west axis of the house, resulting in a form that efficiently collects rainwater, incorporates sustainable passive systems and emphasises views to distant gum tree canopies. Hover House is a “replicable prototype for cost effective, high-amenity housing� (Nigel Bertram, AIA)
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Hover House provides the clients and their friends and family with a warm and functional home all year round, adaptable to varying internal and external circumstances. Lovingly detailed concealed sliding doors and timber screens allow for the flexibility of each bedroom wing to be open or closed independently from the main living space, aiding energy efficiency and privacy and varying the character of the house with different configurations. Bedrooms and kitchen areas also capture discrete connections to exterior gardens around the site periphery, complementing the courtyard focus of the living and entry areas.
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The living wing is the essence of simplicity, with a kitchen, dining space and lounge area arranged in sequence, a three-sided glazed fireplace interposed between lounge and dining areas. The simple form of the house, an extruded gable, has been oriented so that the ridge of the roof falls along the northern edge of the living room wall, facing the courtyard. The living wing ceiling
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angles up from the rear wall, finished in a mosaic of blackbutt-faced timber panels. Blackbutt is used extensively throughout the house, in internal finishes and external cladding, and it is silvering off nicely on the exterior.
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Despite the rather sweeping vistas depicted in the photographs, this is house of modest dimensions, if not modest architectural ambition. The site is small, and the outer edges of the house sit quite close to three of the four neighbouring boundaries. The heart of the site and the house is the aforementioned courtyard, a minimalist space containing a large granite boulder and a single maple tree. The Golf-course turf is sculpted into undulating mounds, a favourite feature for visiting children.
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Mosman Bay House by iredale pedersen hook architects
“Architectsiredale pedersen hook architectsLocationMosman Bay, Mosman Park WA 6012, AustraliaArea474.0 sqmProject Year2015PhotographsPeter Bennetts” From the architect. The Mosman Bay Houseexplorestwocontrastingspatial experiences, one is dynamic and fluid and one is passive and contemplative. One focuses on the distant views to the river and city and one is embedded with the garden. This Dr Jekyll and
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Mr Hyde quality responds to the programmatic requirements of active and communal spaces; living, dining, cooking and private spaces; sleeping, study and bathing In a reference to The Eames ‘Powers of Ten’ we explored multiple scales of relating
to the site fluctuating between distant views and the dynamics of family relationships, contrasted with the tactile engagement with the garden and pool. The upper level appears as a stranded boat, a vessel drifted down the river and washed up on the foreshore,
Spacial Layout “from the river you could be in the city but not on or of it. You could be back from it out there on the water and see everything go by you, a third space connects interior and exterior, upper and lower levels, one long space and a returning point of reference for day-to-day experiences.
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External Design The upper level of space reflecting green light in to the study and bathing areas. A subtle native ‘carpet’ garden and olive grey colour palette responds to the white river sand walls reinforcing a sense of river foreshore. A hidden space with gas fireplace and moving recycled water allows one to ‘drift’ on the edge of the property. n integrated glass art by Pamela Gaunt layers the lines of the architecture with the meandering line of the river, reflecting pattern and colour on to the white island bench. A south facing open-ended gallery space extends along the entire length of the house allowing the southwest winds to filter through the entire house. A series of individual cooling ponds are placed adjacent
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Development Design During the planning approval process the Director of Development was concerned our sustainable design approach would result in a house that would ‘de-value’ the area. We were requested to present to the mayor and development approval panel, mid way through the presentation the mayor asked why we had been asked to present, he noted the design and sustainable design principles were aspirational and believed ‘if built as intended’ would result in a project of significant environmental and social value.
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“In a reference to The Eames ‘Powers of Ten’ the house explored multiple scales of relating to the site fluctuating.”
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101 Things I learned in
Architecture School
A quick review...
Overview
Matthew Frederick Architect Urban Designer Author
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This is a book that students of architecture will want to keep in the studio and in their backpacks. It is also a book they may want to keep out of view of their professors, for it expresses in clear and simple language things that tend to be murky and abstruse in the classroom. These 101 concise lessons in design, drawing, the creative process, and presentation—from the basics of “How to Draw a Line” to the complexities of color theory—provide a muchneeded primer in architectural literacy, making concrete what too often is left nebulous or open-ended in the architecture curriculum. Each lesson utilizes a two-page format, with a brief explanation and an illustration that can range from diagrammatic to whimsical. The lesson on “How to Draw a Line” is illustrated by examples of good and
bad lines; a lesson on the dangers of awkward floor level changes shows the television actor Dick Van Dyke in the midst of a pratfall; a discussion of the proportional differences between traditional and modern buildings features a drawing of a building split neatly in half between the two. Written by an architect and instructor who remembers well the fog of his own student days, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School provides valuable guideposts for navigating the design studio and other classes in the architecture curriculum. Architecture graduates— from young designers to experienced practitioners—will turn to the book as well, for inspiration and a guide back to basics when solving a complex design problem.
Reviews
Endorsements
“The winner of a host of prizes, this delicately laid-out book advises students how to approach a number of design principles. Including advice on everything from ‘how to draw a line’ to ‘how to sketch a one-point perspective of a rectangular interior space’ this is a must-have for anyone starting out in the field.”
“101 Things de-mythologizes the jargon that obscures the real meanings of what is taught in design schools. Designers too often write in obtuse terms that make relatively simple concepts difficult to comprehend. But understanding how we perceive, experience, and interpret the spaces we inhabit should not make us feel dumb, or left out. This readable and graphically clear book is a great introduction to design terms, principles, and concepts. Anyone interested in design will learn much from this terrific book.”
—Will Coldwell, The Independent “How to draw a line, the meaning of figure-ground theory, hand-lettering and the fact that windows look dark in the daytime each item has resonance beyond architecture. Books like this are brief tutorials in the art of seeing, a skill useful in every aspect of life on the planet.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, latimes
—Theodore C. Landsmark, President, Boston Architectural College
“Matthew Frederick offers a wide-ranging assortment of architectural pearls of wisdom that every architecture student should understand, consider and embrace or perhaps rejectwhen first learning the daunting process of design. Encompassing both theory and practice, and illustrated with often witty drawings, 101 Things is an eclectic itemization of architectural philosophies, compositional strategies and tactics, design conventions, drawing and presentation techniques, and even tips about how to behave as an architect.”
Awards
2008 Silver Award Winner, Architecture Category, Independent Publisher Book Awards.
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LE CORBUSIER: A BIOGRAPHY
“A Swiss-born French architect who belonged to the first generation of the so called International school of architecture�
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Early Life Le Corbusier was born CharlesEdouard Jeanneret-Gris in Switzerland on October 6, 1887. In 1917, he moved to Paris and assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier. In his architecture, he chiefly built with steel and reinforced concrete and worked with elemental geometric forms. Le Corbusier’s painting emphasized clear forms and structures, which corresponded to his architecture. Born Charles-Edouard JeanneretGris on October 6, 1887, Le Corbusier was the second son of Edouard Jeanneret, an artist who painted dials in the town’s renowned watch industry, and Madame JeannerctPerrct, a musician and piano teacher. His family’s Calvinism, love of the
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arts and enthusiasm for the Jura Mountains, where his family fled during the Albigensian Wars of the 12th century, were all formative influences on the young Le Corbusier. At age 13, Le Corbusier left primary school to attend Arts Décoratifs at La Chaux-de-Fonds, where he would learn the art of enameling and engraving watch faces, following in the footsteps of his father. L’Eplattenier taught Le Corbusier art history, drawing and the naturalist aesthetics of art nouveau. Perhaps because of his extended studies in art, Corbusier soon abandoned watchmaking and continued his studies in art and decoration, intending to become a painter.
Early Career These trips played a pivotal role in Le Corbusier’s education. He made three major architectural discoveries. In various settings, he witnessed and absorbed the importance of (1) the contrast between large collective spaces and individual compartmentalized spaces, an observation that formed the basis for his vision of residential buildings and later became vastly influential; (2) classical proportion via Renaissance architecture; and (3) geometric forms and the use of landscape as an architectural tool.
The Move to Paris
In 1912, Le Corbusier returned to La Chaux-de-Fonds to teach alongside L’Eplattenier and to open his own architectural practice. He designed a series of villas and began to theorize on the use of reinforced concrete as a structural frame, a thoroughly modern technique.
In 1917, Le Corbusier moved to Paris, where he worked as an architect on concrete structures under government contracts. He spent most of his efforts, however, on the more influential, and at the time more lucrative, discipline of painting. Then, in 1918, Le Corbusier met
Cubist painter Amédée Ozenfant, who encouraged Le Corbusier to paint. Kindred spirits, the two began a period of collaboration in which they rejected cubism, an art form finding its peak at the time, as irrational and romantic. With these thoughts in mind, the pair published the book Après le cubisme.
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New Architecture Also, adopting a single name to represent oneself artistically was particularly en vogue at the time, especially in Paris, and Le Corbusier wanted to create a persona that could keep separate his critical writing from his work as a painter and architect. In the pages of L’Esprit Nouveau, the three men railed against past artistic and architectural movements, such as those embracing elaborate nonstructural (that is, nonfunctional) decoration, and defended Le Corbusier’s new style of functionalism. In 1923, Le Corbusier published Vers une Architecture (Toward a New Architecture), which collected his polemical writing from L’Esprit Nouveau. In the book are such famous Le Corbusier declarations as “a house is a machine for living in” and “a curved street is a donkey track; a straight street, a road for men.”
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“I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.”
Citrohan and the Contemporary Le Corbusier’s collected articles also proposed a new architecture that would satisfy the demands of industry, hence functionalism, and the abiding concerns of architectural form, as defined over generations. His proposals included his first city plan, the Contemporary City, and two housing types that were the basis for much of his architecture throughout
his life: the Maison Monol and, more famously, the Maison Citrohan, which he also referred to as “the machine of living.” `Le Corbusier envisioned prefabricated houses, imitating the concept of assembly line manufacturing of cars, for instance. Maison Citrohan displayed the characteristics by which the architect would later define modern
architecture: support pillars that raise the house above the ground, a roof terrace, an open floor plan, an ornamentation-free facade and horizontal windows in strips for maximum natural light. The interior featured the typical spatial contrast between open living space and celllike bedrooms.
“A house is a machine for living in.”
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In an accompanying diagram to the design, the city in which Citrohan would rest featured green parks and gardens at the feet of clusters of skyscrapers, an idea that would come to define urban planning in years to come.Soon Le Corbusier’s social
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ideals and structural design theories became a reality. In 1925-1926, he built a workers’ city of 40 houses in the style of the Citrohan house at Pessac, near Bordeaux. Unfortunately, the chosen design and colors provoked hostility on the part of authorities.
who refused to route the public water supply to the complex, and for six years the buildings sat uninhabited. In the 1930s, Le Corbusier reformulated his theories on urbanism, publishing them in La Ville radieuse (The Radiant City) in 1935. The most apparent distinction between the Contemporary City and the Radiant City is that the latter abandoned the class-based system of the former, with housing now assigned according to family size, not economic position. The Radiant City brought with it some controversy, as all Le Corbusier projects seemed to. In describing Stockholm, for instance, a classically rendered city, Le Corbusier saw only “frightening chaos and saddening monotony.” He dreamed of “cleaning and purging” the city with “a calm and powerful architecture”; that is, steel, plate glass and reinforced concrete, what many observers might see as a modern blight applied to the beautiful city.
“Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.�