th 9 Lecture on City Planning Le Corbusier

th 9 Lecture on City Planning Le Corbusier K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 1

Le Corbusier: Ville Radieuse At first sight, the greatest opponent of dispersionist planning was Le Corbusier, with his vast glass and concrete tower blocks, apartment slabs and so on His “anti-city planning” converts the city into a park within which the actual buildings – even at its very centre – would occupy only some five per cent of the land In the surrounding residential suburbs slabs of luxury housing – each dwelling with its balcony – would occupy some fifteen per cent of the land K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 2

Le Corbusier: Ville Radieuse – cont. Although it seemed diametrically opposed to Howard’s notion of the small-town Garden City, Le Corbusier’s vision had grown out of Howard’s As Le Corbusier put it: “Nature melts under the invasion of roads and houses and the promised seclusion becomes a crowded settlement. … The solution will be found in the vertical garden city. …” Like Howard, Le Corbusier described the city in a very tendentious way, with a certain exaggeration of its worst features K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 3

Le Corbusier on the street “The definition of a street which has held good up to the present day is a roadway that is usually bordered by pavements, narrow or wide. …” For Le Corbusier: “The street is no more than a trench, a deep cleft, a narrow passage. And although we have been accustomed to it for more than a thousand years, our hearts are always oppressed by the constriction of the enclosing walls. ” “The street is always full of people; one must take care where one goes. For several years now it has been full of rapidly moving vehicles K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 4

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. Then follows his lyrical description which, probably more than any of his other writings, persuaded architects and planners, world wide, to adopt his outrageous model: “The air is clear and pure; there is hardly any noise. Look through the charmingly dispersed arabesques of branches out into the sky towards those widelyspaced crystal towers which soar higher than any pinnacle on earth. These translucent prisms that seem to float in the air without anchorage to the ground flashing in the summer sunshine, softly gleaming under grey winter skies, magically glittering at nightfall – are huge office blocks” K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 5

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. “Beneath each is a vast underground station (which gives the measure of the interval between them). Since the city has three or four times the density of existing cities, the distances to be traversed … (as also the resultant fatigue) are three or four times less. For only 5 -10 per cent of the surface area of its business centre is built over. ” Le Corbusier’s ideas for a Contemporary City, the City for 3 Million Inhabitants were first displayed as drawings and models at the Salon d’Automne in November 1922 K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 6

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. Instead of being a city with gardens of the kind which Howard had proposed, this was to be a City in a garden based on four fundamental principles: Freeing the centre from traffic congestion Enhancing the overall densities Enhancing the means of circulation Augmenting the area of planting K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 7

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. The abstract nature of his thinking is clarified in various articles published in L’Esprit Nouveau including his assays on: “The Pack-Donkey’s Way and Man’s Way” (1922) and “Order” (1922) As one might expect, these are much concerned with geometric order, indeed the first of the two essays is a kind of homage to the straight line He says: “Man walks in a straight line because he has a goal and knows where he is going; he has made up his mind to reach some particular place and he goes straight to it” K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 8

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. “The pack-donkey meanders along – he takes the line of least resistance” If the first of these essays is a homage to the straight line, the second is an homage to the right-angle: “The laws of gravity seem to resolve for us the conflict of forces and to maintain the universe in equilibrium; as a result of this we have the vertical. The horizon gives us the horizontal, the line of the transcendental plane of immobility. ” K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 9

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. “The right angle is, as it were, the sum of forces which keep the world in equilibrium. The right angle, therefore, has superior rights over other angles; it is unique and constant. The right angle is, it may be said, the essential and sufficient instrument of action because it enables us to determine space with an absolute exactness. ” K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 10

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. Le Corbusier first published his ideas on Urbanisme in L’Esprit Nouveau, and then an augmented collection of these writtings as Urbanisme (1925), The Present State of Architecture and Urbanism (1930), The Radiant City (1935) and Propos d’Urbanisme (1946) These contain variations on a series of themes; on the city as a park with (individual) buildings standing within it, on the use of a rectilinear (he calls it Cartesian) grid as the bases for city planning, on the city designed around a transport interchange K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 11

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. Le Corbusier says (1925): “A city built for speed is built for success” Le Corbusier’s City is rigorously Cartesian It is drawn within a strict, rectangular grid – although, like Washington, it also has major diagonals! Each section within the grid is some 400 yards square, surrounding the central area These reflect another of his preoccupations at the time: the need for designing cities so that traffic could move fast K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 12

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. “the street is no longer a track for cattle, but a machine for traffic, an apparatus for its circulation” New forms of street must be designed so that traffic can flow freely at optimum speed, or, at least, at 60 miles an hour Le Corbusier’s Plan therefore includes elevated motorways, each some 120 feet wide, running north-south and east-west The City was centered on a railway station, with an airport, or at least a landing-platform for air-taxis K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 13

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. Of course there would also be a large, central intersection there of his motorways (fig. 1) The centre itself was to be surrounded by a park, some 2400 by 1500 metres within which 24, 60 -storey skyscrapers would be located, spaced some 250 metres apart – these would be office buildings and at their feet, between them, there would be buildings of two or three storeys in the form of stepped terraces containing restaurants, cafes, luxury shops, theatres, concert halls and other urban facilities K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 14

Fig. 1: Centre of the “Ville Radieuse” with transport interchange K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 15

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. The skyscrapers of the central business district were to be cross-shaped in plan and 60 storeys high or more There would be terraces between them, with cafés, theatres, public halls and so on Le Corbusier was quite clear that his 40 storey, steel and glass towers, would not be suitable for family life He proposed two kinds of housing immediately around the City Centre: terraces and apartment blocks K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 16

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. The terraces would consist of six-storey maisonettes crossing the parkland in rectilinier ribbons and beyond these there would be his apartment blocks: immeubles-villas in his familiar form of maisonettes with adjoining balconies hollowed, cave-like, into the facades of his blocks Le Corbusier’s higher density housing was to be built of two storey maisonettes, each with its twostorey balcony flanking a two-storey living room with a smaller balcony at the back which was to carry single-storey bathrooms and bedrooms over the kitchen and dining area, much in the manner of the typical Parisian artist’s studio – fig. 2 K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 17

Fig. 2: Le Corbusier’s apartments 1924 K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 18

Le Corbusier on the street – cont. The whole arrangement was intended to open up day-to-day living to sunlight, fresh air and greenery in a way which was quite impossible in the narrow streets of the medieval city, or even the wider streets of the 19 th century city Le Corbusier’s lower-rise set-back housing would also consist of two-storey maisonettes varying, it seems, from 6 to 12 storeys high Le Corbusier’s plans and perspectives, captured the imagination of architects and planners worldwide In the 1960 s particularly, a remarkable number of them were enabled to make their own cities… K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 19

Le Corbusier on New York More than any other theorist, it was Le Corbusier who persuaded the world that New York offered prototypes for the city of the 20 th century Given all the thought which Le Corbusier had put into such things already, it is hardly surprising that when he first went there – at the age of 52 – he arrived with certain preconceptions And the city most certainly made its impact on him: “…when my ship stopped at Quarantine, I saw a fantastic, almost mystic city rising up in the mist. ” K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 20

Le Corbusier on New York – cont. And again he recalled: “The city’s violent silhouette … like a fever chart at the foot of a patient’s bed…” But as his ship came in closer, all was by no means as it had seemed: “…the apparition is transformed into an image of incredible brutality and savagery … This brutality and this savagery do not displease me. It is thus that great enterprises begin, by strength. ” K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 21

Le Corbusier on New York – cont. New York alone made it possible for: “the city of modern times, the happy city, the radiant city to be born” Once arrived within the streets of Manhattan, as he says: “One sees canyons surging up, deep and violent fissures, streets such as no one had ever seen before. Not ugly either! I will even say: a very strong architectural sensation which is equal to that experienced in the narrow streets of Rouen and Toulon, with, in this case, the enthronement of a grandeur and intensity well calculated to inspire courage. ” K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 22

Le Corbusier on New York – cont. So New York represented a beginning for Le Corbusier but it did not go nearly far enough As the New York Herald Tribune proclaimed on his arrival: Finds American Skyscrapers too Small Skyscrapers not big enough Says Le Corbusier at first sight Thinks they should be huge and a lot further apart K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 23

Le Corbusier on New York – cont. In other words he wanted them to be like those he had visualized already Indeed he wanted to see New York rebuilt according to his own visions of the City for 3 Million Inhabitants (1922), the Radiant City (1935) and so on New York, for him, was a vertical city but by no means vertical enough K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 24

Le Corbusier on New York – cont. The basis of a city was there for him all right. As he says: “In length it is laid out in nine parallel avenues; across, in nearly two hundred streets parallel to each other and at right angles to the avenues … everything is determined with an Euclidean clearness” Given such a layout, of course, you can pinpoint your position exactly wherever you are and your destination, know exactly how many streets you will need to traverse north or south, how many avenues east or west and so on K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 25

Le Corbusier on New York – cont. Contrast this, he says, with the romantic city: “One man sowed that foolish idea. He was an intelligent and sensitive Viennese; Camillo Sitte, who, quite simply posed the problem badly. In travels of discovery through Italy … he was won over by an art which so exactly adjusted house to house and palace to church, each stone of each city (endowing it with) a living and subtle plastic character, a spectacle of quality” Sitte: “Confusion is beautiful and rectitude is base … the beautiful was curved and … (thus) … large cities should be contorted” K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 26

Le Corbusier on New York – cont. New York already had Le Corbusier’s basic Cartesian Plan, not to mention his skyscrapers Indeed Le Corbusier was thrilled by many of their features: the sheer efficiency of their elevators, with their self-opening doors He also admired, as did so many Europeans, American plumbing, not to mention the teams of specialist designers whose careful co-ordination ensured that each building would have a “perfect and faultless life” K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 27

Le Corbusier on New York – cont. He was thrilled too by the experience of space as he looked out from Wallace K. Harrison’s office 820 feet up in the Rockefeller Center, the extensive views across the city and the sense of freedom that he felt Taken as a whole, these presented an experience unique to the 20 th century No city ever before had looked, or could have looked, as New York did in the 1930 s K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 28

Fig. 3: Le Corbusier: City for 3 Million Inhabitants (1922) K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 29

Fig. 4: Le Corbusier: Radiant City (1935) K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 30

Fig. 5: Clarence S. Stein: the Regional City (1939) K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 31

Fig. 6: Le Corbusier: Unité d’habitation 1945 -1950 K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 32

Fig. 7: Le Corbusier: Algiers: A-Obus Project (1931) K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 33

Fig. 8: Le Corbusier: Chandigarh – India 1952 K 127 - katedra sídel a regionů 34