The Five Points of a new architecture
A villa after Le Corbusier’s five points (1926): switch each one on or off to turn a masonry house into a Savoye-like villa.
The rules it illustrates
The five points of a new architecture. With a concrete frame, a house should stand on pilotis, have a free plan and a free façade, be lit by horizontal ribbon windows, and carry a garden on its flat roof.
Pilotis: lift the house off the ground. Raise the main storey on slender columns so that the ground beneath flows under the building (for circulation, cars, gardens or public space) and the rooms are lifted into light, air and view.
The free plan. Since columns carry the floors, partitions can be placed wherever the use requires, independent of the structure and different on every storey.
The free façade. Set the columns back from the edge of the slab, so that the outer wall carries nothing and can be opened, closed or glazed at will.
The ribbon window. Run the windows in a continuous horizontal band from one end of the façade to the other, lighting the room evenly across its whole depth.
The roof garden. Make the flat roof a garden and terrace, returning to the house the ground that the building has occupied.
Volume, regularity, no ornament. Treat architecture as volume enclosed by thin planes rather than as solid mass; order it by the regular rhythm of the structure rather than by axial symmetry; and avoid applied decoration.
Where it appears in the book
In the styles Modernism.
In the chapters The Modern Movement.