Span the whole depth of the building with the structure so that each floor is a single open plate, adaptable to uses that cannot be foreseen.
Pompidou: 48 m clear span between column lines, 13 bays of 12.8 m
Kill the corridor street
Replace the street lined with buildings by roads for traffic alone, sorted by speed and on separate levels, crossing at a central interchange; give the ground between them to pedestrians and parkland.
For Le Corbusier the “corridor street”, a road walled by houses, was obsolete in the age of the car. The Ville Contemporaine is crossed by two great motorways meeting at a central station that stacks the railway, the metro, the roads and, on its roof, a landing field for air-taxis. Buildings stand back from the roads in the park; pedestrians need never cross a carriageway at grade.
Related rules
Build the house as a standard skeleton of flat concrete slabs, a few columns set back from the slab edges, and a stair; everything else (walls, windows, partitions) is infill that can be placed freely.
3 slabs + 6 columns + 1 stair
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 · free plan · free façade · ribbon window · roof garden
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.
Since columns carry the floors, partitions can be placed wherever the use requires, independent of the structure and different on every storey.
House a whole community in one tall slab: stack duplex flats that run through the block with light on both sides, put shops and services on an interior street half-way up, and give the roof to everyone.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Kill the corridor street”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/ville-contemporaine-traffic. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.