Three texts by the most influential architect-writer of the century: a manifesto that compared houses to ocean liners, aeroplanes and cars; a list of five points that turned the concrete frame into a new architecture; and a system of measures derived from the golden ratio and the human body.
Vers une architecture (1923) collects articles that Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant published in their magazine L’Esprit nouveau from 1920. It is written in short, emphatic paragraphs set beside photographs of grain silos, liners, aircraft and motor cars. Its three “reminders” to architects concern volume, surface and plan; it praises regulating lines as a check against arbitrariness; it argues that engineers, obeying economy and calculation, were producing the true architecture of the age; and it ends by posing a choice between architecture and revolution. Its best-known image is the house as a machine for living in.
The Five Points (formulated in 1926 and published with the Weissenhof houses of 1927) are the architectural consequences of the concrete frame first diagrammed in the Dom-ino project of 1914. Because slabs are carried by a few columns, the house can be raised on pilotis, the plan can be arranged freely, the façade becomes a free membrane, the windows can run in horizontal bands, and the flat roof can be a garden. The Villa Savoye (1928–31) is their most complete demonstration.
Le Modulor (1948, with a second volume in 1955) proposes a scale of dimensions for everything from furniture to cities: two interlocking series of numbers growing by the golden ratio, anchored on a man 1.83 m tall whose navel is at 1.13 m and whose raised hand reaches 2.26 m. The Unité d’habitation in Marseille (1947–52) was built with it throughout.
The book, part by part
I Vers une architecture (1923)
Engineers’ aesthetic; three reminders (volume, surface, plan); regulating lines; eyes that do not see; mass production houses; architecture or revolution.
Rules: Regulating lines
II The Dom-ino frame (1914)
A standard skeleton of slabs, columns and stairs, to be filled in freely: the structural premise of everything that follows.
Rules: The Dom-ino frame
III Les cinq points (1926)
Pilotis, free plan, free façade, ribbon window, roof garden.
Rules: The five points of a new architecture · Pilotis: lift the house off the ground · The free plan · The free façade · The ribbon window · The roof garden
IV Le Modulor (1948)
The red and blue series; a scale of harmonious measures for building and industry.
Rules: The Modulor: two golden series · The vertical village