Le Corbusier, Urbanisme (1922–1935) | The Textbook of Architecture

Le Corbusier’s books on the city: the Ville Contemporaine for three million inhabitants (exhibited 1922), the Plan Voisin for the centre of Paris (1925) and the Radiant City (1930–35): skyscrapers in a park, separated traffic and housing à redents.

The Ville Contemporaine, shown at the Salon d’Automne in 1922 and explained in Urbanisme (1925; English 1929), is a symmetrical city of three million. At its centre a transport interchange carries a landing field for air-taxis on its roof; round it stand twenty-four cruciform office towers of about sixty storeys, set so far apart that they cover only a small fraction of the ground and the rest is park. Motorways cross at the centre; housing lies beyond, in slabs folded back and forth (à redents) and in perimeter blocks of stacked “villa” flats with hanging gardens; a green belt separates the city from its industry and its garden suburbs.

The Plan Voisin (1925) applied the scheme to the Right Bank of Paris, and La Ville radieuse (1935) revised it, giving up the strict division into classes and putting the dwellings, rather than the offices, at the heart of the plan. These books, with the Athens Charter, became the model for the post-war towers-in-the-park of half the world, and the chief target of its critics.

The book, part by part

I The Ville Contemporaine (1922)

Towers in the park, the central station, housing à redents, the green belt.

Rules: Towers in a park · Kill the corridor street · Housing à redents

II La Ville radieuse (1935)

The continuous slab on pilotis, the ground left free for the pedestrian and the park.

Rules drawn from Urbanisme

Towers in a park

Concentrate the business centre in a few very tall towers set far apart on a regular grid, so that they cover only a small fraction of the ground and the rest can be park: density and open space at once.

twenty-four cruciform towers of about sixty storeys; a small fraction of the centre built on

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.

Housing à redents

House the population in continuous slabs raised on pilotis and folded back and forth round large open courts, so that every flat looks over the park and the ground runs unbroken beneath the buildings.