LE CORBUSIERS

URBAN PHILOSOPHY

SESSIONAL: HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE

LAILUMAH AFTAB
MANAL ABDULLAH
MASHAL WAJID
SAAD QURESHI
15th MARCH, 2013
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Contents
Abstract.3
Le Corbusiers Urban Work4
Design Philosophy .......8
Reception of His Work...11
Perception of the Group13
Conclusion.15
Bibliography.16

Abstract
Charles-douard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 August 27, 1965), was
an architect, designer, urbanist, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now called modern
architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned
five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout Europe, India and America. His urban work
has spanned over decades as well, his ideas varying from strikingly bold and insensitive to entirely
radiant nd completely sensitive, sometimes in the same project. His design philosophies were
revolutionary, and are affecting, and perhaps will affect centuries to come.

Le Corbusiers Urban Work

Le Corbusier's urban work is referred to as his Utopian urban-renewal plans. Le Corbusier
advanced his ideas continuously through his writings and urban-planning projects. His work on urban
design started with the Immeubles Villas.

His Immeubles Villas (1922) was such a project that called for
large blocks of cell-like individual apartments stacked one on
top of the other, with plans that included a living room,
bedrooms and kitchen, as well as a garden terrace. Only some
of them built, the Immeubles villas were extravagant, and
ironically incompatible with the idea of public housing as they
could be mass-produced which was highly uneconomical.

His next urban project was the Ville Contemporaine or the Contemporary City in 1922, which was
designed to inhabit about three million
people. Rows of glass-skyscrapers were set
within parks and connected by vast highways
on the ground, with separate pedestrian
passage on stilts.
His famous Plan Voisin in 1925 for Paris
was an idea that was going to make the
historic buildings North of Seine a complex of
high-rise buildings. It was a utopian notion
that was created upon the basis that modern
man will now thrive and evolve physically,
economically and spiritually through the
planning and technology. It was a complete
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opposite of the existed soot-filled

slums. Le Corbusier himself envied
the Germans after World War II; they
could now rebuild from ground zero.
His ideas sadly catered to the
intellectual elite, not the poor.
Because of todays massive urban
crisis, he wanted to create a place
where the air is clean and pure and
there is hardly any noise. The ideas
were perceived to be very idealistic,
but they ended up being prophetic in
the sense that these elements are
what today cityscapes try to achieve.
Vers Une Architecture or Towards a New Architecture (1923) was a book written by Le Corbusier
that has been tremendously influential in modern world architecture. In it he extolled the beauty of
the ocean liner, the airplane, the automobile, the turbine engine, bridge construction, and dock
machinery - all products of the engineer, whose designs had to reflect function and could not be
embellished with nonessential decoration. Le Corbusier dramatized the problems of modern
architecture through incisive comparisons and biting criticisms and, in effect, spread the word to a
new generation.
Le Corbusiers The City of Tomorrow and its Planning was written in 1929. It stressed upon the
importance of diversity in neighborhoods. Le Corbusier seems to take this as evidence that people
prefer to live in suburbs rather than in cities, and therefore bases his theory of urban planning on the
idea that the center should be for commerce (and some public services), and that it should be
surrounded by two belts of residential areas. His garden city was to be of a purely geometrical kind.
The rural would move to the urban areas for a
better life quality and then the urban would
become horribly crowded; the exodus of city
dwellers was an idea penned by him,
forethought long before the urban problem
really started taking place. He said it was
replacement by business. The result of a
true geometrical lay-out is repetition. The
result of repetition is a standard, the perfect
form (i.e. the creation of standard types). A
geometrical lay-out means that mathematics
play their part. There is no first-rate human
production but has geometry at its base.

In 1933, The Radiant City was

created as a design. Le Corbusier was
trying to find a fix for the same
problems of urban pollution and
overcrowding, so he envisioned
building up. His plan, also known as
Towers in the Park, proposed exactly
that: numerous high-rise buildings
each surrounded by green space.
Each building was set on what
planners today would derisively refer
to as superblocks, and space was
clearly delineated between different
uses. This was revolutionary in the
sense that he was way ahead of his
years in suggesting the importance of
the use of high-rise, and where that
idea would take us and help evolve
the development of society itself. This
is why Le Corbusiers urban ideas are
said to be prophetic in a sense that he
envisioned al this at that time.

The Unit d'Habitation (Housing Unit) is the name of a modernist

residential housing design principle developed by Le Corbusier, with
the collaboration of painter-architect Nadir Afonso. The concept
formed the basis of several housing developments designed by him
throughout Europe with this name. These include the conceptual work
from Radiant City, Chandigarh, but most importantly some units that
exist and are in use.

In the 1950s, a unique opportunity to translate his concept on a grand scale presented itself in the
construction of Chandigarh, India. The city of Chandigarh is situated at the base of the Himalayas,
and the site is a gently sloping plain, with two seasonal rivulets marking its northwest and southeast
boundaries. The Master plan prepared by Le Corbusier was broadly similar to the one prepared by
the team of planners led by Albert Mayer and Mathew Novicki except that the shape of the city plan
was modified from one with a curving road network to rectangular shape with a grid iron pattern for
the fast traffic roads, besides reducing its area for reason of economy. The city plan was conceived
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as post war Garden City wherein vertical and high

rise buildings were ruled out, keeping in view the
socio economic-conditions and living habits of the
people.

The most significant role played by Le Corbusier in Chandigarh was in conceiving the city's present
urban form. It is the well-ordered matrix of his generic neighborhood unit' and the hierarchical
circulation pattern of his 7Vs' that has given Chandigarh its distinctive character. The Matrix
comprises a regular grid of the fast traffic V3 roads which define each neighborhood unit, the
Sector'. What distinguishes Corbusier's design for Chandigarh are the attributes of its response to
the setting. The natural edges formed by the hills and the two rivers, the gently sloping plain with
groves of mango trees, a stream bed meandering across its length and the existing roads and rail
lines - all were given due consideration in the distribution of functions, establishing the hierarchy of
the roads and giving the city its ultimate civic form.

Design Philosophy
Le Corbusier can be said to be a straightforward man obsessed
with functionality and squeezing out the maximum economic
benefits out of the land. His ideas were pro-development, and
ideas were the ones that allowed todays pro-productivity world
to come into existence. He divided the functions of a city into
linear block zones as he believe that having a specific region
which catered for one function was the most sustainable way of
designing a city. This did limit the natural organic growth of the
city, as each zone would eventually only cater to itself. His ideas
were utopian, and have been referred to as Utopian urbanrevival plans.
for it is not really illogical that one entire superficies of a town
should be unused and reserved for a flirtation between the tiles
and the star? (Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 1974)
Le Corbusier tired of the extravagance of the traditions wanted to clear the slate. He didnt want
architecture to force beliefs into the masses. Architecture was a tool for a society to live the best
standard of life. Being this modernistic he paid attention to simpler things in life. By this statement
the interpretation gained is that clearing the surfaces of the buildings at eye level and cleaning the
slate giving the users nothing to forcefully look at subconsciously pushes them to search for
something. Rather than forcing shapes textures colors and depth into the viewers by heavy
ornamentation of the buildings le Corbusier wanted to give them the freedom to maybe notice the
textures of the tiles on the floors. If they found nothing there then they could look up into the sky go
back to nature and escape into the mysterious glamour of the starlit sky. For a change move their
neck beyond the 30 degree angle. (Radiant City Plan on pg.6 is a clear example).
In his work, Le Corbusier sets out an ambitious goal whose outlandish claim is exceeded only by the
authors own megalomania: by constructing a theoretically water-tight formula to arrive at the
fundamental principles of modern town planning. He admonishes town planners for their
shortsighted, hasty reactions to predictable problems, and calls down planning methodology
conceived without a strategic plan. Seeking to establish a new planning canon, he outlines
stipulations for a variety of elements in his theoretical city, and for developments within it:
The primordial instinct of every human being is to assure him of a shelter. The various classes of
workers in society to-day no longer have dwellings adapted to their needs; neither the artisan nor
the intellectual. (Gosling)
It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of to-day: architecture or
revolution (Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 1974)
The following quotes show the translation of his geometrical work into the urban field. Uniformity was
something that he believed was a necessity in order to bring the lack of uniformity into the minds of
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people. He believed that only strict uniformity would breed a chaos that would deem individuality
necessary.
The plan is a generator. Unity of law is a law of a good plan: simple law capable of infinite
modulation (Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 1974)
Standardization is imposed by the law of selection, and is an economic and social necessity.
Harmony is a state of agreement with the norms of our universe. Beauty governs all. (Corbusier,
Towards a New Architecture, 1974)
He said:
Rhythm is an equation ; equalization; compensation; modulation. (Corbusier, Towards a New
Architecture, 1974)
Building a city can be tricky in reference to time. While it is designed in the present it must cater for
the future, years ahead and capture the essence, habits and ideology of the people by studying their
past. Le Corbusier believed that a successful and workable urban design must be able to sustain
itself and grow infinitely. He, being a member of the organization called CIAM, Congress International
Modern Movement set up some of the first principles for the modernistic movement. He saw
architecture as an economic and political tool that could be used to improve the world. He had to
develop a design philosophy for modern urban planning which would support these beliefs and not
make a city become a burden rather than a tool. He put forward his Radiant City plan a conceptual
drawing of how he believed a city should work. In this plan he gave modulation and segregation of
building of different functions great importance. Basically it was the simple way of stack up zones
side by side. To add definition and depth to these zones he believed that the most important thing
for an urban plan to have is a modular pattern. This module can be infinitely repeated to ensure
future extensions and at the same time develop a rhythm of a city, a language or pattern. Le
Corbusier once said that divisions into units and modules were the best way to unite something.
Reason, and reason alone, would Justify the most brillant solutions and endorse their urgency.
(Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and it's Planning, 1971)
His visionary books, his startling white houses and his progressive urban plans set him at the head
of the modern movement in the 1920s, while in the 1930s he became more of a complex and
skeptical explorer of cultural and architectural possibilities. Le Corbusier frequently shifted position,
serving as Old Master of the establishment of modern architecture and as unpredictable and
charismatic leader for the young.
His ideas upon what the street should become, how it is currently being used and how it is beginning
to evolve were brilliantly interesting:
The street of to-day can sustain its human drama.
It can glitter under the brillance of a new form of light.
It can smile through its patchwork of advertisements.
It is the well-trodden path of the eternal pedestrian, a relic of the centuries, a dislocated organ that
can no longer function.
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The street wears us out.

And when all is said and done we have to admit it disgusts us.
Then why does it still exist? (Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and it's Planning, 1971)
He had severe beliefs on how a site and a city layout should be used. Verticality was one of the best
options he had, more or less giving birth to the idea of skyscrapers particularly as residential units.
He solved the contradiction between higher density and open space, and claimed that the architects
of that time were simply being ignorant by not addressing the issue of separating pedestrian and
vehicular flow. He said this was not just vital for urban circulation patterns but more so for the
ambience of the city itself as well as he pollution and environmental control.
.Therefore we must have roadways of ample dimensions and a proper division of their surface as
between motor-transport and foot-passengers. Then the street as we know it will cease to exist.
And the old districts makeshift expedient of canyon like cross-roads would no longer be tolerated in
residential and dormitory.

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Reception of Work
Jane Jacobs's critique is that this kind of urban planning and lifestyle, will make the city lose its
vitality, resulting in a loss of pleasure. She believed the city is an organism, detailed and diversified,
so that economic and social activities mixed with each other produce vibrant city, so it should be
seen in the context of life science urban rehabilitation, rather than cold figures, scientific planning
razed to the name of a large-scale urban redevelopment. A great city values the diversity, and this
diversity is the need to maintain a certain environment, such as street life, the importance of
neighborhood life is to control the car and refuse repetition of the urban landscape
Jane Jacobs: Le Corbusiers Utopia was a condition of what he called maximum liberty, by which he
seems to have meant not liberty to do anything much, but liberty from ordinary responsibility.
-

A Critic On His Work by Jane Jacobs

The city is dying today not because it is not geometrical, as Le Corbusier believes, but because it is
not organic. Geometric order is undoubtedly a fundamental means to give form to the city, but it is
alwaysonly a means. It is never an end in itself.2

le corb took edges too seriously. he compartmentalized every function into zones and boxes.
he gave functionality and max space use value more importance that humanity and nature
sensitivity.

Another Critic on his Theory

His modernistic approach towards having a separately defined infrastructure for pedestrians and
vehicular flow caused a very negative criticism for his urban philosophies. The specific notion was
proposed in Le Corbusiers unrealized project entitled Ville Contemporaine (Contemporary City) in
1922; which ultimately was perceived as a threat to mans natural responses:
"...the car would abolish the human street, and possibly the human foot. Some people would have
airplanes too. The one thing no one would have is a place to bump into each other, walk the dog,
strut, one of the hundred random things that people do ... being random was loathed by Le Corbusier
... its inhabitants surrender their freedom of movement to the omnipresent architect."
-

Robert Hughes - The Shock of the New

Le Corbusier doesnt seem that far away from Jane Jacobs in what he wanted to achieve, but they
are lightyears apart regarding their ideas about how cities best are transformed. Le Corbusier
believed in knocking down entire districts and rebuilding them from scratch (and he actually makes a
convincing case), for instance in his Voisin plan2 for rearranging the center of Paris shown in the
picture above. Jacobs, on the other hand, believes that change must be gradual and often affected
through indirect measures, as neighborhoods in cities are delicate organisms which must be
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handled with care or they will be destroyed. But what bothers me is that I cant find any mention of
shops, cafs, and restaurants in this residential district (or in the garden city, for that matter). Did he
really intend for all shopping, out of house dining, and visiting cafs to take place in the center of the
city?
- On The City of Tomorrow and its Planning by Josh Sadler

"Why is socializing in cities taken to be a good thing? Why do we assume it is beneficial for people to
experience urban variety, opportunity, and intrigue? These are not questions normally asked, and it
feels perverse to frame them as questions. Still, we have not always been so sure about socializing
in cities. We have forgotten the negative argument - that the unregulated social life of large cities is a
corrupting influence best avoided. It had never occurred to me to raise these questions until I began
research on Le Corbusier. At the same time that he is celebrated as the visionary architect of such
modernist masterpieces as the Villa Savoye (1928) and the pilgrimage chapel at Ronchamp (1955),
he is decried as an irresponsible and perhaps mentally disturbed city planner. In his Plan Voisin from
1925, for example, Le Corbusier proposed to demolish the center of Paris and replace it with towers
in parkland. The prospect of German cities bombed flat by the Allies during World War II made him
envious - the Germans were able to rebuild from ground zero. (Incidentally, many British planners
offered thanks to the Luftwaffe for returning the favor.) He made plans that would mean (as he put it
himself) the "Death of the Street." In proposing the elimination of side alleys and shops, in granting
limited space for cafs, community centers, and theaters, in dispersing them over great distances,
and constructing them of uninviting concrete, glass, and steel, Le Corbusier expressed his contempt
for the teeming hubbub that urbanists now esteem.
-

A Machine for the Society by Nate Berg

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Perception of the Group

The centerpiece of its plan was a group of sixty-story cruciform skyscrapers built on steel
frames and encased in curtain walls of glass. These skyscrapers were set within large,
rectangular park-like green spaces. At the center of the planned city was a transportation center
which housed depots for buses and trains as well as highway intersections and at the top, an
airport. Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways, and
glorified the use of the automobile as a means of transportation. (Wikipedia)

So far it has been that his philosophy (or rather his approach has been) pretty rigid and follows a
specific pattern. Le Corbusier has shown modernistic (practical and rational) solutions to happenings
which in his view were to be extinctive if not taken a timely measure. But the extremes and the
seriousness Corbusier devoted to Architecture certainly is very commendable; he tends to compare
most of the things with architecture: the soul (or core) of the subject in terms of beauty, functionality,
symmetry and were critically analyzed and tuned.
Eventually as we practically see the urban cities around us, what he proposed is now what is being
practiced throughout the entire world; the outburst of criticism probably was the traditional human
instinctive rejection to an abrupt new idea. It was noticed that the plans and work designed by him
were not necessarily sensitive to the natural environment and organic growth of a place. In a way,
those plans could be picked up and put anywhere, as he began from ground zero without much
regard to the existing designs.
The idea of building on stilts and growing vertically was very prophetic as the sudden growth of urban
growth was seen my him since before it started happening. Certainly, the idea of disconnecting the
pedestrian and vehicular movement was beautifully thought of, and beautifully put out as a thought.
Le Corbusier put forward a solution to one of the most challenging issues of urban planning; how to
protect the public from traffic noise and fumes while also giving them a reason to walk and not be
forced into becoming a handicap because of the extensive acceptance of cars and mechanical
transportation systems. Like everything else he physically divided these into different layers and
gave them both their own space.
As vehicular and pedestrian flow has to run side by side, his solution was to divide them vertically by
height. This would allow both an undisturbed flow. He proposed that the streets for the vehicular
movement should be on the ground level only, and the pedestrian flow as well as the buildings
themselves must be raised above the ground. Raising his buildings on piles supported his philosophy
of solutions being economically feasible, allowing the penetration of light, creating a physical sense
of lightness as well as clearing the space on the ground level for other functions such as parking.
There was no fear of making floating gardens, not as a designer, or a revolutionary, or as an architect
responsible for lives. Vertical growth was his solution to upcoming problems. In a harsh manner he
managed to selfishly obtain the use of everything whilst being surprisingly sensitive to the users at
the same time.
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Though his ideas were sometimes completely incompatible with the concept of community, but the
spaces he proposed had the tendency to not just create a personal space, but also to make invitingly
public spaces to become more harmonious. In that way, he truly was an architectural genius, to have
the capacity to understand the power of architecture and to try to use it in such a subtle manner.
Perhaps his ideas to create chaos through enforcing uniformity was feasible, as it would then be an
idea bred into the minds of the users without them realizing it, it would be like planting a seed that
would eventually lead to the society developing itself and realizing where its headed, and then
changing its course. In that brilliant and possibly cynical way, he may just have changed the course
of mankinds development as individuals and sped up the process of their own self-awareness.

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Conclusion
Although many criticize his work of robotizing everyday life into strict paths and cubicles, Le
Corbusier did put forward many functional solutions for small urban problems. His whole urban idea
might not be acceptable as whole parts of his philosophies can be merged with more organic
solutions to find not just a balanced urban design philosophy, but perhaps an ultimate solution for
the generations to come. Though his harsh, pro-development ideas were disregarded at first, but
eventually it was their different versions that took the architectural world by the feet, and today we
see everyone running the race of building vertically with blatant disregard for any sensitivity of the
environment OR the user.
Cultures and ways of life vary throughout the world, so a standard philosophy can never be accepted
globally, so it would be ignorant to completely accept or eradicate his ideas. His ideas were too
extreme to be implemented in any situation, but geniuses and revolutionaries understand that it is
perhaps only the experience of the extreme that creates the importance of balance in humans, and
that ideas will perhaps have to be implemented over and over again in that extreme way for every
new generation that comes.
The only question that remains, though we already see it happening, is that whether or not the
eventual result of a self-actualized specie is worth giving it the experience of what it should not have
to go through.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Corbusier, L. (1971). The City of Tomorrow and it's Planning. London Architectural Press.
Corbusier, L. (1974). Towards a New Architecture. London Architectural Press.
Gosling, D. (n.d.). The Evolution of American Urban Design. Wiley Academy.
Gray, S. (2002). Architects on Architects. McGraw-Hill.
Rob Krier, C. K. (2006). The Making of a Town. Andreas Papadakis.
http://www.planetizen.com/node/29959
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-legacy-of-le-corbusier-429194.html
http://tesugen.com/archives/04/06/corbus-city-of-tomorrow
http://www.patrickseguin.com/en/designers/le-corbusier/biography/
http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5082/
http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/art-history-le-corbusiers-2
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-legacy-of-le-corbusier-429194.html
http://www.slideshare.net/ctlachu/planning-of-chandigarh-by-le-corbusier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandigarh
http://www.archdaily.com/162279/ad-classics-chandigarh-secretariat-le-corbusier/
http://kristopherhartley.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/le-corbusier-a-contemporary-city-from-the-city-oftomorrow-and-its-planning-summary/
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/11/evolution-urban-planning-10-diagrams/3851/
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/11/evolution-urban-planning-10-diagrams/3851/
http://www.contemporaryurbananthropology.org/pdfs/Le%20Corbusier,%20City%20of%20Tomorrow.pdf

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