Technical Difficulties

Le Corbusier proudly drew the piling for the Pavilion Suisse of 1933. It is a particularly compelling section, since it represents the breaking of the Palladian wisdom, to load the plan equally to avoid cracking, given new technologies applicable to both surveying and construction. Colin Rowe might have dwelt on this in his magnificent essay 'Mathematics of the Ideal Villa' (1947) but he didn't.

Notwithstanding endless technical innovation, I cannot escape the thought that these days such technical innovation lies rather more in the realm of desire (dating sites) than construction (drilling piles). It is possible to think that with the provision of reasonable toilets, effective thermal insulation and heating etc, the job, architecturally speaking, is already done, and this asks many questions as to the point of the technically orientated view of progress within architecture. We still stand up, then lie down, we still piss, we still shit, we still need to keep warm, we still eat and drink, we cum, we learn things, do things and generally need to be entertained. Worst of all we worry, and I really don't need the equivalent of a spaceship to do it all in. This is a continuity with the ancients I cannot avoid.

But Are They Any Good?

I ran a workshop the other day on housing. In the morning we did vernacular housing from the workers cottage to the town house, and in the afternoon the modern apartment block. Using the vernacular as an introduction, it was easier to answer that question that looms unanswered in the blogs below; no matter the utopian vision, is modern housing any good?
In the morning, the drawings that made their way on to the flip chart illustrated an organic progression, where largely pre-industrial methods were marshalled in the service of shelter, heating, ventilation, transport, waste disposal, sociality, so called 'culture' and so on. The section drawing of a London townhouse and mews became quite an agglomeration as crappers and their soil pipes entered the fray, or as immigration and flight disturbed the social consensus. At each stage I asked the question; and where is the architects craft here?
It turned out the wasn't really too much for the architect to do.
On the other hand, by the afternoon the architects role was crystal clear; perfected 'units', cells, or modules get racked and stacked in some kind of frame, with the totality of what was previously 'organic' marshalled all in one go by the architect. Within this conception there were (of course) multiple occasions for creativity, and the role of the architect somewhat delicate; predicated on the need for virtue, working for the greater good in the tradition of the enlightenment.
I still haven't answered the question above, however the principle 'issues' surrounding 'housing' were pretty much solved by 1960, and if the architect was up to snuff, and you didn't mind appreciating his (usually his) generosity, what could be the problem?
It is the latter half of that conception that is problematic in terms of 'quality', for if you acknowledge the importance of so many other factors in constructing the built environment, the argument against modern housing is a bit like the argument for neoliberalism; the whole business is too complex to be controlled by experts. This means you can never (again) have the perfect city; and that mess is the law.
Which is a shame if you are a good architect, and a very good reason for architects to season themselves against the neoliberal establishment.

P.S. To wit, I woke up thinking about that funnel on the roof of L-C's Marseilles block. Of course it alludes to a ships funnel, but a ships funnel usually slopes backwards in the wind. Then I thought of a cartoon fart. It's a fucking cartoon fart! The Ancient Greeks would have cheered.

Top photo by David Granick. Lower photo Fondation Le Corbusier.

In the Beginning

In Le Corbusier's final testament he states 'in life it is above all necessary to act'. This would indicate that he wasn't interested in idle speculation, in just talking about it. It might also bring to mind that elemental biblical challenge as to our beginning; with the 'act' or with 'the word', but I'm not much of a bible reader so I don't know.
However such a view allows us to revisit his urban planning proposals with the view that he really meant it, and that he really meant his proposals for Paris (as above) of the twenties. But if we imagine ourselves the in the nineteen twenties, they must have looked provocative beyond belief, far from any imaginable reality. Indeed, they are drawn that way, with the perspective drawn as above, which the ordinary viewer would never see. This means these proposals can easily be read as speculative necessity, a seizing of opportunity by the architect who's tools are drawing rather than building, as a vision, and in the end, as 'utopia'.
But if we imagine ourselves in 1933, the mood has changed entirely. If you look at the post below ('Le Corbusier the Fascist') I say of course he was, but within a great many qualifications; such as it is impossible to imagine him holding any of the more idiotic views of Nazism (for instance).
And now, when we look at his 1933 scheme for Antwerp and see that in his endnote to The Radiant City's republication a year before his death; his coda, the end, he raises this to the summit of his achievements; his attempts at a 'Homeric world' we begin to understand why:

We understand that under the conditions of the thirties he genuinely thought he might be able to win that competition and build it. This was the dream worked out. He produced 30m of drawings to prove it; we are confronted not by views from the metaphorical mountaintop, but designs for traffic intersections and underpasses. He was bitterly disappointed when it was rejected.
This further sheds light on the notion of the hero; Le Corbusier's self image as a latter day Odysseus. If your intention is always to act, then you are mostly doomed to fail. Such a notion is embodied in the very concept of the hero, since as humans, how can we expect to be able to compete with figures who are half mortal and half immortal god. This is the difference between me and James Bond; James Bond is a necessary fiction.
So how extraordinary complex these images become, not just as images that might conjour up a bad day in Stevenage, but in the mental construct of their author. Our contemporary technologies are ridding us of the opportunity to act, there are no heroes anymore, but the apparent fallacies that underpin the attempt would seem to be genuine human weakness. It would seem an absolute cosmological necessity not to abolish tragedy.