Observing the past century

Le Corbusier's Maison Ozenfant Observing the past century, we remark human kind's need for evolution into a better way of life, the modernist era is the one in which architecture left behind all the past influences and tried to revolutionize itself, goal achieved by numerous architects in their own way, some of them also being my favourites such as: Mies van der Rohe, Josef Hoffman, le Corbusier, and others alike.

By taking in consideration all of their work, I've decided to write my opinion on le Corbusier's first house ever built in Paris, Villa Ozenfant. Built in 1922, it symoblizes le Corbusier's and Ozenfant's collaboration on spreading their “Purist” movement, an attempt to restore regularity in a war-thorn France post World War I. Le Corbusier, birth named Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer and also, the reason for which he is mostly known, one of the pioneers of the internatonal style, known today as the modernist current.

His most popular manifesto, best summed up in Villa Savoye, is “Le Corbusier's Five points of Architecture”. Manifesto which sums up the architect's experience in five representative points of his idea of an ideal house.

By approaching the subject in an industrial manner, le Corbusier considered the workshop as the artist's factory where he produces his art. Following this judgement, he came up with the idea of using the form of a sawtooth for the skylight in order to give the cuboid workshop the best possible lightining.

Focusing more on the artist's needs and desires, without letting the aestetic factor get in the way, le Corbusier put more emphasis on functionality and the ability to control the natural factor of light imperiously necessary for the act of creation to be accomplished.

The interior allows for a better assessment over the spatiality and utility which is indicated by the unique style used for its concept, while the exterior is defined by an austerity of elements which distracts us from the rigurous structure showed by the plans that assemble the building.

By observing the two facades, we notice the architect's perfectionist personality, not letting any detail neglected. Showing how much he had learned from his travels, the wonderfully calculated facades reveal the great influence the classic works such as the Parthenon had on le Corbusier.

The main dominant of the house being the two walled, almost-squarred windows, the architect manages to accomplish with great compositional depth an ambient which suits all the needs of an artist's workshop, balancing the verticality of the house with the long horizontal window which covers most of the first floor.

Over the years, the house has undergone some major changes due to the different owners it had. Its last owner made changes that gave the house a more contemporary look, like eliminating the saw teeth and replacing them with a concrete slab, that changed the builings identity completely, making it less of an architectural monument which focuses on verticality and more of a balanced paralipipedic structure.

Drawing a conclusion, it can be said le Corbusier's Ozenfant house is a perfect example of his modernist style, having its concept based on his five principles of architecture.