3.3 Architecture for the characters: Development of characters There are cases where architects followed a tradition of developing characters to produce architecture in the past. A well-documented case following this tradition is Le Corbusier’s ‘modern man’. Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier is interested in breaking Victorian and bourgeois traditions (Flint, 2014). He developed the modern man as a tool to break the old traditions. Le Corbusier invented new ways of thinking and building in the architectural discipline. Modern Man (Flint, 2014) is a biography that portrays Le Corbusier as a constant self-inventor and genius (Argitect, 2010). He sought to refashion the world through his vision. Le Corbusier invented the ‘Modern Man’ to develop the theory that supports his buildings that fall under the modern architecture category. He used this figure of the modern man to describe an architectural context that insists that sacred buildings conform to the modern man’s proportions. Although the creation of the modern man was an attempt to start a new vocabulary for designers to draw from, this study argues that the concept of the modern man is flawed in that Le Corbusier’s aspirations were subjective and imposed on readers, as men and women are influenced to have the same aspirations. Critics labelled Le Corbusier as a stubborn
man whose strong opinions were often contradictory regarding the urban form. Hseuh-Bruni (2015) mentions that the French architect portrayed himself as concerned with improving living conditions. In truth, Le Corbusier was obsessed with uniformity, artificial order, and control that symbolised totalitarian rule. This totalitarianism resulted in segregated societies (Hseuh-Bruni, 2015). Le Corbusier’s work was influenced by the aftermath of World War I: pollution, poverty, tuberculosis, overcrowding, and chronic housing shortages (Maycroft, 2010). He wrote passionately about his aspirational architectural concepts. He called a home a machine in which to live. His utopia included affordable homes for the masses located within cities arranged for efficiency and maximum order (Flint, 2014). This collection of machines was a utopian city for the modern man. The creation and description of users of a particular architecture is a tradition that early architects employed. Le Corbusier’s sketch of the Modulor man showed a silhouette of a man who was 1.83m tall. The first sketch of this man was finished in 1943. The value of the sketch was proportion and how proportions bring order to the relationship between humans and their surroundings.
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