iii. Eugenics and Modernism Le Corbusier and the Standard Human

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eugenics and modernism

While the relationship between biopolitics and geology has been largely ignored when considering the Anthropocene, biology has been weaponized as a tool for othering. Biology and the evolutionary theory have, throughout history, been used by the oppressor to justify their means and methods for domination. So while biopolitics is intentionally ignored during the Anthropocene discourse to incriminate those exploited as well through universalist arguments, eugenics has been used to justify slavery and colonization to prove that those colonized needed to be “civilized” since they were evolutionarily inferior to the Caucasian race.

This attempt to evolutionarily prove racial inferiority has affected how the built environment and the discourse around architecture has developed as well. Modernism in architecture resulted as a response to the Industrial Revolution and as a critique of ornamentation. It was always an ally of capitalist modes of production. It wanted to standardize design.

In 1942, Le Corbusier wrote an article in the

Comodeia—a journal co-opted for Nazi propaganda, and within it, presented a drawing of a tree. This tree had three major branches and emerges from the trunk that is the French State. The left branch is supposed to represent Man and his immediate environment: the region, the central branch represents Man and his family: the social structure, and the right branch represents cultivation of land and trade. 42 “ Le Corbusier co-opted Darwin’s diagram to illustrate the interconnectedness of man, nature, and family, all held together by the State and its executive tool—the built environment. Le Corbusier was, with this tree, placing himself within the company of evolutionists, inserting a powerful orthopedic function whereby the stability of the family, the French nation, and its empire depend on the stability of the physical environment. At the epicenter of this doctrine was Lamarckian eugenics. 43 Lamarckian eugenics strove for the refinement of the human race, and relied on the manipulation of the built environment to achieve that. Le Corbusier’s work was based on this manipulation, and he believed architecture and objects like furniture to be tools of eugenics that “medically” corrected humans. 44 His work to create the Modulor was an establishment of the standard type of human that could serve as the mold for the betterment of the human race through the manipulation of the built environment. 45 This theory went on to inspire other designers like Henry Dreyfuss to create their own standard humans. 46

It becomes important to study the roots of the Modernist movement, because the establishment of standard dimensions for design has carried on to how design is approached today. For instance, seat belts are designed keeping the 50th percentile male as the standard for testing, resulting in 47% more women getting injured and dying in car accidents than men. Similarly, due to testing based on the 50th percentile white male, military gear, spacesuits, even heart attack symptoms disproportionately put women at risk. 47

The built environment has been normalized to be catered to the standard type, a type that was established back in 1452. 48 There is need to study the interrelated nature of oppression since the complacency to normativity and the discourse of “this is how it has always been done” continues to oppress those who are not the standard the built environment is designed for.

42. Fabiola López-Durán and Moore, Nikki. “Le Corbusier, Architecture, and Eugenics : From France to Brazil and Back.” In Across Space and Time: Architecture and the Politics of Modernity. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2017). 159–74. 43. López-Durán and Moore, 159. 44 Ibid, 162. 45 Ibid, 169. 46.Henry Dreyfuss, Designing for People (New York: Allworth Press, 2012). 47.Ritu Prasad, “Eight Ways the World Is Not Designed for Women,”BBC News (BBC, June 5, 2019), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-uscanada-47725946. 48. 1452 refers to the date described by Sylvia Wynter as the beginning of the Anthropocene—the first time enslaved peoples were put to work in the Portugese Islands of Madeira.