L’Esprit Nouveau Pavilion Modernism from equipment to the city Xiaoyan Dong ARCH 3304 Column Wall Elevation Facade Instructor: Jerry Wells
* sketch on site, L’Esprit Nouveau Pavilion, Bologina, Italy
Basic Information: Project Name: L’Esprit Nouveau Pavilion Architect:
Le Corbusier
Date:
1925
Location:
Paris, France
Client:
the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts
“The program of that scheme was as follows, the rejection of decorative art as such, accompanied by an affirmation that the sphere of architecture embraces every detail of household furnishing, the street as well as the house, and a wider world still beyond both.
Introduction
My intention was to illustrate how, by virtue of the selective principle (standardization applied to mass-production), industry creates pure forms; and to stress the intrinsic value of this pure form of art that is the result of it. Secondly to show the radical transformations and structural liberties reinforced concrete and steel allow us to envisage in urban housing - in other words that a dwelling tan be standardized to meet the needs of men whose lives are standardized. And thirdly to demonstrate that these comfortable and elegant units of habitation, these practical machines for living in, could be agglomerated in long, lofty blocks of villa-flats.”
Le Corbusier expressed a total rejection of the decorative arts in the design of the pavilion. The unornamented, mass-produced equipments (such as glassware and crockery) displayed in the pavilion’s living room shared the same identity of purity and geometrical logic with the overall spatial organization of the housing unit. Likewise, some compositional features, like the shift of axis/center, the overlapping of space, the mediation between solid and void etc., were reappeared in the scale of urban proposals. The idea of “archiecture as the machine for living” ran through the project through sequential scales.
* quotation from Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret : oeuvre complète 1910-1929.
The Pavilion de L’Esprit Nouveau was a temporary building constructed in 1925 within the framework of the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris. For Le Corbusier the 1925 exposition provided the opportunity to present his vision of an appropriately reframed city. Not only a visual demonstaration of his L’Esprit Nouveau publications, the Pavilion de L’Esprit Nouveau also functioned as a manifesto. It consisted of a fully outfitted model home, equipped with standardized furnishings and Purist paintings, as well as displays of Le Corbusier’s town planning schemes.
However, all these ideas were quite unusual at a time when Art Nouveau was regarded primarily as a decorative art, the reaction from the organizers of the exhibition to this project was hostile. A fence four feet high was placed around the pavilion to hide the eyes of the public. Despite the reaction of contemporary critics, the 1925 Pavilion de L’Esprit Nouveau has a huge influence on the design of modern interiors and dwelling projects of Le Corbusier and generations of successive architects.
The Equipment of a house
01
A new term “the equipment of a house“ has been used to replace the world “furnishing” in the design of the new housing unit. Equipment means the classification of the various elements necessary for domestic operations. The scientific study of chairs and tables has led to entirely new conceptions of what their form should be: a form which is no longer decorative but purely functional. In replacing the innumerable furnishings of all shapes and sizes, standard cabinets are incorporated in the walls or set against the walls to serve their daily functions. The carbinets are constructed of metal instead of wood to show the purity of industry created products. They constitute, in themselves, the sole furnishing for the house, thus leaving a maximum amount of available space within each room.
The machine for living
02
The Pavilion de L’Esprit Nouveau was constructed in two parts. The eastern part represents a cell-unit of the Villas-Apartment Block. The unit reveals Le Corbusier’s five points of architecture: by organizing the unit on a regular column grid, the architect is able to incorporate free-plan wall elements into the design; The full-glass window on the south facade shows the loftiness of the double height living space, while the strip windows on the north facade provides a continous view; The exterior terrace garden space has a dialogue with the living room and allows for sufficient sunlight and air flow into the unit. The geometrical logic of the unit organization is clear and honest based on program and function. However, it is articulated in such a way that different readings can happen at the same time, which is not unlike the cubist painting by Le Corbusier.
A vision of urban form
03
The pavilion was to be imagined as one dwelling in a series of much larger blocks, which were also likewise just components of more extensive urban plans. The western part of the pavilion provided a backdrop for a number of drawings and images, including two panoramic cityscapes, painted by Le Corbusier and installed in purpose-built display walls. Described as ‘dioramas’, these installations served to illustrate Le Corbusier’s urban plans as panoramic views: one of the Ville Contemporaine (1922), an ideal city for three million inhabitants and another of the Plan Voisin (1925) in Paris. In both of the urban planning project, the housing unit served as a module that can be assambled next to each other, together bring the concept of “machine for living” to a greater scale.
Similar to the proposal of L’Esprit Nouveau Pavilion in 1925, the Unité d’Habitation project in Marseille in 1952 shared the same features of modularity and compactness. Units were constructed based on a regular structural grid and like the former proposal, a double height living space was celebrated. However, a lot modifications has been done in the Unité d’Habitation project: the exterior terrace garden in L’Esprit Nouveau was sacrificed and the unit was sqeezed into a highly compacted strip to achieve maximum use of floor area; two reciprocal “L-shaped” units were designed interlocking with each other to increase the efficiency of interior corridor.
Ville Contemporaine (1922) Le Corbusier proposed a vision of modern housing and framed the idea of Urbanification in his ideal city for three million inhabitants. Seems siteless, the project generated a strong urban identity by itself and ready to be implanted into any context.
Plan Voisin (1925) Plan Voisin in 1925 was Le Corbusier’s experiment to implant his vision of an ideal city into the existing urban context. The proposal was purely spatial and functional. Even though a little adjustment were made to fit into the site, the proposal seemed extamely dominant, creating a huge contrast to the existing social and cultural context.
Bibliography: Eliel, Carol S. L’Esprit nouveau : Purism in Paris, 1918-1925. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2001 Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret : oeuvre complète 1910-1929. Zurich: Éditions d’Architecture, 1967 Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier, architect, painter, writer. New York: Macmillan Co., 1948 Marcus, George H. Le Corbusier : inside the machine for living. New York : Monacelli Press, 2000 Troy, Nancy J. Modernism and the decorative arts in France : art Nouveau to Le Corbusier. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1991 Website: Fondation Le Corbusier. http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/