FUNKTIONNEL

Page 9 of 18

FUNKTIONNEL (Valencia)

On September 13 1958, Le Corbusier is flying from Stockholm to Paris: departure 8.30 am, 20 minute stop-over in Copenhagen and then Paris at 11 o’clock. Warmed by smoked salmon and whiskies, he philosophises about his recent discussions in Stockholm:

La question : « Funktionnel ! » Voici MMS [Messieurs] : l’Orthographe + la syntaxe. Yes ! OK, dac, dac [d’accord]! Mais que voulez-vous me dire ? De l’épicerie ou du cœur ? Et amis, attention au mal de cœur, au mal au cœur. Il faut rester les pieds par terre et lever le nez, la tête, regarder l’horizon. Si vous atterrissez sur l’esprit, attention aux rochers, - c’est sec… et dur. Si vous chavirez dans le cœur c’est le mal de mer ou Dante au purgatoire (J’ai choisi le purgatoire, plus humain et varié que le paradis).

He warms to his task:

Cette distribution hollandaise de la terre me parait très Funktionnel, très Van Eesteren = très idiot = bouché à l’émeri, constipé, fini. Il ne reste plus qu’à mourir : on a fait son devoir. Ici la purge humaine (organisée, réglementée, fonctionnelle), après : le paradis (des imbéciles) : on sera heureux (on va pas rigoler ! on chantera des psaumes, avec les nichons croulants sur les genoux) Amen !

He describes approvingly the Swedish lakes and forests, but then the aeroplane crosses into the Netherlands:

Puis Hollande avec FUNKTIONNEL ! N[om] de dieu ! Tout est en règle : la mer est dominée par les dunes (les polders) les canaux p[ar] les bâtiments, les autoroutes avec croisements ponctuels etc… et cités jardin paradisiaques où la famille s’emmerde, dans ses clôtures, ses haies, son jardin etc. : on dirait un plan d’Architecte.Foutez les moi en pile, sur 50 [mètres] de hauteur, à 2000 ensembles ! Brassez, rassemblez, et attendez que la commune se forme = la vie : heurts et frottements, mais au lit : chacun chez soi !

Le Corbusier had warned against functionalism from his earliest architectural writings, but in his old age his criticisms take on racist features. The English, Dutch, Swiss and to an extent the Germans appeared to him congenitally unable to raise their noses and look to the horizon. Writing to his Swiss friend and supporter Professor Rudolf Fueter in 1950, he had declared:

Je tiens à affirmer ici avec la plus grande force : ces sacrés Suisses m'agacent avec leur conception du fini exagéré en architecture. Vous êtes un sage et moi aussi. Nous ne sommes pas des bourgeois, nous apprécions la rudesse des briques brutes, des joints rudement faits par le maçon, le badigeon passé sur une maçonnerie de briques brutes à l'intérieur d'une maison, etc…

It was not that technical perfection was insufficient; far worse, it was unsophisticated and bourgeois. The English, the Dutch and the Swiss were unable to appreciate real quality, the values of the spirit. As he said of his English colleagues at Chandigarh (and Pierre Jeanneret), “… aucun des 3 architectes senior n’a le moindre idée du Signe. Plus que cela, ils y opposent un frein presque frénétique p[our] cause de Salut. S.O.S. Save our Souls. »

And later he explained the reality of the symbolic :

J’accepte les signes, je crois aux signes. Car ils sont l’expression des réalités vécues ou l’évocation des questions sans réponses. Je m’arrête devant le symbole, devant la métaphysique = imagination, création valable en un temps et circonstances, objets et fétiches d’exploitation de l’homme, terre d’asile des évadés, évadeurs et évadables et des mythomanes. 

The polarisation of values in Le Corbusier’s thought, between the functional, the finished and the bourgeois on the one hand and the symbolic, rough and primitive on the other, developed along a slow trajectory from at least the Voyage d’Orient onwards. A key chapter in articulating the limitations of rational architecture is the lecture ‘Une Maison un palais’, first delivered in November 1927 in Zurich and then in Barcelona and Madrid in May 1928 and reprinted in an adapted version in the first part of his book of the same name. His celebration of the dignity and quality of the fishermen’s shacks in the pine forests of the Bassin d’Arcachon, and his apparent acceptance of Adolf Loos’s contention that architects, having no culture, were unable to design houses, is just one of many tributes to the primitive, the instinctual and the human in his lectures, writings and sketches of the end of the 1920s.

A year later he was defending himself against the charge of ‘lofty idealism’, from Karel Teige, and in 1931 writing his ‘Defence of Architecture.’ This was a crucial moment in his re-evaluation of himself, both as a leader of the Modern Movement and as target for attacks from traditionalists and Modernists alike.

On 14 December 1931, the newly founded journal L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui mounted an evening of ‘propaganda for modern architecture’ at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. This event was intended in part to show a number of films, and to engender a debate on modern architecture. Raymond Fischer was to chair the evening, with Le Corbusier and Henri Sauvage as the two principal speakers. This turned into an event comparable to the first night of Hugo’s Hernani on 25 February 1830. An hour before the event was due to start, over 2,000 people were in the hall, and a quarter of an hour after it began, a large group of Beaux Arts architecture students forced their way, uninvited, into the hall, overflowing the available seating and preventing a number of people outside from entering. The evening began with a number of films, including a history of the development of modern architecture scripted by Pierre Vago and Pierre Chenal’s film about Le Corbusier’s architecture. As soon as Le Corbusier began to speak, he was interrupted by alternating applause, whistles and foot stomping, so that he was barely able to make himself heard. According to Henri A. Storoge,

L’un des conférenciers prévu au programme comme simple “speaker” crut devoir déborder le rôle qui paraissait lui avoir été attribué. Pour des raisons dont mes camarades des diverses écoles sont seuls juges, une obstruction systématique fut organisée contre ce conférencier qui ne paraissait pas qualifié pour prendre aussi longuement la parole dans le cadre d’une telle soirée.’

In his notes for his lecture, Le Corbusier followed the familiar outlines of his lectures on architecture, in four parts.

(a) The machinist revolution in the nineteenth century had changed the world

(b) A new spirit had arisen, promoted by these changes, but only accessible to the sensitive few

(c) The new spirit had created a new aesthetic.

(d) ‘Alors, ACTION/ alors monde nouveau ; de conservateurs nous devenons conquérants’

We know from the reports of the lecture, that Le Corbusier responded to the violent heckling of the Beaux Arts students by counter-attacking, accusing the architects in charge of the still unfinished League of Nations building in Geneva of incompetence and plagiarism.

In the heat of the debate, Le Corbusier found himself being described as a functionalist and contrasted with the humanitarianism of Henri Sauvage. This was absolutely not his intention, and he left the hall with mixed feelings which coloured his later lectures. He was sufficiently stung by Sauvage’s lecture to respond to a number of his points. In the text he dictated afterwards for publication, Le Corbusier drew attention to the modernity of the Salle Pleyel and focused his fire on the baleful consequences of académisme, launching the slogan ‘…violence et pureté. Violence parce qu’il y a trop de pression égoïste et intéressée qui barre la route à tant d’enthousiasme.’ He also took the opportunity to repeat his mantra: ‘Laissez-moi vous le dire. Je n’ai eu depuis toujours comme véritable maître que le passé avec ses leçons si évidentes de conquêtes et d’optimisme’. This seems to have been in response to Sauvage’s reference to Le Corbusier’s campaign as ‘…en un mot cette démolition en grand de tout notre passé artistique…’. Le Corbusier also added a passage on modern music, clearly in response to Sauvage, who had appealed to music as an art in which fundamental rules did not stop composers establishing their individuality. Vago came to Le Corbusier ’s defence :

M. Sauvage fait la critique d’une école qui – parait-il – nie le sentiment dans l’architecture… Y-a-t-il un architecte plus sentimental que l’auteur de Vers une Architecture ? Plutôt nous lui reprocherions d’être plus poète qu’architecte ; de se préoccuper plus de la plastique que de la construction ; de se laisser guider plus par la fantaisie que par la raison.

Surprisingly, the Salle Pleyel meeting was reported in the Dutch national press, where a significant detail caught the attention of the reporter.

Het werd een herhaling van de oorlogszuchtige vredesmeeting in het Trocadero. Dadelijk al werd de spreker overstemd door een koor van trappelende en fluitende Beaux Arts-studenten. Men brulde hem toe: Spreek Fransch!, wat niet alleen doelde op Corbusiers Zwitsersch accent, doch tegelijk op het internationale van zijn grondstellingen. Maar geeft niet elk land aan de algemeene bouwbeginselen zijn eigen uitdrukkingswijs?

This report is also of interest in that it suggested that,

Waar de spreker faalde, slaagde echter de sonore film, door Pierre Chenal en hem vervaardigd. Het is een lesje in architectuur, dat men op alle hoogescholen zou moeten afdraaien.

It was in the expectation of a much warmer reception, therefore, that Le Corbusier packed his bags in January 1932 to visit Holland. He had been approached in the summer of 1931 by the Genootschap Nederland-Frankrijk to give two lectures in Rotterdam. He conceived of the idea of putting on an exhibition of his work at the same time. Not to be left out, Cor van Eesteren wrote on 27 December 1931 asking him to give a lecture in ‘la ville du romantisme’. He explained that he had approached an organisation possessing sufficient funds to honour him an appropriate fashion, but they had refused.

In his diary Le Corbusier reminded himself to prepare his slides, to take the plans of the Palace of Soviets project (along with a St Gobain report) and to read Ghyka. He took Charlotte Perriand with him and was met at Schipol airport by C. van Eesteren, A. Boeken, B. Merkelbach and Ch. Karsten. He gave one lecture in Rotterdam on 11 January in the Nutszaal on ‘La révolution architecturale fermentée par les techniques modernes’ and another in the same location on the 13th, entitled ‘la révolution architecturale apporte la solution aux problèmes de l’urbanisation des grandes villes’.. The same newspaper commented favourably on Le Corbusier’s ideas after his departure in: 'Le Corbusier en zijn fantasie', illustrating the hallway of the Villa Savoye, the elevation of the Palace of Soviets and a view of the Ville contemporaine. It is noticeable how the word ‘fantasy’ reappears in almost all of the Dutch accounts of these lectures.

On 12 January, Le Corbusier gave a lecture in Delft to the architecture students of the TH in the Weg- en Waterbouwkunde building. On Wednesday 13, Le Corbusier visited the exhibition of his work in Rotterdam at 10.00, apparently with Albert Otten and then visited Oud’s Kiefhoek housing estate. He also noted in his diary ‘gare Ravesteyn’ which presumably indicates an interest in Sybold van Ravesteyn’s functionalist buildings for the Dutch railways. Whether he was already aware of Ravesteyn’s criticism of the Dutch functionalists and his appreciation of Le Corbusier’s more formal and symbolical approach to architecture is not clear. On the evening of 14th January, according to his diary, Le Corbusier was in Amsterdam, after visiting Haarlem, and this was when he gave his lecture ‘Architecture et Urbanisme’, promoted by the ‘Architektenkern de 8’ in the great hall of the Koloniaal Institut in Amsterdam.

Throughout his visit, the journal De 8 en Opbouw supported him, publishing advertisements for his lectures, as well as a special edition with articles about his work, texts by Le Corbusier and summaries of the lectures. His lectures were well attended and listened to with close attention, if not without some close questioning:

Bij het vertoonen van de lange reeks lantaarnplaaties heeft Le Corbusier vele uiterst belangwekkende en klemmende vragen aangeroerd, die een langen uitleg zouden behoeven, maar waarvoor dit verslag de ruimte noch de gelegenheid bieden kan.Het heeft hem aan belangstelling en enthousiasme niet ontbroken, waarvan de volle zaal ondubbelzinnige blijken heeft gegeven.

Figure 1 Publicity for Le Corbusier's lectures in Rotterdam, in De 8 en Opbouw, January 1932 (Robert Mens, Bart Lootsma, Jos Bosman, Le Corbusier en Nederland, Utrecht 1985)

On his return to Paris, Le Corbusier wrote up his Dutch trip in a piece in Plans, with a fine and poetic description of the Dutch landscape, its great skies, special light and intimiste interiors. He praises the Dutch for first introducing an architecture of glass in the 17th century. He has warm praise for the ‘Frugès of Holland’ – ‘Van de Leo’ [Van de Leeuw] – and the Van Nelle factory which he described in the most glowing terms. Apart from a dig at the Dutch spherical cheeses, which he found ridiculous, there is little to compare with the radical criticisms of Dutch functionalism later in life. In Holland he was addressing Modernists. His task was to distance himself from functionalism and celebrate a symbolically rich and sensitive response to the machine age. Whenever Le Corbusier visited a city to lecture, he took great care to position himself carefully in relation to the local groups of architects. We can see how strategic his allegiances were. C. Van der Vlught, Sybold van Ravesteyn and Jan Duijker were men with (at the time) impeccable Modernist credentials but who might be expected to appreciate Le Corbusier’s position.

Figure 2 Le Corbusier photographed in front of the exhibition dedicated to his work in Rotterdam, January 1932 (FLC L4(5)17)

The lectures at Rotterdam and Amsterdam were apparently substantially the same. Their main content is summarised in a single page of sketches. This follows the standard pattern of Le Corbusier’s lectures at this time: a short introduction carefully framed to interest his audience, followed by a long section in which he expanded on his doctrines with the aid of diagrams and illustrated examples drawn on large sheets of paper, ending, after a short break, with a sequence of transparencies showing his own work. Lecturing in French, he had developed this technique for performing in foreign countries.

Figure 3 Sheet of sketches illustrating the lectures at Rotterdam and Amsterdam, January 11 and 14 1932 (FLC C3(8)267)

With a knowledge of Le Corbusier’s lectures on urbanism, this sheet is sufficient to summarise the argument, illustrated by sketches on large sheets of paper. Le Corbusier wrote out a very similar page of notes, which he signed and sent to De 8 en Opbouw (see Figure 4). Albert Otten describes his lecture like this:

Na een korte voorgelezen inteiding, met een rake uitenzetting, hetgeen hij onder académisme verstaat, begon hij al schetsende op groote vellen papier zijn ideën toe te lichten.

Otten also tells us that Le Corbusier discussed the troubles of Pessac and showed a number of his houses, including the Stein-de Monzie Villa, the project for the League of Nations and the Palace of Soviets. He argued that the bane of modern city life was the time wasted commuting to and from work (diagram top left). The Ville Radieuse would liberate 9 hours of free time, indicated in the next pie chart by two little flowers, allowing 1 ½ hours for meals and 4-6 hours for sleep. The extra time would be allocated to ‘récupération, entretien physique, divertissements, étude.’ This argument, which featured in every lecture he gave on urbanism, must have been more persuasive in some cities (such as Paris or London) rather than others. Perhaps the Dutch would have considered that the organisation of public housing and public transport in both Rotterdam and Amsterdam was considerably more efficient than other European cities.

He would then have set about showing how the Ville Radieuse resolved all the necessary problems of life: work, divided into industry and commerce, supplied by ‘grande industrie’ on the one hand and ‘city’ on the other. Le Corbusier paid a very affectionate and admiring tribute to the Van Nelle factory and Van der Vlugt in his article in Plans, describing it as ‘le plus beau spectacle des temps modernes que je connaisse.’ He later gave a warm tribute to Van der Vlught after the latter’s early death in 1936.

With Van der Vlugt modern architecture lost one of its best men. I know Van der Vlugt's magnificent achievement, the Van Nelle Works in Rotterdam. …

Van der Vlugt's art possessed an exceptional purity, and a rich and variegated imagination. How many works are there in the modern world to rival the Van Nelle factory? He had succeeded in making these rooms, destined for work and modern production, into spaces full of light and wellbeing and I thought I noticed, when I visited the factory from the basement to the top, that the attitude of the workers there was different from anywhere else. They were surrounded with the benefit of a warm, humane and friendly architecture. With this work Van der Vlugt had realised in a splendid manner the very vocation of the architect, which is to bring happiness to people. He had done this in a particularly pernicious field, that of the factory.

The lecture would have finished with his full exposition of the Ville Radieuse and his solution for housing in the modern city, probably along the lines of the slightly later article which he published in the second volume of the Oeuvre Complète. The mention of ’14 m2 par habitant’ indicates that he would have made use of the minimum dwelling plans on which Charlotte Perriand and others were working at this time. The sketch shows that the slabs would have been raised off the ground on pilotis which would have penetrated the 5 metres of sand in the Dutch dunes to find their anchor far below. The Pavillon Suisse, with its gravel pit under the pilotis, had shown how this could be done.

As was his normal practice, most of Le Corbusier’s notes for the lectures at Rotterdam and Amsterdam focused on the introduction. He wrote alternative openings for Rotterdam and Amsterdam and then two pages common to both audiences. In fact, the Rotterdam lecture had two opening pages, the second one being added at the end of his notes. This afterthought begins like this:

On veut faire aujourd’hui de l’architecte, un sociologue. Un architecte réalise des constructions matérielles ou des programmes. Les programmes c’est la sociologie. L’architecte reste l’ordonnateur, le metteur en ordre, dont des constructions dont les autres convictions irrécusables sont :

La loi de la pesanteur

La pression des fluides

Les lois de l’esthétique ou de la plastique

L’esthétique c[est]-à-d[ire] à notre époque surtout, l’expression d’une qualité spécifique de l’esprit contemporain. En l’occurrence de l’époque machiniste.Telle est l’action de l’architecte.

This clearly sums up his position statement vis-à-vis the Dutch functionalists, who he saw as remaining at the level of sociologists and failing to grapple with the ambitious task of architecture. Albert Otten, in an article in the Bouwkundig Weekblad, suggested a way of mediating this contrast.

Zoo nu en dan hooren wij de woorden « moderne logique » en gelukkig niet “nieuwe zakelijkheid”, hetgeen ook natuurlijk is, omdat zijn werk en zijn ideën voortzettingen zijn van den Franschen geest, van Fransche architectuur, met Franschen materialen.

By contrast, his first introductory page addressed the audience in a more personal and emotional manner:

Croyez bien qu’il faut aujourd’hui un certain cran pour mener par le monde une croisade d’urbanisme moderne.

Le monde est malade, désorganisé, brisé à tout jamais dans ses plus chères traditions, ses plus chères convictions, ses plus chers espoirs même d’en sortir un jour sans douleur.

On ne voit qu’écroulementDécouragementEt abdicationPourtant, à l’heure de désagrégationOu plutôt bien avant ‘’ ‘’ ‘’ ‘’C’est construire qu’il faudrait.

His revised introductory page summarised the emotive description of the predicament of modern man more succinctly:

Le monde moderne en pleine perturbation n’a pas exprimé et moins encore réalisé, son aspect conforme.Tout est à faireTout n’est encore que velléité.Rien n’est déjà harmonie.

By 1931, Le Corbusier was not describing the machinist age in the positivist terms of the 1920s. The machine age was bringing a new dark age and every effort had to be made to find hope:

Pour construire il faut un plan, des plans en tous domaines.

Et devant le crépuscule qui s’éteint sur nos vies d’hommes machinistes écrasés par la machine, il faut dresser l’espoir, par un acte de courage, de foi, de volonté guidé par une raison d’acier et un cœur ouvert à toutes choses ( …) dans le fracas du fer et le tumulte blâmable de la production contemporaine, il faut sereinement établir le plan de la libération humaine.

Nous, architectes et urbanistes, une grande tache nous attend. Dans 10 années il faut que le monde moderne ait bâti la maison, c'est-à-dire qu’il se soit équipé et qu’il ait assuré à tout individu les trésors de la liberté individuelle par l’organisation des services collectifs.

Note how the task facing the architects was ‘to assure the treasures of individual liberty through collective services’, not quite the form of words which Karel Teige or Mart Stam might have chosen but close to their theoretical position. Architecture, Le Corbusier goes on to say, having achieved its own revolution (perhaps he was thinking of his villas of the 1920s) was now being blocked by urbanism. Only when urbanism and architecture could work together would solutions be found.

But at this point Le Corbusier’s argument takes on an anti-capitalist rhetoric which must have warmed the hearts of his Rotterdam audience:

Architecture et urbanisme conjugués – je l’ai déjà affirmé l’autre jour, c’est la solution à la crise des temps modernes :

C’est l’abandon de la fabrication de produits de consommation illicite :

les imbécillités qui nous assaillent de toutes parts et nous enlisent et c’est la mise en fabrication de produits de consommation licite :

la maison -

La ville et les agro-villes

C’est la grande industrie s’emparant du bâtiment : programme immense.

And he finished his Rotterdam introduction :

Je vais essayer de vous montrer l’espoir que j’ai dans des propositions précises.

His tactic is clear. Despite making a clear and forceful defence of Architecture as an art, he was prepared to attack consumerist capitalism in a way which allowed his audience to believe that he was in favour of a nationalised building industry in the service of a Socialist state.

Figure 4 Le Corbusier lecturing in Amsterdam on 14 January 1932, with a text he supplied to De 8 en Opbouw, January 21 1932.

Curiously, the notes for his introduction to the Amsterdam audience, three days later, focused almost entirely on Rotterdam.

J’étais découragé à Paris où tout dort (et où peut-être on se réveillera à temps)

A Rotterdam, en naviguant dans le port, je sentais la vie : l’eau en mouvement et les formidables entreprises humaines : les bateaux et l’équipement des docks : toute l’aventure de la mer.

It was a point of honour for Le Corbusier to thoroughly explore the cities in which he lectured. As was becoming a common practice in his visits to major cities, he had himself taken up in an aeroplane to obtain an urban perspective, but he also toured the port by boat. As he said, ‘

Rotterdam possède la moitié de la victoire : son port.Que Rotterdam élève la ville pour la vie harmonieuse d’une journée solaire de 24 heures… digne des moyens dont nous ont fait cadeau cent années de science.

But there was a sting in the tail of this praise for Amsterdam’s rival for the leadership of Dutch modernism. For it turned out that the Rotterdam architects had turned their backs on their biggest asset.

En plongeant d’avion, sur la Ville, j’ai pensé que les gens de terre, ignoraient cette vie palpitante et grisante du port : ils vivent sur le sol, à niveau de la terre humide, dans les rues qui sont des corridors et le nez sur le trottoir.

Pensant architecture, je me disais que si on me le demandait, j’installerais l’académie d’architecture, l’école des architectes, dans le port, dans un vieux paquebot désaffecté pour que les jeunes gens sentent et voient qu’entre la terre et le ciel, il y a de l’espace pour dresser l’outillage moderne du logis et du travail, et que les moyens qui sont à notre disposition, l’acier et le béton.

Was this a way of giving the Amsterdam architects a stick with which to beat their more hard-line colleagues in Rotterdam, who were clearly in need of spiritual sustenance? Is not the metaphor of lifting their noses from the humid pavements to take in the sweep of the sea and sky as much a moral and spiritual lesson as a call to design work and living places in the sky?

At any rate, he continues immediately to praise the Van Nelle factory:

En visitant une fabrique magnifique, ce matin, que peu d’entre vous ont vu fonctionner, j’ai repris mon plein d’enthousiasme et toute ma foi. Vous avez à Rotterdam, une preuve étincelante de la vie qui vient, de cette pureté, nette, catégorique dont j’ai qualifié ces tendances et qui violente en un geste impitoyable, toutes les tentatives de retour du regard jeté en arrière, les paresses, les rêves fatigués, romantisme de l’indigence

Notre roman, il faut le vivre devant vous! Joie d’étudier, de concevoir, de réaliser! Agir.

So Rotterdam could also be used as a stick to beat Amsterdam, which had nothing quite as spectacular as the Van Nelle factory to show.

From these introductions to the Rotterdam and Amsterdam audiences, Le Corbusier added an emollient tribute to Dutch modernity and the pioneering work of Berlage, who had of course supported him in the League of Nations competition and was present at the lecture.

Vous m’avez appelé à venir parler d’architecture moderne dans un pays qui s’est acquis une juste célébrité pour les grandes réformes qu’il a entreprises.

Chez vous vit encore un pionnier de la première heure : Berlage. Il éclairait de ses œuvres maitresse les débuts de notre jeunesse. Permettez-moi de lui apporter notre tribu de reconnaissance.

Puis est venue la légion de vos novateurs qui ont poussé bien loin le problème de l’habitation. Je n’en citerai pas, de peur d’en oublier.

Que puis-je faire chez vous?

He doesn’t answer this question, except to explain, in such a guarded way that the message barely comes across, that he was there to warn them against loss of feeling and spirit. He referred to the Beaux-Arts students who had whistled him only a few weeks earlier, on 14 December 1931. He referred to this hostile reception in most of his lectures in 1932 and 1933, usually in the register of the martyred modernist. But here it seems that he was half on their side, since they were reacting against what they saw as the mechanical coldness of Modernism.

Le mois dernier, j’étais devant plus de 3000 auditeurs à la Salle Pleyel à Paris, sifflé par mille protestataires.

Pourquoi ?

La révolution architecturale ne peut s’accomplir en un jour ; voici 100 ans qu’elle a commencé avec le calcul du machinisme.

C’est une profonde révolution.

Si les facteurs les plus évidents de la transformation en cours sont les facteurs techniques – ceux que les générations germaniques ont appelé la Sachlichkeit- , il serait pour la penser, que l’élément éthique en soit absente.

Non, il reste à atteindre l’équilibre sentimental. Ici on m’appelle le poète déchainé.

So, the people protesting his lecture at the Salle Pleyel would have been right if they had thought him only interested in technical solutions and Sachlichkeit. But his Dutch audience knew this to be untrue; here he was thought of as wildly poetic. His conclusion was intended to be radical, especially for a Dutch audience:

C’est le sentiment qui conduit les hommes, et non la raison.

Les sifflets de l’école des Beaux-Arts je les ai acceptés sans amertume

Ils manifestent cette crainte licite que l’architecture ne doit pas sombrer dans la pauvreté et l’indigence.

Je leur ai répondu : un sentiment neuf nous anime et nous conduira implacablement à la victoire. Ce sentiment qui est celui des temps présents est :

Violence et pureté.

In his lecture in Delft, as always when speaking to students, Le Corbusier felt able to express himself more freely. He wrote two pages of notes for this lecture, beginning with his classic charm campaign for the young:

Aux étudiants Delft = Amis, car suis demeuré un étudiant ; n’ai jamais pu me résoudre à l’enseigner. Veux conserver toute mobilité. Car époque exige une vitalité intense et une constante puissance de renouvellement.

Architecture ? La fin : ÉMOUVOIRComment ? Par un don d’une chose inappréciable: la beauté. Beauté ? = HarmonieStyles ? Regionaux ou classiques? Rien à faire, devant cet impératif de l’architecture: SERVIR.

And he defined this as an individual attribute, ‘puissance… qui donne à ‘X’, dans le temps et l’espace, une parcelle de ce que l’homme détient de puissance créatrice.’ In terms which evoke Calvinist Predestination, he goes on :

Or, ceci est ou n’est pas chez l’individu. Ce n’est pas moi qui vous apporterai la recette pour l’acheter à la pharmacie ou à l’épicerie.

Then, after encouraging the students to devote their talents only to the service of society, he launched off into a series of sketches of walls showing different ways of placing doors and windows, with the label ‘La géométrie d’Euclid’. This suggests that he would have followed the lines of the eighth lecture he gave in Buenos Aires, when he interrupted his account of the Mundaneum project to answer the question ‘comment enseigner l’architecture?’ He finished with an explanation of his Palais des Soviets project.

That he followed his notes closely in the lecture is indicated by a review published the day after.

Le Corbusier betoogde als aanloop, dat de architektuur is emotie en daardoor op zichzelf al moet ingaan tegen het academisme dat slechts doode dingen heeft. Bij die emotie, de omzeiting in het mechanisme der menschelijke gevoelens moet echter nog een kapiale factor komen, wil werkelijk architectuur ontstaan en dat is de rede. Door de wetenschap is een deur open gegaan en we willen nu weten wat de berg van het onbekende is, die achter die open deur te zien is. Scheppen is het grootste genot, scheppen is echter al organiseeren. En architektuur verkrijg: men als de heldere inwendige visie gepaard gaat met de rede. De vereischte harmonie heeft een heel ander karakter gekregen dan ze vroeget had, o.a. door de regeering van de snelheid.

Le Corbusier’s approach to his Dutch hosts is subtle. In Rotterdam he is the hard Modernist, solidly behind the technical and social programme and calling for courage to construct the new world. His inflection promoting a more aesthetic approach is subtle. In Amsterdam, he praises Rotterdam and its Modernist works, but warns against the loss of sentiment, which is what will convince the masses. In Delft, he goes straight for the hearts and minds of the students. Only the most gifted will be able to solve the essential problems of the modern world, which are, in the end, aesthetic. And in a letter to Jan Dujker, Le Corbusier appealed to him to progress beyond the Dutch obsession with detail: ‘Courage!, voyez grand! Allez jusqu’au bout de la question, synthétiquement.’ This was a long way from the bad-tempered musings on the plane over Holland in 1958, with which we began, but the issue was the same: functionalism.

� Le Corbusier Sktechbooks, vol. 4 1957-1964, p.154 (M54 f.13)

� Ibid, p. 156

� Ibid, p. 157

� Le Corbusier letter to professeur Fueter, 17 March 1950, FLC I2 7, 89, cited in Caroline Maniaque, Le Corbusier et les maisons Jaoul, Picard, 2005, p.36 n 48.

� Sketchbooks, vol. 2, p. 896 (F27, fol. 19)

� Sketchbook 3, H33, p. 128, FLC.

� Tim Benton, ‘The era of great projects’, Le Corbusier Architect of the Century, pp. 164-171. Karel Teige wrote: ‘The idea of the Mundaneum is not a living one, it is not born of need. Rather, it is the fruit of an abstract and “lofty” speculation about certain intellectual circles within the League of Nations.’ (Karel Teige, ‘Mundaneum’, Stavba, No 1, 1929. See also Le Corbusier, ‘Défense de l’architecture’, Mousaion¸ Prague, 1931, reprinted in Oppositions, No 4, 1974.

� The journal published a detailed account of the event, ‘La soirée de propaganda de L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui’, written by Pierre Vago with texts purporting to represent the speeches by Le Corbusier, Henri Sauvage and Raymond Fischer, and ‘Echos, Nouvelles, Informations’, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, December 1931, pp. 77-84 and 90 respectively. Le Corbusier’s text was dictated by him after the event (see corrected page proof of the text with the autograph inscription: ’L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui janvier 1932 texte dicté de ma palabre Salle Pleyel 14 dec 1931’ (FLC B3(5)288-9)). The elegant text by Sauvage was probably the lecture he read out, in which he welcomed much of the Modernist campaign but accused the Modernists of having gone too far in the direction of functionalism, with a consequent loss of feeling, art and character. He was listened to in respectful silence. It seems that Raymond Fischer was not allowed to deliver his speech. Pierre Vago cited him as opening his remarks by saying: ‘M. Le Corbusier a exposé une thèse, M. Sauvage l’antithèse, je vais essayer de faire le synthèse.’

� See also an account somewhat dependant on that of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui in Les chantiers nord-africains, March 1932 (FLC X!(11)182) which mentions the presence of ‘nombreux parlementaires, et, en particulier, M. Borel, sénateur, ancient minister, M. Auray, sénateur de la Seine, la plupart des directeurs des services de la ville’, as well as an array of architects.

� There is a set of notes for this lecture (C3(8)175-9) and another manuscript (C3(8)317-329) which, despite being headed ’14 décembre 1931 (conférence devant 3,000 auditeurs qui hurlent et qui sifflent)’ turns out to have been written during or after Le Corbusier’s lecture tour in Italy in 1934, since it includes a sketch of one of the designs for the competition for the Palazzo del Littorio in Rome.

� L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, January 1932 , p. 90. Storoge was the grand Massier of the École Nationale Supérieur des Arts Décoratifs and was therefore a representative of the student body.

� Paraphrased and cited from FLC C3(8)175

� Pierre Vago reports this in his piece, while Joseph Vago, one of the five architects involved with the League of Nations, sent in a letter arguing his case (L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, January 1932, p. 90).

� FLC B3(5)284. Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, January 1932, p. 79).

� L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, January 1932, p.84.

� ‘De oude en moderne bouwkunst leveren slag’, Het Vaderland, 4 January 1932 (Avondblad C). The paper’s Paris correspondent introduced his remarks by comparing the French hostility to modern architecture with the better understanding which existed in Holland.

� Ibid

� See Robert Mens, Bart Lootsma, Jos Bosman, Le Corbusier en Nederland, Utrecht, 1985, p. 33

� The exhibition was organised by the Rotterdamsche Kunstkring and was held at 35 Witte de Withstraat, Rotterdam, from 8-15 January 1932. A brief commentary of the exhibition is added to a description of the second lecture in Rotterdam in the pages of De Telegraf on 14 January 1932 (FLC X1(11)165) This exhibition seems to have reused the panels which Le Corbusier put together at the last minute for the Bauausstellung, Berlin, 1931.

� Agenda F3-5-2, p. 97 (folio 82). For a detailed account of this lecture tour, see Robert Mens, Bart Lootsma, Jos Bosman, Le Corbusier en Nederland, Utrecht 1985, pp. 33-41

� This lecture was discussed in 'De architecturale revolutie lost de stedebouwkundige vraagstukken der groote steden op' in Het Vaderland (14 January1932, p.3) and again in De Telegraf, 14 January 1932 (FLC X1(11)165), where it was noted that ‘Zijn aandachtig auditorium dankte met hartelijk applaus voor zijn leerrijke uiteenzettingen.’ See also the advance notice in Het Vaderland, 24 December 1931, p. 1 and an advertisement in the same newspaper on 8 January, which specifies the start at 20.15 and the ticket price as 2 florins. I am very grateful to Dr. Herman van Bergeijk for generously providing me with the information about the Dutch reception of these lectures.

� Het Vaderland, 19 January1932. A long illustrated piece on Le Corbusier (described as ‘the painter Pierre Jeanneret’) by H.T. Zwiers was published on 10 January 1932 in Ochtenblad Algemeen Handelsblad van Zondag (FLC X1(11)163 and another by ‘A.B.’ in De Telegraf on the same day (FLC X1(11)162). The latter author (A. Boeken?) gives a good account of Le Corbusier’s position, indicating his commitment to the art of Architecture, beginning where calculation ends.

� For one example among many, the journalist of Het Vaderland used the word selfconsciously: ‘Hierna ontvouwde Le Corbusier zijn plannen – om het word fantasieën niet te bezigen…’ (Het Vaderland, 14 January 1932, p.2).

� There are two pages of notes for this lecture (C3(8)270), entitled ‘aux étudiants Delft’. The invitation came from Studenten Gezelschap Practische Studie en het D.S.D.G. Vrije Studie, after Le Corbusier had turned down an invitation from Gerrit Rietveld, see Le Corbusier en Nederland , 1985, p. 33

� Le Corbusier refers to a ‘Hotten’ who met him at his hotel on the Tuesday, before visiting the exhibition, and again on the Wednesday.

� For the diary information, see FLC F3(5)3 folio 4v. For an account of the lecture, see Ochtenblad Algemeen Handsblad van Zaterdag, 16 January 1932 (FLC X1(11)166).

� De 8 en Opbouw, 1932, No 2, 21 January. An article by Van Loghem, for example (pp. 13-15), paid tribute to Le Corbusier’s huge impact, while carping at the fantasy and elements of utopianism in his work.

� Het Vaderland, 13 January 1932, p. 3.

� Plans , 12, February 1932, pp. 39-42

� Le Corbusier met Duijker, visited the Zonnestraal Sanatorium with him and later corresponded with him (see his letter thanking Le Corbusier on behalf of ‘De 8’ on 26 January 1932 (FLC C3(5)115). He compared Le Corbusier’s lecture to a performance of Bach’s St Mathew’s Passion.

� FLC C3(8)267

� See Benton, T., Le Corbusier conférencier, Le Moniteur, Paris, 2007.

� Albert Otten, in Bouwkundig Weekblad, 1932, 21-22 (16 January 1932), cited in Le Corbusier en Nederland, op.cit., p. 35

� The evidence of the sketch is supported by a detailed account of the lecture in Het Vaderland, 14 January 1932, p.9

� Plans, 12 February 1932, pp. 35-42.

� Published in De 8 en Opbouw, 11, 20 May 1936. Thanks to Dirk ven den Heufel for communicating this to me.

� ‘Un nouvel ordre de grandeur des éléments urbains, une nouvelle unité d’habitation’ Œuvre complète, 2, pp. 110-114. The article mentions Algiers, Barcelona, Stockholm and Antwerp, but must have been similar in its central arguments to the other urbanism lectures he gave in the early 30s. In fact many of the arguments followed those of his lecture in Strasbourg in 1923 and the articles of 1922-4 which became Urbanmisme.

� The 14 m2 plans had appeared in Plans 9, 1931, alongside a series of articles on the Ville Radieuse. Again, the article in Het Vaderland on 14 Jnuary 1932 confirms that the apartment of 14m2 was discussed in detail.

� C3(8)268

� See Note � NOTEREF _Ref193884206 \h ��33�

� C3(8)260

� C3(8)268 Several commentaries in the newspapers noted statements of this kind by Le Corbusier.

� C3(8)260-261

� C3(8)262

� If the account of this talk given in Ochtenblad Algemeen Handsblad van Zaterdag (16 January `1932) is to be trusted, however, Le Corbusier spent most of his lecture discussing the urban planning history of Amsterdam, emphasising the city’s advances in the 17th century and running through his usual theoretical arguments. According to this journalist, he only turned to Rotterdam in the later stages of the lecture.

� Ibid. These words were reproduced verbatim in his article describing his Dutch visit in Plans , 12, February 1932, p. 41.

� Ibid

� This passage too was reproduced in Plans , op.cit., but not the next passage about the proposal for the Academy of Architecture.

� C3(8)262-3

� C3(8)263-4

� Het Vaderland, 14 January 1932, p. 9.

� C3(8)265. This tribute was noted approvingly by Albert Otten in a piece in the Bowkundig Weekblad. Berlage, of course, had been one of Le Corbusier’s supporters on the jury of the League of Nations competition.

� C3(8)265-6

� C3(8)266. As we have seen, the slogan ‘violence et pureté’ featured in the version of his Salle Pleyel lecture which Le Corbusier dictated for publication in the December 1931 edition of L’Architectured’Aujourd’hui (see Note � NOTEREF _Ref193882992 \h ��14�).

� A detailed report of the lecture at the TH in Delft can be found in Het Vaderland Avondblad C, 13 January 1932 p. 9 and Pim Pernels wrote a reflection on this and other notices of Le Corbusier’s lectures four days later (Het Vaderland 17 January 1932 p. 8).

� FLC C3(8)270

� FLC C3(8)271

� See Précisions…, Paris, 1930, p.228 and FLC C3(7)60.

� Het Vaderland, 13 January 1932, p. 9R. The reviewer went on to describe Le Corbusier’s use of geometry and finished with the Palace of Soviets and transparencies of his buildings. He concluded, ‘Ook ditmaal heft Le Corbusier een dankbar gehoor gehad.’

� Reported at the end of his article in Plans. In his reply, Duijker doubted that Dutch architects had Le Corbusier’s capacity to inspire the masses to think big (FLC C3(5)115).

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