Le Corbusier (1)
The Cabanon was the only house he ever designed for himself. Although Corbusier was not a religious man, it is hard to argue the spiritual relationship that the Cabanon has with nature. He spent much of his career building monasteries. As a young architect, he found inspiration in the little cells that monks lived in. He liked the idea of having a small room to sleep, eat, think, and dream in. Cabanon ultimately became modern living in its most elemental form. Not corrupted by the frivolities of modern society, but similar to the purity of monistic life, it was designed to support the fundamental needs of an individual. In the years prior to the creation of the Cabanon, overpopulation was beginning to emerge and cities degraded into slums. The question rose of how to survive in such a tumultuous state. For Le Corbusier survival was not enough, he wanted to live. The difference between the two comes down to the human condition. It is the reason to survive.
There is an intriguing ambiguity imbedded in the purpose of the Cabanon. On one hand it was a study of the individual immersed in nature, a study to explore Corbusier’s monistic aspirations. On the other hand, it is also a stride towards living well in a growing urbanity. Upon further analysis, it can be observed that the former is the answer to the latter.
Corbusier’s last rule of design dictates the design of, “A roof garden so that we give back to the landscape what we’ve taken away.” While he did not have a roof garden on the Cabanon, he managed to maintain his environmental philosophy in an even greater respect. The mere size of the miniature cabin portrays the attempt at having a small footprint on the earth. It is situated in Roquenbrune, Cap-Martin, on the French Riviera. With such a magnificent landscape, Corbusier designed a structure that would not take over the environment, but rather become immersed in it. Especially with the function of the windows expressing the very elements of the earth (mineral, vegetation, and water), the house is fundamentally involved in the relationship between human and nature.
The Mediterranean Sea (2)
Corbusier believed that one could only truly experience spirituality in isolation, distant from the fast pace of daily life. He looked to the past for answers, as he studied the key fundamentals to living from a vernacular and elemental level. He discovered in medieval monasteries how many monks could all function as a community, while remaining on the path towards spirituality as an individual. The Monastery of St. Gall was never meant to be constructed, but rather to be treated as a philosophy. It has been referred to as the “perfect” monastery. Many monks would inhabit the space and yet they would all share one life. They followed a strict set of rules for living. These rules in addition to the arrangement of the plan assisted in creating an entire community with a single life. The monks would eat together, sleep together, pray together and work together. They functioned as one entity in the continual pursuit of salvation.
Imagine the Cabanon as a seed, one singular cell. Now imagine society as the fruit. The fruit holds within it many seeds that create life and growth. In order to properly understand the fruit, one must understand the seed. This is why Corbusier focused on deciphering the simple life. He wanted to find the core, the essence of dwelling. The Cabanon was his end result. Obviously he could not take the Cabanon and plop it into a city but the idea of simple living and going back to the vernacular basics of architecture, which created the Cabanon, can be used to create a sustainable foundation for urbanity.
An example of this is Le Corbusier’s L’unite D’habitation. The design took this seed notion and replicated it to form a community of housing all in one building.
L'Unite D'Habitation (3)
“I am so happy in my Cabanon that I shall probably end my days here.” Of course Corbusier would not have known at the time, but both Le Cabanon and the Monastery of St. Gall ultimately became a threshold from this life to the next. It was their inhabitants’ pathway towards god, or in Le Corbusier’s case death. While Corbusier did not have god, he did have something spiritual that was inspired from his Cabanon. He would open the window facing the sea and look out towards the horizon. "How nice it would be to die swimming towards the sun", he once remarked to a colleague. The horizon symbolized the infinite. It symbolized the answer to his mortality.
On August 27 1965, the seventy-seven year-old Le Corbusier approached the shore at his Cabanon. He entered the water and swam towards the hot Mediterranean sun. This would be his last swim as the architectural philosopher transcended from a body on this overcrowded Earth to a memory; an idea embedded in books and on the architecture he left behind.
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