Designing a Life.

Defining a good life may seem like a relatively simple task. However it is a subject that is filled with ambiguity and relativism. Is there an equation that one could follow to ensure such a life? Is a good life a state of mind or a physicality? What does such a life include and more importantly how can it be reached? Such questions have been at the front of human infatuation for years and they have never truly been answered. If asked people will likely answer that the answer is relative. A common answer would not be architecture. What does architecture have to do with the good life after all? Does where we live influence how we live and how we feel? Absolutely. This is something that Le Corbusier and Abbot Haito both tried to perfect and represent.

The plan for the monastery of St. Gall was something unique. It was the first attempt at representing a 'good' life within the built environment. While a life in a monastery is by no means an attractive one in modern society it can be inferred that the sense of security it provided in a tenuous medieval environment would make it a very viable lifestyle. It goes without saying that living safely with definite supply of food and shelter was very good. The rule of St. Benedict promoted such security. Monasticism, according to Benedict, was something that was directly related to the idea of permanence. To remove oneself from society and wander aimlessly leeching off of other institutions accomplished nothing. A monk should be initiated, educated, work, live and eventually die in his monastery. However, he interestingly notes that the monastery itself should be able to accommodate such a life within its walls, reducing any unnecessary contact with secular society. It is in this way that the church and its faithful can be strengthened in their quest to serve god. This was good. A life devoted to god was one with worth. A life that obeyed the rule was good. One that didn't wasn't. There was no room for interpretation, making the life of a monk essentially simple. However, the plan of St. Gall is the ideal monastery in the sense that it allows for such complete permanence. It poses a methodology of designing a monastery that could be reapplied to ensure the permanence, and thereafter stability, of the place. Not only would the monks live here for the entirety of their lives, they would live in a ceremonial way undergoing the same tasks, activities every day with minor variation. In this way, when one looks at the plan with this knowledge it becomes clear that the very layout of the place allows this to be accomplished with minor obstacle. Therefore the proposed good life in this monastery becomes a life of singularity. Every monk appears the same, acts the same, does the same things, eats the same food, lives in the same conditions and so on. The monastery begins to represent a single life. The community becomes a single entity with one face. All humble and individually insignificant under god. Finding a large sense of spirituality. This is both good and simple.

Le Corbusier studied living throughout his career. Carefully distilling what it meant to live. Not just living but living well. He concluded that people need no excess. They should live with the essentials immersed in their surroundings. However, the more interesting thing was his approach to his own residence. Le Cabanon was a miniscule structure, a mere spec compared to the plan of St. Gall. However, Cabanon is similarly designed to accommodate a certain lifestyle. A modular lifestyle. All necessary functions are designed to exact proportions detailing what one should do in their day to day routine. Le Cabanon's simplicity is what makes it good. It boldly states how to live. It does not simply imply. The good life is directly related to how you live. Therefore doesn't architecture play a key role in determining that? Corbusier believed it should reflect that very fact. Such philosophy is directly related to the time in which Corbusier lived. A time when the world suddenly repressed from its rampaging process and began to seek answers to its innumerable questions. Corbusier looked for such answers within his cabin. A cabin which allowed a life of pure constraint within the most grandeur setting. To me it was blunt architecture but an architecture which encompasses a life. A life with solitude. A life of necessity. A life of thought and introspection. These are things that Le Cabanon emits and that Corbusier embraces.

-Kyle Brill

Information Sources:

Braunfels, Wolfgang. Monasteries of Western Europe: The Architecture of the Orders. Princeton: Princeton Up, 1972.

Jencks, Charles. Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture. New edition ed. New York: Allen Lane, 1975.

Price, Lorna. The Plan of St. Gall In Brief: an overview of the three volume work by Walter Horn and Ernest Born. Ex-Library ed. Los Angeles: Univ Of California Press, 1982.