The Modular and the Cabanon

Le Corbusier's Drawing of The Modular Man (1)

Based on the measurements of an individual man, Corbusier’s Modular is a scale of proportionality. In his Modular 2, Corbusier includes a quote from M. Gabriel Dessus: “I have just read ‘The Modular’... since the purpose of architecture is to house human beings, it is necessary that the dimensions of the elements of constructions, meant to be seen at the same time as the human being, should be in a relationship with it that is aesthetically correct’ – in other words, the series chosen must contain the principal dimensions of an ‘average’ man.” Corbusier took inspiration from studies by Leonardo da Vinci and Vitruvius in establishing his own “average” man. Combining this with the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci sequence, he relates the proportions of a building to the human functioning inside it.

The Modular man is represented on paper as a figure 2.2 m in height with one arm upraised, put inside two 1.1 by 1.1 m squares, superimposed on each other. A third square is set astride the first two, creating a place for the right angle which should help determine where to put the square. The Modular man adorns many of Corbusier’s buildings as a “signature” of sorts, and the large upraised hand becomes a recurring motif in sketches and designs like his Chandigarh open hand sculpture.

The Cabanon corresponds to Corbusier’s writings about the Modular in several ways. Firstly, he talks of the use and application of the Modulor to architecture in regards to cells, either single or in combination to form apartments or small houses. Corbusier was also fascinated with packaging and containers. The state of modern living was sad to him: “we live in an era of solidarity, not yet, alas, solidarity of feeling but of the bare bones of economic and technical method”. The idea he derived from such inspiration was two-tiered. In the first, focusing on packaging itself, Corbusier saw that optimizing the exterior, rather than the interior, would be of primary importance. This was his system of ‘isotropic’ stowage. For the second part, Corbusier focused on units of living as contained compartments. In Modular 2, Corbusier describes his Cabanon as the basic, ideal unit for such living: “Thanks to the Modular, the venture was completely sure”. Using prefabricated components assembled quickly on site and proportioned to a certain system, the Cabanon was the perfect example of one Modular unit, which later would be joined with others to make a collection in the Unité d’Habitation of Marseilles.

-Rachel Cohen Murison and Lauren Tom

Image Sources:

1. "Le Corbusier: Le Cabanon 1887-1865." http://www.borxu.com/corbu/html/modular.html (accessed Jan 16, 2010)

Information Sources:

"Iconeye." http://www.iconeye.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3684:le-corbusiers-cabanon (accessed Jan 16, 2010).

"Le Corbusier's Cabanon on the French Riviera." http://trifter.com/europe/france/le-corbusiers-cabanon-on-the-french-riviera/ (accessed Jan 16, 2010).

Le Corbusier. Le Modular and other buildings and projects, 1944-1945. New York: Garland, 1983.

Le Corbusier. My work. Translated by James Palmes. Introduction by Maurice Jardot. London: Architectural Press, 1960.

Le Corbusier. The Modulor: a harmonious measure to the human scale universally applicable to architecture and mechanics. Translated by Peter de Francia and Anna Bostock. London: Faber and Faber, 1961.

Le Corbusier. Modulor I and II. Translated by Peter de Francia and Anna Bostock. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980.

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.

Once upon a (Corbusier's) time...

1887 Born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, he didn't change his name to Le Corbusier until much later, with the belief that everyone can reinvent themselves.

1900 Entered the Art School in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, where he received arts and crafts training.

1907 Visited the Carthusian monastery of Ema, near Florence. These were the beginnings of his studies for a dwelling at human scale. From this he envisioned a modern city majestically set on a hill. Its' vision stayed with him forever and he returned to the site again in 1910. He found it to be the noblest silhouette in the landscape, and the uninterrupted crown of monks' cells left him flabbergasted. Each cell had a view on the plain, and opened on a lower level on an entirely closed garden. Each cell opened by a door and wicket at its’ back end onto a circular street which was covered by an arcade (the cloister). The monastery services (ie. prayer, visits, food and funerals) operated through here. Corbusier thought he'd never seen such a happy interpretation of a dwelling before.

1908 Worked a bit with Auguste Perret in Paris.

1910-11 Completed a study on the Decorative Art Movement in Germany.

1912 His Villa Jeanneret, and Villa Favre-Jacot were strongly influenced by Behrens's neoclassical houses.

1914-18 World War I lasted far longer than expected, extensive damage done to people and buildings. Many were trumped into thinking it'd be short enough to start rebuilding destroyed houses early.

1914 Dom-ino frame, first embodiment of his idea for building in cellular units: concrete as a means towards the industrialization of the building process. This house was a response to replacing ruined houses during the war. Although it never served this purpose its' form evolved for and was used in his later projects.

1916 Villa Schwob was strongly influenced by Perret's use of a concrete frame.

1917 Moved to Paris (permanently).

1920 Citrohan House project.

1920-5 Founded L'Esprit Nouveau with Paul Dermée (who was later kicked out) and irregularly published the magazine. Wrote under pseudonyms, started using Le Corbusier. Co-wrote with Ozenfant. Its' principle theme studied problems in the relation between art and industrial society (Corb's magazine believed the new aesthetic would be classical in spirit -so the pages were often, juxtaposed with the old and the new). The work questioned need for decoration of any kind, praising work that served, but didn't master human needs. It covered topics from architecture to almost all cultural aspects of modern life. The two writers came up with an interesting idea, that "the complete man is both sensual and cerebral." He realized the need to exercise both instinctual and intellectual sides of his character (thus often spending mornings studio painting, and afternoons doing more pragmatic affairs).

1922 Ville Contemporaine schematic proposed a city of 3 million people on an ideal site, to address the issues of hygiene and circulation. To slow the city's increasing congestion and the consequent escape of inhabitants to the suburbs, Corbusier saw it necessary to increase the city's density but decrease the area covered by buildings. Modern technology (ie. American skyscrapers) allowed the combination of the Garden City advantages with those of the traditional city, and therefore the suburbs move into the city instead.

1923 Maison Ozenfant was associated with purism and a strong order in composition.

1925 At the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (aimed at reasserting French dominance in the field) Corbusier's pavilion interior make-up challenged the tradition design view point. It was a generic apartment, of the post-war mass consumption and production economy type. Corbusier used fixed and moveable furniture (Loos' idea) but expressed by the industrial age. The furniture was of objet-type class.

1927 Published his Five Points for a New Architecture.

1927 His public buildings (or proposals) around this time were broken up into component parts (mainly linear bars containing repeating modules like offices, and centralized volumes i.e., for public assembly).

League of Nations Building for Geneva design competition that remained unbuilt. Although his and Jeanneret's submission was one of the few serious modern and practical proposals (ie. the existing landscape had been respected as much as possible through his use of pilotis, so that informal gardens could continue beneath and beyond most of the new structures) it didn’t win. Despite this disappointment, it created lots of uproar that helped advance the cause of modern architecture, and equally importantly, Corbusier's career.

1928 Corbusier, Giedion, and other leading architects of the modern movement came together to form CIAM (Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne). At its' beginnings it was mostly a defensive alliance of architects and planners who believed that the United Nations competition and other fiascos required them to stick together. The first meeting discussed principles such as "city planning", "modern technology and its consequences", and "education of young architects". It was powerful in the modern movement, and its influence could still be felt in the 70s in certain architecture schools.

1928-1932 Admired fishermen building their huts (intuition leading followed by reason), at Le Piquey near La Rochelle where he spent many vacations and wrote about them in Une Maison, un Palais his long interest with vernacular architecture became apparent. Participated in Neo-Syndicalist group.

1929 His typological analysis of his work revealed his four basic house types. Showed concept of a Platonic exterior, a functional interior and the dialectic between the two (forms of order existing side by side).

1928-31 Villa Savoye, Poissy. The dialiectic tension (interior vs. exterior) climax. His five principles of new architecture were all realized, using contemporary and functional materials . He named it The Light-Filled Hours to reflect the bright and free life modern architecture had in mind, and acheived here. Corb's architecture embodied the spirit as a treatment of form proposed for a new way of living.

1929 After his lecture tour of South America, he became involved in a series of very different urban projects from his previous city plans.

1929 Ville Radieuse was a schematic design for an ideal site. Projects for Rio de Janeiro (1929) and Algiers (1932-42) were for actual sites, and incorporated his new-found interest in “l'homme reel”, and regional cultures based on local customs and geographies. He made his earlier urbanism forms more sensitive to local topographies and with monumental, collective form provided more private life.

1929-33 Cité de Refuge (Paris).

1929-35 Centrosoyus building (Moscow).

1930s Extensive travels in South America and Algeria led to a series of urban projects and proposals.

1930-5 Vernacular forms (pitched roof and masonry wall) made their appearance in several small rural houses by Corbusier and Jeanneret. They weren’t just vernacular architecture, but used natural materials reinterpreted in terms of modernist aesthetics.

1931 Palace of the Soviets for Moscow (design competition unbuilt).

1931 Villa de Mandrot, another example of vernacular models with modernist aesthetics.

1933 Ville Radieuse work and domestic life, nature and technology were juxtaposed, work and life planned for high-rise structures, cultivation of the spirit and body in the parkland.

1934-8 Radiant Farm, Village Coopératif, linked unrealized projects where modern building technologies and Modernist aesthetics were applied to agriculture (part of national plan for agrarian reform).

1936-65 Modernism went global. Totalitarian states preferred buildings that reinforced central state authority. In communist countries, architectural innovation was limited.

1939-45 World War II. Many of Europe's scientific and artistic geniuses left for America. Period of hitherto unimaginable horrors.

1946-52 Unité d'habitation in Marseilles successfully incorporated many of Corbusier's radical ideals. It was built vertically, used modern construction technology, and it was set in landscaped open spaces thus increasing housing densities while maintaining healthy, green spaces for recreation. It was built around a philosophy of unity of mutual understanding and respect. He used weather-boarded and bush-hammered concrete, which created a robust, primitive finish that provides good sound insulation (which is considerably important to allow and maintain the part-solitary lifestyle l'unité can accommodate). It was originally intended as low cost housing even though today it houses richer folk.

1950s Europe didn't like the influence of US on its' traditional culture, there was a disillusion worldwide with the effect of design and manufacture on socio-cultural implications (crises of values arose)

1950-5 Work on Pilgramage Church of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp. It was an example of non-historicist monumentality where buildings are more representative than utilitaria. By this time many of the modern architects who previously employed such geometrical shapes as boxes and cubes began creating more organic forms. The chapel at Ronchamp stands out as a bulbous shape of concrete reflecting the landscape of hill shapes surrounding it. Southern-orientated coloured windows project colour to its' interiors. Corbusier carefully planned the theological program (Mogens Krustrup wrote an entire book discovering the meaning of one door). Ronchamp's form was generated to stir "the psych-physiology of the feelings." Here the modulor is both a form of measurement and experience. He tried to immerse each visitor with a sense of the transforming and restorative power of harmony through colour, sound and form believing behaviour could be changed through affected feelings.

1951 Chandigarh plans began. He designed the city according to the principles of CIAM, which called for functional order. Corbusier's material choice included exposed brick, boulder stone masonry and concrete surfaces that together formed geometrical structures. His work included among other buildings the High Court. The façade to the plaza shows an inspiring composition of cutouts and niches, that reconce the courts' size with the human scale, but still express the force of the law.

1952 Built le Cabanon for his wife on Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, in France. Believed it would provide her with happiness and cure her alcoholic maladies. Corbusier himself spent many summers there.

1956-9 Sainte-Marie de la Tourette, a Dominican monastery at Eveux, near Lyons. Building of small but relatively comfortable monk cells, his studies of the human body and proportions paid off. Very influential to many modern architects.

1963 Maison de l'Hommer design for Heidi Weber in Zurich. It was prefabricated, industrialized, and modern.

1960s (late) International economy increasingly unstable, caused disillusionment with materiality, the hitherto abuse of technology and resources to political and economic ends resulted in a wave of revisionist tendencies (many involving design).

1965 Corbusier's death, touched thousands, even his long-time creative rivals (ie. Picasso).


-Andjela Tatarovic


Information Sources:


Blake, Peter. The Master Builders. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 1976.


Coloquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press.


Irving, Mark, Mary Cooch, Lucinda Hawksley, Carol King, Fiona Plowman, Frank Ritter, Jane Simmonds, ed. 1001 Buildings You Must See Before You Die. New York: Quintessence, 2007.


Samuel, Flora. Le Corbusier architect and feminist. England: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2004.


Smith, Viginia. Forms in Modernism A Visual Set. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2005.


Sparke, Penny. An Introduction to Design and Culture in the Twentieth Century. London: Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, 1986.

Cabanon History

Le Corbusier reputedly drew Le Cabanon's plan in 45 minutes, and constructed it in a mere 6 months in 1952. All the material, which was prefabricated, had to be hauled on site, because it was only accessible by foot.

Although small in appearance, he frequently describes it as his castle. Can we then call this architectural experiment his ideal “living machine”?

Corbusier used the Modular as his primary design tool based on human proportions and the Golden Section. It took him 12 years to develop, from 1943 to 1955. Around that time (in the late 1940s) research into proportional systems from Renaissance architecture was widely published and reviewed. Thus Corbusier's interests strongly reflected the attitude of the time; the fascination with mathematics, and their potential as sources of universal truths.

Early on, Corbusier worked with Auguste Perret and Peter Behrens. He also visited Istanbul, the Balkans, and Athens where he appreciated the feminine vernacular arts of the former two cultures, and masculine classicism of the latter in ancient time. The collective experiences of Perret, Behrens and the Parthenon all helped him shift his architectural interest from Jugendstil to Classicism. This is very important achieving his early goal: to reconcile architectural tradition with modern technology.

Corbusier embraced modern technology but simultaneously went back to the spirit of classicism and geometry. He recognized the dirty conditions of the city and wanted to improve people's lifestyles. With the "new machine aesthetic" around him he could explore the effect of the machine on architecture production (and the consequences of mass production in building). The modular helped to avoid repetitive monotony because an infinite number of variations are possible with a unit system of construction that helps to provide multiple, and adequate housing.

By the late 1920s, Corbusier's building material, and type began to change. He joined the Neo-Syndicalists around then who believed Europe should be divided into three 'natural' zones (per race). In sharing their ideas (as many people in did)Le Corbusier thought in terms of a global modern architecture where technology would have to work with the natural geographic forces of different macro-regions.

Between 1930 and 1935, vernacular forms show up in several small houses he and his cousin (Jeanneret) design. He spent several vacations at Le Piquey near La Rochelle where he was extremely interested in the vernacular architecture. He admired fishermen building their huts (where intuition was used first then reason). Around this time Corbusier believed a return to "l'homme reelle" and the spirit of community in pre-industrialized society would alleviate the alienation of the then modern social life. This was very similar to the Volkisch movement of the time in Germany. Again, Corbusier shows sensitivity to problems of his time, with proposals for the better future.

Albert Einstein made of Corbusier’s modular: “a range of dimensions which makes the bad difficult and the good easy.” In essence, it is a moral code, the rule of law brought into art.

He essentially wanted this rule to be available to future generations. Although many of his works underwent high scrutiny and criticism, there’s no denying Corbusier’s ideas weren’t just architectural, but life solutions to a dream of a better, simpler world.

Perhaps we may still draw valuable lessons from this ethic today. Le Cabanon has been reproduced at a 1:1 scale by Cassina (a Milan furniture company) and was in exhibition at the RIBA last year in March. The project revealed both the interior experience of the Cabanon to visitors and offered the team a far more valuable perspective on materials, and critical choices Corbusier had to have made. At least as a starting point, Le Cabanon's relevance to ecologically sound lifestyles, where living simpler is a necessity should not be overlooked.

Today, the real Le Cabanon, along with the atelier, café, unités de camping (built between 1954 and 1957) and Villa E-1027 have become historic monuments.


-Andjela Tatarovic

Information Sources:

Blake, Peter. Le Corbusier Architecture and Form. Maryland: Penguin Books Inc, 1960.

Buxton, Pamela. “Le Corbusier’s Le Cabanon at the RIBA.” Building Design- The Architects’ Website, March 13 2009. http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3135979 (accessed January 7, 2010).

Coloquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Duff, Jonathan. “Building of the Month.” The Twentieth Century Society, December 2002.
http://www.c20society.org.uk/docs/building/cabanon.html (accessed January 10, 2010).

Parveen, Nikhat. “Golden Ratio in Art & Architecture.” UGA. 2004, http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680/Parveen/GR_in_art.htm (accessed January 13, 2010).

Viladas, Pilar. “Le Shack.” New York Times, April 1, 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/01/magazine/le-shack.html?pagewanted=1 (accessed January 10, 2010).

Cabanon as Construction

Drawn up in the nominal forty-five minutes Corbusier claims it took to complete the task, the plans for Le Cabanon exemplify his investigation into the Modular and simple, efficient design in its truest sense. Originally connected directly to the Cafe Etoile de Mer via a small door, the cabin is a twelve foot by twelve foot structure which contains the fundamental necessities for human existence, with the exception of food, found next door. Pursuing the idea of the single cell, the Cabanon is an exercise in building a fundamental structure which can contain all human needs while remaining simple in plan and assembly. Corbusier later took this singular unit as the basis for his collection of apartments in the Marseilles Unite d’Habitation.

Constructed to have a log cabin exterior while using a corrugated Everite slanted roof, the first thing to notice is it’s size. As a twelve-foot by twelve-foot space, Corbusier designed the floor space to optimize the furniture. Indeed, some of his first sketches on the Cabanon are of the furniture, not the building itself. He included a small diagonal table, crates for chairs, a screen concealing the toilet, and a bench-like bed. Contrasting the rough unmilled pine exterior, these pieces of furniture and the interior walls are made of walnut, plywood, and oak.

-Rachel Cohen-Murison

Information Sources:

Le Corbusier. Project Roq et Rob, Roquebrune-Cap Martin, and Other Buildings and Projects, 1948-1950. New York: Garland, 1983.

Le Corbusier. Unité d'habitation, Rezé-les-Nantes. New York : Garland, 1983.

New York Times Online. “Le Shack.” New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/01/magazine/le-shack.html?scp=1&sq=cabanon+corbusier&st=nyt (accessed Jan 12, 2010).

L’unite D’habitation- Le Corbusier

L'Unité d'habitation (1)

1946 - 1952

Cast concrete apartment block

280 Boulevard Michelet

13008 Marseille

France

Sited to have a clear view of nature and the Mediterranean Sea

137 m x 24 m x 56 m

18 floors + sun deck roof-terrace

1,600 residents, 337 apartment blocks (23 variations)

Facilities include kindergarden,hotel, shops, offices and gymnasium

Purpose:

L’unite D’habitation was commissioned in the summer after the end of world war two. Rebuilding the damaged city was the primary goal. A quick affordable solution was needed to provide 32000 families with homes in Marseilles. Le Corbusier’s experiments with collective housing solutions resulted in the construction of L’unite. As a prototype for a radical renewal of apartment blocks, the building was designed on a spatial, functional and social level. Each apartment block takes up one and a half floors (the half floor being shared with the opposite neighbors). As a result, double ceiling height gives the room adequate light and the illusion of more space. The integration of open public spaces and services promote social interaction. Le Corbusier’s apartment complex excels in finding the right balance between public and private life-to be able to build a community as an extension of the home.

Le Corbusier's drawing of L'unite D'habitation: shows interior double height (2)

-Natalie Hui

Image Sources:

1. "L'Unité D'Habitation." http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartmichaeldavis/1294949977/ (accessed Jan 10, 2010).

2. "en ville." http://blog.pressebook.fr/giulio/2009/01/23/contre-larchitecture/ (accessed Jan 10, 2010).

Information Sources:

Janson,Alban. Le Corbusier Unite d'habitation, Marseille. Axel Menges. Stuggart/ London: Everbest Printing Company Ltd., 2007.

Sbriglio, Jacques. "Unite d'Habitation le Corbusier Marseilles." http://www.marseille- citeradieuse.org/chap1/immeuble1- 2.htm (accessed 10 January 2010).

Sbriglio,Jacques. L'Unite d'habitation de Marseille. Birkhauser Publishers Basel, 2004.

Examining the singular and its application to form a whole

St. Gall Plan

*ISOLATION

Medieval monasteries were sited away from the urban, they were solitary structures. The physical removal from daily life evokes a spiritual journey to the sacred. Monasteries acts as a retreat overlooking the rest of the population. Symbolically, this siting represents the monk’s vocation to oversee and care for the populace. Therefore the vast vantage points of monasteries had an infinite quality both physically and metaphorically.

*COMMUNAL

The plan of St. Gall emphasizes the church as the core of the monastery. The church dominates in size and is placed in a central position to further define its significance. Density increases around the church in order of hierarchal importance, for example the Abbot’s house has a direct route to the church, whereas pilgrim guests are located comparatively further. One can then conclude that the ease of circulation and length of travel to the church is determined by status. There is a definite inward focus to the church and the act of congregation to that central point is a communal activity regardless of status. Furthermore, the buildings are bounded in a grid to constitute as a whole. Physically this defines the community.

Plan of St.Gall: Communal gathering

*A DIFFERENT INTERPRETATION

St. Gall can be seen with isolated and communal qualities simultaneously. The community represents the individual. St. Gall is a representation of a monk's life, all the services that one requires from monk-hood to death is present. Everyone is subject to the same conditions, there can be no deviation to how life functions. Life is certain and preordained. Therefore, the community and the individual are two conditions that are integral to each other because in the case of St. Gall they are describing the same life.

Le Cabanon

*ISOLATION

In plan, Le Cabanon has a radial scheme in which the dynamics of the space are directed to isolate the core of the house. Similar to St. Gall, there is an inward focus to the essence of the architecture. Every piece of furniture is placed in relation to the central core. As Corbusier states, “volume and surface are determined by the plan”. Le Corbusier painted on the window panel, so that when closed his focus would be directed into the interior. The siting and purpose of Le Cabanon reflect isolation as well. Built as a retreat overlooking the natural word, it serves as a physical and emotional removal to modern life. The identification of the horizon and vast sea through windows explore the infinite. The physical infinite inspires the individual metaphorically.

Plan of Le Cabanon: day and night areas

Plan of Le Cabanon: Radial Scheme and Circulation

Interior of Le Cabanon: Interior focus, painting over the window (1)

*COMMUNAL

Taking the concept of the singular cell from Le Cabanon, Le Corbusier explored the possibility of joining multiple cells to form a community in designing the apartment complex L’unite D’habitation. In section, the apartment cells also uses a radial scheme. They interweave each other and form a dialogue by sharing the same space. The physical relation to the neighbor further emphasizes the occupants to be interrelated to form a social body. Finally, the individual comprises the whole. Cells are bounded in a grid to form a solid block of architecture.

Section of Unite d'habitation: radial scheme and dialogue with neighbors

-Natalie Hui

Image Sources:

"dezeen." http://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2009/03/le-corbusier-cabanon-the-interior-ricostruzione-cabanon04.jpg (accessed 12 January 2010).

Information Sources:

Janson,Alban. Le Corbusier Unite d'habitation, Marseille. Axel Menges. Stuggart/ London: Everbest Printing Company Ltd., 2007.

"St. Gall Monastary Plan." http://www.stgallplan.org/ (accessed 12 January 2010).