LE CORBUSIER
(1887 A.D- 1965 A.D)
Aakriti Khadka
Aditi Paudel
Shreya Tiwari
“A house is a machine for living in.”
EARLY LIFE
➔ Originally – Charles Édouard Jeanneret and developed the
pseudonym “Le Corbusier” in 1920 inspired from his
grandfather.
➔ An architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer &
one of the pioneers of what is now called Modern
Architecture or the International style .
➔ In 1908, he went to Paris and began to practice with
Auguste Perret then moved to Berlin.
➔ He was awarded the Frank P. Brown medal and AIA Gold
medal in 1961 .
➔ Amedee Ozenfant initiated him to sophisticated
contemporary art ‘Purism’ .
➔ His collections were later collected and published as Vers
une architecture (toward a new architecture).
THE SOCIOLOGIST
➔ For Corbusier, a house no matter how beautiful, should
have a little significance in itself.
➔ Concerned with the freedom for the individual i.e. to say-
space, sunlight , open green areas for each and all of us.
➔ In 1943, he applied an interdisciplinary approach in
developing "Modulor”.
IDEAS
➔ A movement was defined by rectilinear forms, open interiors and 'weightless' structures.
➔ Le Corbusier laid out these tenets in his five principles of new architecture, published in
1927 and the Modular.
➔ His five points of architecture is reflected in one of his masterpieces Villa Savoye.
Villa Savoye
Villa Savoye- “the house is a box in the air”
Villa Savoye is a modernist villa located in Poissy,designed by
Le Corbusier in 1929, it had later become the milestone of
modern architecture.
The house is a sleek white box with horizontal windows
running around nearly the total length of its exterior walls.
Renowned for its “five points of architecture” – pilotis, flat roof
terrace, open plan, ribbon windows, and free facades.
Five points of Architecture
● Pilotis - Lift the building over pilotis
The ground floor of the house like the street, belongs to
automobile.
Replacement of the supporting walls by "pilotis", or,
reinforced concrete stilts.
● Free Plan - Free designing of the ground plan
A buildings’ floor plan must be free from structural
condition so partitions can be organized in any way.
● The free Facade
Consequence of concrete frame construction.
The structure separates from the facade, relieving it of its
structural function- separated exterior of the building is free
from conventional structural restriction, allowing the façade to
be unrestrained, lighter, more open.
● The Horizontal windows
The facade can be cut along its entire length to allow
impressive view of exterior & maximum illumination of interior
space.
● The Roof Garden
A building should give back the space it takes up on the
ground by replacing it with garden in sky.
It meant to a city the recovery of all the built-up area.
A mean of bringing nature to houses, RCC slabs makes it
possible to have a roof garden.
The sleek geometry of the white living space, with its elongated ribbon windows, is supported by a
series of narrow columns around a curved glazed entrance – and topped with a solarium.
Colline Notre Dame du Haut
Notre-Dame du Haut, A Roman Catholic Church is one of the
finest examples of the architecture of Franco-Swiss architect
Le Corbusier built in 1955.
A simple design with two entrances, a main altar, and three
chapels beneath towers. Although the building is small, it is
powerful and complex.
The monumental curved concrete roof is a shell structure
supported by columns hidden in the walls. A gap underneath
allows a sliver of light to filter into the interior.
External appearance is a complicated layout while interior is
fairly simple in plan.
Three thick white walls curl inwards from the outside to
create smaller chapels at the sides of the main space.
Scattered and irregular arrangement of the window.
The internal and external walls finished with mortar and
sprayed onto the surfaces before being whitewashed or
painted while the roof was left raw, showing the board marks
from the casting of the concrete.
The Pavilion
The Pavilion, Le Corbusier's last building constructed by the
great Swiss-French architect, is the only of his buildings to be
entirely made from glass and steel.
Intensive use of prefabricated steel elements combined with
multi-coloured enamelled plates fitted to the central core, and
above the complex he designed a 'free-floating' roof.
Designed entirely according to the Modulor system, an
anthropometric scale of proportions devised by Le Corbusier
based on the human body and the golden ratio.
It celebrates the latest and upcoming technology of
Prefabrication and assembly.
The choice of material from concrete to steel was made due
to the characteristics of the key design element ‘Roof’
which was a large, free-flowing, structurally independent
element.
The Modular
Le Corbusier, the renowned architect found that
the golden ratio also exists in the proportions of
the human body and published Le Modulor in 1948.
In the human body, the distance from foot to
navel and navel to top of the head are in golden ratio.
Similarly, the distance from navel to shoulder and
shoulder to top of head are in golden ratio.
The graphic representation of the Modular is a stylized
human figure with one arm upraised standing next to two
vertical measurements.
It represented an attempt to give architecture a
mathematical order oriented to a human scale.
It became foundation for his furniture design .
Villa Sarabhai
Comfort is coolness,yet the sun must penetrate at the proper
time
It is situated according to the prevailing winds and its facades
are furnished with brise-soleil.
To reestablish contact with the noble and fundamental
materials of architecture.
The composition serves to create openings in these walls, all
parallel, playing solids against voids.
SAINTE MARIE DE LA TOURETTE
● Sainte Marie de La Tourette
is a Dominican Order priory
in a valley near Lyon, France
designed between 1956 and
1960.
● One of the more important
buildings of the late
Modernist style.
● Forms are in an almost harsh
contrast to one another that
expressed Corbusier's notion
of pure and beautiful
geometries.
CHANDIGARH CITY PLANNING
● Concept of the city:based on four major
functions: living, working, care of the body and
spirit and circulation.
● Planned the city like a checkerboard.
● The discipline of economy, technology and
climate was maintained-- (materials, simple
shapes, shades, hydraulics, flow of air current) .
● Having 3 immense important buildings:The high
court building, The assembly hall, The secretariat
building.
Unite d’Habitation
➔ Designed as “vertical garden city”.
➔ Designed specially to rehouse victims of destroyed
neighbourhoods of the city after the II world war
➔ Often referred as the original inspiration of the Brutalist
Architecture and philosophy.
➔ UNESCO World Heritage list in 2016.
➔ The Unite block is set in a landscaped park and raised on
pilotis.
➔ The north side is blind due to cold winds.
Unite d’Habitation
➔ It is bulky and looks like an ocean liner.
➔ The ventilation sculptures on the roof looks like the upper
deck and the chimney and the horizontal windows look
like ship cabin windows
➔ In free facades with a carefully orchestrated pattern of
single and double height balconies created fifteen
different types of apartments
Unite d’Habitation
➔ The apartments are private and located around internal
central corridors
➔ The apartments are offset in a pattern, forming a series
of vertical interlocking shaped 'L‘
➔ The roof (garden terrace has 300m running track, a
kindergarten, a gym and shallow pool.
➔ “City within a city”
Saint Pierre
➔ Saint pierre is a concrete building in the commune of
Firminy, France.
➔ The last major work of Le Corbusier, it was started in 1973
and completed in 2006, forty-one years after his death.
➔ The church takes the form of a basic square building
topped with a truncated pyramid.
Saint Pierre
➔ Eastern side features a representation of the orion
constellation
➔ Each side of the structure glows with different colors
➔ Light cones in the ceiling
National Museum of Western Art
➔ The National Museum of Western Art, designed by Le
Corbusier, built in the mid-20th century, was the premier
public art gallery in Japan specializing in art from the
Western tradition.
➔ The building itself presented an “artistic significance and
beauty,” which rivaled the paintings inside.
➔ The museum is square in plan, with the main body of the
galleries raised on pilotis to the first-floor level.
National Museum of Western Art
➔ Externally the building is clad in prefabricated concrete
panels which sit on U-shaped frames supported by the
inner wall.
➔ The building generally is constructed of reinforced
concrete, and the columns have a smooth concrete finish.
➔ This double height space is lit from above with a north
glazed pyramidal skylight intersected with reinforced
concrete beams and columns.
THANK YOU!
