Villa Savoye

Constructed by Le Corbusier in 1929-31, the Villa Savoye, hotshot of the greatest masterpieces of modern computer architecture, has been widely contested on the part of its originality and its harmony to the practical significance requirements every expression should meet.Following the tradition of International expressive style (a major architectural style in the 1920s and 1930s, also known as a Modern movement, the modernistic style of uttermost minimalism), the Swiss architect Le Corbusier dreamed of breaking all architectural rules and principles (such as scope, tectonics, prossemic etc) and building simple, geometrically designed, unornamented, spacious houses as he called them, machines to be lived in (machines habiter).Of course, this outburst of the twentieth century architecture towards the organic mechanization and simplicity was numerously criticized for the lack of humanism (box-shaped building dehumanize and deprive people of their individuality, they say), yet Le Corbusiers (and other modern architects, such as Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Mart Stam, Hans Scharoun, as well) intention was suddenly humanistic to provide every man with a place to live in this constantly emergence world.Le Corbusier sought efficient ways to house large numbers of people in response to the urban housing crisis. He was a leader of the modernist movemnet to create better living condition and better ordering through housing concepts.But apart from the problem of efficency, many art historians prefer to look on his works, and peculiarly on the Villa Savoye, as on the works of art which provide many artistic effects and turn human perception with unexpected geometry. As a matter of item, Le Corbusier disproves Umberto Ekos functionalistic theory of architecture by costructing buildings to exceed all levels of expectation (as it is required from works of art). Many critics refer to his buildings as to the adjust masterpieces.William J. R. Curtis, for e xample, analyzing the elaborate shape of the Le Corbusiers building, compares the Villa with a Cubistic painting. While Mark Wigley pays much guardianship to the comment of the Villa Savoye his admiration of its glairing flannelness is unconcealed. So, lets take these two critics analyses into pieces in order to queue up out who sounds more(prenominal) convincing and whose point of view looks more original and advanced.William J. R. Curtis takes the most evident singularity of the Villa Savoye for analysis the shape. What he real notes is Le Corbusiers excellent ability to combine severe and breathtaking square horizontal forms with intricate curvatures and asymmetrical forms. This is the top formalistic skill, he claims.It is a well-known fact that Villa Savoye in Poissy is Le Corbusiers major work, associated to his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. In this construction he pioneered to specify the revolutionary five points for a modernistic architecture1. constructing buildings that stand on pilotis thus they should elevate the potentiometer from the ground. The loads are carried punctually and release the peripheral walls, allowing points 2), 3) and 4). Pilotti was one of the most favorite Le Corbusiers devices to free the lower levels for pedestrians.2. a free plan3. a free faade4. long horizontal windows running from one wall to another and outcropping the frontage. They allow generous chip ining on light and sun.5. a cover garden the terrace, build on the roof, totally resembles the garden. Curtis is free to operate almost all the principles, although he pays more attention to deconstructing the overall shape of the Villa Savoye. Thats why any principle he includes into the analysis serves to mess up this unordinary combination of forms and lines, which make the whole building opened toward the conversation with the outdoor atmosphere and the horizon undersurface it.It is sculpted and hollowed to allow the surroundings to enter it, and its form al energies radiate to the borders of the site and to the distant horizon, keenly observes William J.R. Curtis in his essay about the Villa. In fact, he uses many arguments to sound more convincing. For example, he speaks of the faade to be somewhat blank and forbidding in the whole picture of the counterbalance-level box that at first sight makes an whimsy of only horizontal lines predominance. While the faade is a simple key to open an elaborate asymmetry of the Villa, hidden in the other three sides one can rediscover the building from.The faade with its long horizontally placed ribbon of windows seems to be a difficult riddle that at first glance requires a simple answer (the Villa is incorrigibly symmetrical) but can be resolved only after taking a glance from the rear (its symmetry is upset by the curving volumes behind).Another argument the author refers to is the use of pilotis, which Le Corbusier favored so much. The cylindrical pilotis are actually the only vertical l ines of the building helpfully holding the bulky first-level box so that create an impression of hovering.Thus, Le Corbusier not only frees the low-level space for pedestrians but also breaks the architectural archetype of tectonics (in a common view such a thin pilotti cannot hold such a massive box). But it is the architects great achievement to be able to supply this broad machine to be lived in with an airy sense of lightness.Mark Wigley chooses another path to the Villa Savoye. Unlike William J.R. Curtis, who takes a get to the Villa and a walk around it so that grasp the overall expression, Wigley assesses the close picture of it, i.e. analyzing the colouring materialize of the building Le Corbusier preferred, having been influenced by the usual etiolatewash technique.For the design of the buildings themselves, Le Corbusier said that all buildings should be white by law and criticized any effort at ornamentation. What Wigley states in his essay is that the nature of whi te colour in LeCorbusiers houses is not as simple as only an echo of Mediterranean vernacular whitewash the Swiss archtect admired so much during his travel to the East at the end of 1910. His new found love of white is of a complex origin, Wigley claims. For example, he cites Le Corbusiers letter to his paladin William Ritter, in which the architect share his newly made discovery of white, as a proof for his guess.This cunning critic cannot accept the view that the reason for such a faithful love to the white colour is only a result of submission to the irresistable attraction of the Mediterranean. In fact, the architects hail to the universal status of white seems to be founded on a highly specific and idiosyncratic set of personal experiences and fantasies. Le Corbusiers choice of the white wall is motivated by synthesis earlier than by a simple influence.Thats why the phenomenon of white in modern architecture sure enough exceeds all the discourses (a collective idea of the white colour) and rests on the intimate emotional experiences of every architect that rediscovers the colour for him/herself.To some extent I really feel this personal modernistic view on white. I can feel the authors attitude towards the colour that obviously contradicts the common idea of white as a symbol of purity (yes, Le Corbusier was a purist architect, but only in cost of the usage of simple geometrical forms) and sanctity. His white is deprived of the collectivistic views and is rather a symbol of forefront blank page. Le Corbusier rubbed off the messages scripted by the previous cultures.