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 Villa Savoye, Poissy |
Visionary architect or destroyer of picture book England?
The Barbican’s Le Corbusier retrospective places the architect again at the centre of a fierce debate over his role in designing the 20th century, writes
Dan Carrier
HIS critics blame him for the destruction of English urban life, the man who turned our pretty, picture book towns with Cotswold-style high streets into smog-choked thoroughfares lined by swathes of Europeanconcrete monoliths, rain-stained, damp and dirty.
For his loyal followers, Le Corbusier was responsible for ushering the 20th century into Britain, escaping the heavy hand of Victorianism and embracing technology to bring about a brave new world.
This week sees the opening of a retrospective of the Swiss-born architect’s work at the Barbican – and underlines the vast and varied talents of the man who, for better or worse, shaped the modern world.
The exhibition, the first in the Uk for 20 years, includes architectural models, interior reconstructions, drawings, furniture, vintage photographs, films, tapestries, paintings, sculpture and books.
It also places him in context by including work by contemporaries such as Fernand Leger and Le Corbusier’s one-time muse, the Cubist artist Amédée Ozenfant.
Born in 1887 in Switzerland, his home town, La Chaux-de-Fonds, is renowned for clocks and Le Corbusier was an apprentice clockmaker for a time.
The town is also laid out in grid form: orderly, neat, straight – all influences that he would later draw on, as the show explains. It traces his development as a designer, architect and artist, from the twee homes of the Swiss slopes he grew up on, to the no-frills blocks he envisaged that discarded the chintz of the 19th century.
It also covers his abilities as an urban planner – his master plan for a slum-free Paris, formulated in the 1920s, shows his holistic approach to how modern design can improve the collective experience.
As the exhibition explains, during and immediately after the First World War, Le Corbusier began to think in terms of building houses using the technology of mass production. Efficient and rational, he saw homes as living machines, with clearly defined spaces for modern life to be played out inside.
And he though the modern world should be built using modern materials as well as modern techniques. Previously, homes were built with what the builders could find locally – walls were made from stone hewn from the earth beneath.
Le Corbusier’s favoured material – concrete – could be produced away from the site and was uniform grey, not the shade of the local quarry. It seemed to alienate a building from its surroundings, and perhaps subconsciously his early critics, who saw his work as a dangerous Continental fad, were turned off by the fact that a building’s exterior did not reflect the world within which it was set.
Architect Alan Powers, who has contributed to a new collection of essays on the designer in the book Le Corbusier and Britain by librarians at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), explained how the polymath’s work is influential today.
He said: “Le Corbusier was Britain’s gateway to modern architecture, a frame through which the British tried to see something on the other side: literally the other side of Channel, and figuratively something that they assumed to be excitingly ‘other’ to their preconceptions about the purposes of architecture.
“He was also a mirror, in which the British, hoping to see a different world, saw reflected a picture of themselves.”
Yet for someone who captured the imagination of British architects, it is incredible that he never saw a building put up in this country. Le Corbusier designed just one structure in Britain – an exhibition stand for the Venesta Plywood Company in 1930.
British architects discovered Le Corbusier as his ideas came to the fore in Europe: he was discussed in such publications as the Architects’ Journal from the early 1920s onwards.
According to RIBA head librarian Irena Murray, Le Corbusier conjured up a variety of strong feelings.
“British architects reacted to the new phenomenon that was Le Corbusier with awe, curiosity, bewilderment, outrage and incomprehension,” she said. “Clearly he could not be ignored. The editor of the Architectural Review spoke for many when he wrote in 1928 that ‘Le Corbusier discovered a new heaven and a new earth... whether we agree with him or not, it is most fitting that this eager knight should enter the English lists’.”
But whatever your views are on his work, the show’s comprehensive displays make for a thoughtful exhibition. It includes a mural painting, Femme et coquillage IV (1948), from his Parisian office and a reconstruction of his “Plan Voisin” for Paris (1925). There is also a complete kitchen by Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand from his post-war Unité d’habitation project in Marseille.
For his critics, it will also underline the idea that Modernism is somehow inhumane: that the civil unrest in places such as the Projects of New York, the suburban ghettoes of Paris and the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, can somehow be linked to the creative genius of Le Corbusier.
Whatever you think of Le Corbusier, more than 40 years after his death his influence is as important today as it was in the 20th century.
Do Something Different Weekend
?On March 7 and 8 the Barbican is hosting its annual Do Something Different Weekend festival. Highlights this year include:
• Secret Le Corbusier/Secret Barbican: Join architectural historian Eva Branscome for a series of ‘walk and talk’ sessions that explore hidden aspects of Le Corbusier and little known details of the Barbican Estate, focusing on the close relationship between the two. 2pm & 4pm.
• A Day in the Life of Le Corbusier: Architects, artists and critics discuss the First Guru-Architect.
• Family Film Truck:
A programme of fantastical short films for all the family, including a quick jaunt through the history of children’s film as we delve into the archives.
• Musical Snakes and Ladders: Throw the dice and see where you land on the giant Snakes and Ladders board to create a new piece of music with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
• Sandcastles: Design and make sand buildings – be inspired by Le Corbusier’s work, and his love of the beach.
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