Architecture Publications Architecture

Fall 2001

Savoye Space: The Sensation of the Object

Daniel J. Naegele
Iowa State University, [email protected]

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The Sensation of the Object
by Daniel Naegele

The house will sit in the middle of the meadow,

like an object, without spoiling anything.
-Le Corbusier

The object is surely dead. The sensation of the

object is of first importance.
-Paul Klee
\

To transform space ... it is first necessary to

eliminate rigid objects, conventional receptacles:
one must throw into question the view itself.
-Carl Einstein

LE CORBUSIER'S EARLY EDUCATION encour-

aged him to think of architecture in idealistic
and metaphoric terms: architecture not as
building, but as representation. Schooled in
the neomedieval beliefs of John Ruskin and
Owen Jones, and in the organic similes of art
nouveau, he was convinced that art and indus-
try, like art and craft in former times, ought
naturally to ally. For Le Corbusier, a building
was always like something else. His La Chaux-
de-Fonds houses were like the nature that sur-
rounded them, with their roofs designed as
curves and folded gables to echo the shape of
local ftr trees. 1 The Salvation Army building
was like a beached ocean liner, the Unites like
ftling cabinets or wine racks. Continuous rib-
bon buildings projected for Rio de Janeiro and
Algiers were like bridges or aqueducts or even
like the Great Wall of China, and the poly-
chrome Nestle Pavilion was like a collage
painting into which the viewer could walk.
Most overtly, however, Le Corbusiers Parisian
a
houses were "machines habiter." Taut, precise,
placed on the ground, never of the ground, in
many ways they were a formal coalescence of
the warehouse and the silo, types of American

FALL 2001 5
building extensively praised in Vers une architec- ahabiter to be almost as objective and almost as He insisted on avant-garde painting as prece-
ture. The warehouse-a "shed" decorated by authentic as that which inspired them. dent for this phenomenon, indeed, on its hav-
its extreme lack of decoration-and the silo--a This, however, was not often the case. Le ing provoked the phenomenon, and he closed
building-sized machine of intriguing volumes Corbusier's subscription to "factory aesthetic his treatise by noting: "The essential thing
and shapes-were creations of calculations, lite" did not result in convincingly authentic that will be said here is that the release of aes-
large-scale containers built by engineers along object architecture, though persistently it was thetic emotion is a special function of space. "6
strictly utilitarian lines. Both types seemed to sold as such. 4 What was provoked, however, The release of aesthetic emotion is a special
be delivered to rather than derived from their was an architecture of space; but it was not JUnction of space. Surely this must be one of Le
sites.2 That industrial manifestations of this until much later that Le Corbusier came to Corbusier's most potent declarations, with im-
sort might align with the efforts of avant-garde recognize this. "I see-looking back after all plications not only for the architecture that
art had been established a decade earlier in these years," he wrote in 1955 just a decade followed it but also for all that came before-a
various Cubist and Futurist works, and by before his death, "that my entire intellectual statement that seems to insist on the critical
artists like Fernand Leger and Marcel activity has been directed towards the mani- reassessment of an oeuvre that had been as-
Duchamp, the latter's readymades being a festation of space. I am a man of space, not sumed to be about something else entirely.
most concise, if somewhat less than sincere, only mentally but physically.. ."s Nine years For if space was to be the venustus of modern
summation of the situation.3 By the 1920s, art earlier, in the short treatise "L'espace indici- movement architecture, how to know and to
and industry had allied, and to meld silo and ble," Le Corbusier had proclaimed a new the- qualify the presence of space? How to evoke
warehouse forms to arrive at a five-point for- ory of architecture, one that held space to be a the presence of absence; how to make space
mula for modern architecture must have uniquely 20th-century venustas, the Vitruvian felt-and why, in the 1920s, would anyone
seemed both logical and progressive. Free fa- "delight" that had been absent from earlier want to conjure up such a situation anyway?
cade, free plan, pi/otis, ribbon windows, roof modern movement theories. As he described For surely then, unlike now, at least in Paris,
garden-all might be derived from a melange it, this space was a peculiar, decidedly "ineffa- space did not exist. That is to say, the notion
of building-sized industrial containers of this ble" space; it was not a static, absolute, and of space as related to architecture had not yet
kind. Like the objets-types pictured in Le Cor- objective entity, but rather a relative sensa- gained currency in France.7 Yet if in fact Le
busier's Purist paintings, silos and warehouses tion, a "vibration" between the "action of the Corbusier's "entire intellectual activity" had
were authentic and presumably embodied the work (architecture, statue, or painting)" and been directed toward the "manifestation of
spirit of the age. It was therefore not unrea- the "reaction of the setting: the walls of the space," the obvious questions arise as to the
sonable to expect similarly composed machines room, the public squares ... the landscape." nature of such a space at such a time and

6 HARVARD DESIGN MAGAZINE

where we might find evidence of it even in his "throwing into question the view itself." Space release of aesthetic emotion." "L'oeuvre d'art,"
early architecture. in Purist painting was made manifest through Ozenfant wrote in the mid-teens, "est une ma-
And here it is worthwhile to note that carefully configured ambiguity. Certain tac- chine aimouvoir."ll
~space was not an issue in French ar- tics-a "mariage des contours," a palette of ad- Though "space" could hardly have been a
dtitecture in the '20s, it certainly was in art, so vancing and receding colors, exaggerated conscious concern of the architect Le Cor-
mtdl so that at the time the renowned art frontality, paraline space construction, figure- busier in the '20s, it seems to have had "pres-
aiic Carl Einstein defined the history of art ground reversals-conspired to create con- ence" in Purist painting. Convinced that
smmnation of "all optical experiments, sciously contradictory readings, at once flat painting "should lead to the objectification of
~ted spaces and of figurations." For and spatially deep. Conventional perspective the entire 'world,"' 12 Le Corbusier sought to
W., die future of art lay in the manipulation was employed-in prevalent diagonals, for in- aggrandize this art into environment. The
tJJl spnce. He believed that "in order to trans- stance, that seem to recede into space even as search for a trigger to release aesthetic emotion
' - - this space," it was first necessary "to they relate directly to the two-dimensional originated in Purist painting, became the aim
~te rigid objects, conventional recepta- plane of the canvas. However, it was used of architecture in the 1920s, and ultimately was
d&sm aM thus "throw into question the view largely as a foil to underscore contradiction
_.,ws The Swiss artist and one-time Bauhaus
~ Paul Klee, shared Einstein's convic-
and thus to heighten the observer's physical
sensation of the work of art. Oscillation un-
elevated to the special function of space-the
new venustas of modern architecture-in the
1940s. Questions again present themselves.
ritess. ~~is surely dead," he wrote in dermined absolute objectivity. It questioned How might the peculiar "contradictory space"
biadteryio k mid-'20s. "The sensation of the the authority of "the view." The observer felt of a three-dimensional image on a two-dimen-
ma
qzfjbia im tJJl importance."9 And something space. Such ambiguity presents a both/and sional canvas be made manifest in the decidedly
hiim ~ ~ts can be found in the the- condition in which multiple images or read- three-dimensional art of architecture? How to
I.e
otWioai tiitii'iottp; Corbusier and his part- ings-distinct and separate yet one and the introduce as essence to the nonfictive medium
ii'tlitii" m ~ ~ Ozenfant, as early as same-reside in a single painting. Because of architecture the sensation, the resonance,
itli. m ~m fur example, they define only a single reading can prevail at any one found in the space of representation?
mar ~ sdf-Rferential Purist painting time, in the instantaneous passage from one
~ u ~ lmt as space."to Purist space reading to the next, time is felt. Visual ambi- Perhaps in no other early Le Corbusier work
- ZMJt of a tnditioml, perspectival sort. On guity induces what might be called, if only in is a sense of "new space" more palpable than
die OOttary, Purism strove to undermine this hindsight, a "space-time" sensation. The aim in the Villa Savoye, the architect's first mas-
regime" and did so largely, it seems, by of all this, according to Purist theory, was "the terpiece. Certainly, writings on architecture

FALL 2001 7
begin to note this only a decade after the vil- and urbanity of Parisian life. Arriving from head of which coincides with the horizon line
la's completion. Sigfried Giedion, for instance, the city, he says, the automobile will glide in the landscape to the left. This landscape,
in his 1941 Space, Time and Architecture, pro- among the pilotis beneath this elevated do- too, forms part of the interior terrace, appear-
claimed Savoye "quite literally" a "construc-
tion in space-time." 13 And by the mid-1950s it
was common for critics and historians to place
great emphasis on "the manner in which space
main. Garage, domestics' rooms, and entry ing almost as a framed picture, only minimally
are all at ground level. The entry is "on axis" separated by the mullions of the sliding glass
as is the "very gentle ramp [that] ushers one window. But the true catalyst to novel space
effortlessly to the main living level." Though comes from the construed "frame" on the
I
has been enclosed and related" in the villa. 14 free to orient the frontless villa to his liking, right-a direct result of the manner in which
Yet while it is assumed that Savoye was the Le Corbusier situates the "cube" to assure Le Corbusier portrays architecture. Here he
summation of a decade of white villa building, each room a view, but notes that "orientation shows the wall and ceiling of a roofed exterior I
1
none of these writings speculates as to the na-
ture of Savoye's space and none attempts to
of the sun is opposite that of the view." Only cove with the diagonal junction of these
the suspended garden, and the interiors that planes ambiguously configured. Like many
I
explain why such space might more readily open onto it, are permitted an abundance of similar frames found in Le Corbusier's Purist
appear in Poissy than in Paris. For Le Cor- direct sunlight. On the level above the garden, paintings-frames that would later be trans-
busier, of course, at least at the time of the accessed again by ramp, one finds a seemingly lated to three-dimensional sculpture-it can
house's completion, space was decidedly not redundant solarium, a kind of toit Jardin. De- be read simultaneously as both receding into
the essence of the Villa Savoye, and in intro- fined by "curved forms that resist the strong and folded out of the picture plane. Thus de-
ducing the Villa Savoye to his Oeuvre complete winds and that offer a very rich architectural piction permits space to modify itself at will.
readers in 1929, he offered neither space nor element" to the design, the solarium is neces- In this way, framing seems to encourage the
any aesthetic rationale whatsoever for what at sary, Le Corbusier insists, "in order to crown sensation of space.
the time must certainly have seemed a curious, the ensemble." It serves as forecourt to the In contrast, Le Corbusier's verbal descrip-
not to say absurd, residential proposition. For elaborate boudoir and bedroom suite for tion of the villa is mundane, presenting his
why construe a weekend house in the country Madame Savoye, a cubic appendage that in el- highly questionable parti as matter-of-fact res-
("in the middle of a meadow") as a cubic evation detracts from the clarity of the olution to-not provocateur of-issues of
three-story contraption ("like an object") so scheme. In ending this short tour, Le Cor- function, hygiene, and site apprehension. Yet
obviously at odds with its situation? Why of- busier notes what seems obvious in his per- each of his claims hints at qualities that serve
fer a highly contrived, machinelike assem- spective drawing but what must have been a to distinguish this design from those of his
blage, one that goes up instead of out, as an peculiarity at the time: the "main body of the earlier villas, and it is these distinguishing
appropriate solution to such exceedingly nat- house is defined by four similar walls, with characteristics that ultimately earn it entrance
ural, excessively accommodating and expan- overtly voided centers all around, and with a into the realm of the truly remarkable. "The
sive circumstances? unique window system designed by L-C and house should have no front," he insists, thus
Needless to say, when Le Corbusier de- P.J."I6 The accompanying two-point perspec- emphasizing the nonwall quality of the four
scribes his initial scheme for the not-yet-built tive of the southwest exterior comer of the walls. Yet certainly frontality, if not facadism,
Villa Savoye in the premier volume of the villa emphasizes volume over plane. Ribbon was a mainstay of Corbusian design both be-
Oeuvre complete, he does not address these is- windows render vertical walls as rectangular fore and after the design for the Villa Savoye.
sues.'5 He tells us instead that the site is very hoops hovering in space, skewered together To eliminate a front is also to dissolve Le Cor-
open, has wonderful views, and "is magnifi- by toothpick pilotis, affecting a look remotely busier's most persuasive but least noted formal
cent, comprised of a great meadow with a hill similar to that of a box kite, or given the villa's device: the (almost) blank sidewall. For
surrounded by trees." He then directs our at- cockpit "crown," like the Air Express that so throughout the '20s, from the conceptual Cit-
tention to aspects of his design related to excited Le Corbusier in Vers une architecture. rohan to the representational Pavilion de !'E-
these conditions. "The house has no front," In none of this description does Le Cor- sprit Nouveau, from the Villa Meyer to the
he claims, but as it is "situated at the crest of busier mention space. Of the nine drawings Maisons Cook and Guiette and to the Villa
the hill, it should open to the four horizons." provided, only a large perspective of the sus- Stein and Maison Plainex, Le Corbusier con-
And "to permit distant views of the horizon," pended terrace suggests spatial novelty. It coa- ceived of a kind of bookend architecture:
he reasons, "the main living level, with its sus- lesces the interior and exterior, allowing us to buildings with blinders, houses that opened
pended garden, is raised on pilotis." He imag- look from the terrace through the living room mainly to the front and back. With the excep-
ines the house as a retreat from the congestion and through again to the ribbon window, the tion of Maison Citrohan (a rather faceless

8 HARVARD DESIGN MAGAZINE

theoretical villa designed with no specific site thus ignoring the ramp's principal flaw, its dis- when-seen-as-real Villa Savoye.'And here the
in mind and bearing some resemblance to cer- continuity. He cites dryness and health as notion of Savoye space-and its relationship
tain grill-faced automobiles of the day), each good reasons for his having "suspended" the to promenade architecturale-returns. For of
had a carefully composed front facade and, "garden" above the ground. "But one contin- the sixteen photographs of the villa featured in
ideally, each contained its own "outdoor ues the promenade," he says. "From the ele- the second volume of the Oeuvre complete, the
room," ancestor to the suspended garden. The vated garden one climbs by ramp to the roof two most beguiling are certainly the one that
Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau was paradigmat- of the house where the solarium is located." portrays the beginning and the one that antic-
ic in this respect. Built as a full-scale model of Then, in a more reflective mode, he tells us ipates the end of the promenade experience.
sorts, it quite intentionally 1epresented a Le that "Arabian architecture gives us a valuable Captioned "Arrivee des voitures sous les pi/otis,"
Corbusier ideal. It could serve either as subur- lesson. It apprehends 'on the move,' by foot; it the first records our initial encounter with the
ban house, or, like a modular container, as a is in walking, in displacing oneself, that one villa as we arrive via automobile. The image
single cube in an "Immeubles-Villas" urban sees the order of architecture unfolding." And portrays not an object, but space. Its focal
structure built of many such cubes arranged this, he claims, "is the opposite of baroque ar- point is a rectilinear "void," luminous and
side-by-side and one atop another.17 The lat- chitecture, conceived on paper from a fixed centered in the composition. Grass, gravel,
ter possibility insists that the cube be opened theoretical point. I prefer the lesson of Arabi- and ceiling surfaces appear as flattened shapes.
only to front and back. Circulation through an architecture." Architecture is to be appre- Pilotis are soft cylinders that frame the glow-
the pavilion is of little consequence. But in hended, it seems, by both the body and the ing rectangle even as they emanate from it.
19.:!6, with the Villa Cook, this stackable con- eye in motion. In concluding, Le Corbusier Photography transforms awkward beams to
tainer gave way to the independent town- declares his creation to be a "true architectur- washes of gray-more the absence of light
house. Responding to its tight urban setting, al promenade," one that offers constantly than the presence of out-of-place mass. The
Le Corbusier opened both the underside and varying views and achieves tremendous diver- horizon bisects the picture. Dominant diago-
top of the cube and thus, by necessity, pilotis sity despite the "absolute rigor" of its post- nals, implicit and explicit, radiate from its cen-
and roof garden enter the formula. Circula- and-beam system, a system comprised, he ter void and engage the edges of the image.
tion is now vertical. One ascends from ground says, of "equidistant pilotis which form an in- All conspire to support the illusion of appar-
to sky. The toit jardin, no longer mere nicety, dependent frame and result in a free plan."zo ently deep space, to depicting a kind of trun-
has become a transcendent experience. "The But of course, a glance at that plan, particu- cated pyramid receding into the picture plane.
reception is at the top of the house," Le Cor- larly at the lower level, reveals anything but Yet abstraction and careful composition, to-
busier writes of Cook. "One exits directly equidistant pilotis, for the "on-axis" ramp has gether with the tendency of bright planes to
onto the toit jardin where one prevails over required that the order be interrupted. And advance, encourage an easy reversal of this
the vast forest of the Bois de Boulogne; you throughout the villa, interior wall placement view, and the truncated pyramid can be read
are no longer in Paris; you are in the coun- seems not free but precisely determined by alternatively as projecting out of the picture
try. "Is This movement from the city to the column and exterior "mullion" locations. In plane. Ultimately, oscillation between receding

I
\
country, from the mundane to the metaphysi-
cal, from earth to heaven, from body to mind,
is quite dearly a metaphor for life as Le Cor-
busier knew it.19 The orchestrated experience,
its beginning, middle, and climactic end,
._,,,..,,.,_, something larger than just promenade
rd:m:c~"1znnle. But still, at the Villa Cook, the
rman..:tan:e obscures the metaphor. Ascension is ~ !
"""'"'~"'""h a tight and discontinuous vertical
The movement seems simply logical,
result of confined urban conditions.
Jit Poissy, the opposite is true. Logic is un-
,tenTIHM''<fi by the apparent inappropriateness addition, construction photographs suggest into and projecting out of brings about the col-
z three-story structure on an expansive, that frame, floors, and walls were hardly inde- lapse of the image to a two-dimensional "X"
site, and by Le Corbusier's emphasis pendent but were more or less cemented to- running from corner to corner, and a third
importance of the on-axis ramp. Un- gether to make of the building a single, solid reading, one of absolute flatness, becomes ap-
the original design, in which the ramp unit.Z 1 So with "absolute rigor," "independent parent. Such ambiguity conveys a sense of
at Madame Savoye's elaborate frame," and "free plan," Le Corbusier de- contradictory space. It affects the reader em-
'#(.'''""''-''" suite, in the budget-wise final de- scribes not the real but the ideal. And this ten- pathetically. One feels space. "The object is
u: leads nowhere but to the sky. Its use- dency extends to earlier assertions as well. The dead." The "sensation of the object" is now of
!o.~ness is its greatest strength. Promenade steeply inclined ramp, for instance, hardly primary importance. An off-strike of reality
ttecomes not a means to an end, but an end in "ushers one effortlessly." In addition, the T- that when carefully construed records visual
a "poetic fact." Accordingly, Le Cor- shaped north elevation-not hovering on pilo- contradiction, photography corralled and
rw:Mi.li!'!""' description of the completed villa in tis like the other three elevations but extending transmitted this sensation of the object-what
,u{ume 2 of the Oeuvre complete-a descrip- to the ground-is clearly the "front" that Le Le Corbusier had termed in Vers une anhitec-
tt<!4f written after he himself had walked the Corbusier says the house does not have. Still, ture the "resonance profonde"-and of this sen-
many times-underscores the impor- Le Corbusier makes evident what he wants this sation, new space was born.
the ethereal and somatic apprehen- architecture to be: a kind of exhibition-un- The other image, "Promenade architec-
architecture. It begins with our derstood by both foot and eye-of l'ordannance turale, " confirms this. Depicting the final mo-
;;tnothetized?) approach by car to the lower- des formes, forms at the very center of Vers une ment of one's ascent through the villa, it is
door of the house, and by our entry, as it architecture theory, forms that "intensely affect remarkably similar in composition to "sous les
uere. from beneath the skirt of Villa Savoye. our senses, provoking plastic emotions."zz pilotis." Dominant diagonals radiate from a
tJn &m"t"al, Le Corbusier assures us that the central white rectangle. Cylindrical shapes
u.eeping circle of the glazed entry hall wall The carefully selected photographs that ac- seem to levitate. A decidedly horizontal line
'% ;s det:ermined not frivolously but functional- company Le Corbusier's verbal description of- bisects the composition. Complex surfaces are
its diameter corresponding to the turning fer testimony to his convictions. And it is the rendered as simple overlapping planes in
r21.ln.J.s of the family car. Le Corbusier then verbal and visual "texts" together that elevate space. And here too, the image strives to re-
GTi'~'+ us directly to the main living level- to canonical status the otherwise imperfect- verse itself, for despite the presumed use of a

FALL 2001 9
wide-angle lens, its space is highly com- VeTs une architecture. Dominating that cover is a onto Lac Leman, parallels the continuous
pressed.~3 Its background, poised as it is on the photograph of the promenade of the ocean lin- opening of the Aquitania promenade.
bisecting horizontal roof plane, leans into the er Aquitania, a compelling one-point perspec- Destined to appear repeatedly in the work
foreground. The whites advance, and neither tive cropped to create an oscillating tnmcated of Le Corbusier, this truncated pyramid com-
the ramp-wall nor the rail possess adequate pyramid composition. Like "sous les pilotis," it position and the space that it evoked achieved
gradation in gray scale to appear sufficiently features an "X" parti of abstract surfaces, a lu- iconic status in a perspective montage that rep-
"deep" to keep it at bay. Rather the ramp-wall minous rectangle as focal point, and promi- resented an interior design for the 1929 Salon
is sho"lhTI as a Hat triangle that seems to run nent diagonals formed by rails and the d' Automne. In this montage, black-and-white
across the image instead of into it. The rail is junction of wall planes with ceiling and floor. photographs of the then-new furniture of Le
abstracted to a series of radial lines compara- The "shadowed-grass triangle" on the far right Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte
ble to the highlights and shadows found on side of "sous les pilotis" closely parallels the Perriand are placed in a dravrn and colored
the ramp surface. But if the background ap- rail of the ocean liner, with tl1e highlighted tri- perspective. The conjoining of "real" (photo-
pears to be nosing its way forward, it is the
ramp itself that encourages this. The ramp is
inherently a visually ambiguous architectural
entity. Its floor is both a vertical and horizon-
tal plane. As an indicator of depth, it is highly
deceptive, for one intuitively knows "floor" as
horizontal plane, but to read it in representa-
tion as only horizontal upsets a delicate bal-
:mce, confounding all visual clues of the
composition. A false perspective ensues. The angle above it providing a "ribbon window" gnphic) with fictive (drawn) space brings an
view itself is throw-n into question. "Content" similar to tl1at of the ship. So uncanny is the etl1ereal air and eJ~:pansiveness to depiction.
is abstracted, and if only momentarily, the im- resemblance that here one is tempted to an Like the curious pods in paintings by Hierony-
age is about space. That it should also depict Olympian leap to conclusion, albeit only in the mus Bosch, the cutout photographs of furni-
the climax of our ascent is not '-'Y""'"""ca" inte1rogative. Could the im.age of the Aquitania ture resist the regime of the overall drawn
Recording contradiction, promenade----not an object per se, but a seustt- perspective. They are not quite right size,
"sous Ies pilotis" are the first "sensations" tiou of an object-have inspired nearly identi- and each comes with its own perspectival
the special space of Yet such ambigu- architectural configurations in the work of space, space that contradicts of the
ously construed space was common to Le Cor- Le Corbusier? Could it have initiated a kind of cated perspective. By challenging the
busier. He had employed truncated pyramid "truncated pyramid space," a peculiar but very of tl1e perspective that contains them,
configurations often and consistently to cat- consciously construed configuration adopted ing to confom1 to its dictates,
his Pmist paintings, and as a standard type and destined to appear again ize--in the most meaning
te11..i:s of his '20s publications feature many im- and again in Le Corbusier's buildings? word--space itself. make evident and
ages similar in composition to "sous les pilotis" Certainly as an object, the Aquitmzia as palpable that which would go unno-
and "promenade."2'' Indeed, so persistent is the promenade might have inspired such an archi- ticed. It is contrast, with the cre::Jtion
motif in Le Corbusier's representations---and tecture. "\V1th plan in pocket," Le Corbusier of a dialectk, that tJ1e of
in work of renowned contemporaries, confessed in reference to the tiny house that he catalyzes the imaginary, nature of
artists such as El Paul and designed for his parents in 1925 beside Lac Le- the drawn-up space. The presence of a
Jacques Villon--that one might consider it not man, "one goes in search of a site that will conjoTt outside the of construed
just an important but, in its objective prove agreeable to jt," 26 The living room of tlus perspective heightens this effect.
manifestations, a d1at appears in 560--square-foot maison miniscule, Le Corbusier As polychromcd for in L'Arcbi-
many gmses m and tells us, offered a forty-five-toot-long "perspec- tecture Vivrmte, this and rose
sional fonn in the oeuvre of the architect.25 tive" that included a thirty-six-foot-long perspective presents autonomous, "unin~rsal"
The special significance of this type both to Le continuous ribbon vvindow onto the lake. The space, distinctly and once again echo-
Cmbusier's built \Yorks and to hjs theory is perspective is the principal space of the house; ing in both form and content the space con
made evident on the original 1923 cover of it is a place. The ribbon window, opening out veyed in the photograph the
promenadeY Yet image
Salon installation itself.
position of a Cartesian grid over
lowered ceiling, and the modular
gave measured order and definition to the
space and integrally tied the advertised
"equipment" to its environment. In contrast,
in the colored image, the of
measure and modulation have apparently
evaporated in favor of a more nebulous, effer-
vescent, and decidedly unreal "space." Objects
are not anchored to but seem to levitate in a
more or less perspectival ord.er established by
the convergence of diagonal lines. Le Cor-
busier's bluish-white coloring of both ceiling
and rear wall assists in conveying an ethereal
(not-the-object-but--the-sensation-of-the-ob-
ject) atmosphere. Color, and a reluctance on
the part of the photographed furniture to co-
operate with the implied perspective, dissolve
resolute structure. Still, the prome-
nade is present, and its continuous opening"
to-the-sea aperture is here echoed on left
by the long metal cabinets that hover above the end of the interior ramp with the suspend- Time and again, Le Corbusier would construe
the floor-a substitute fenetres en longuer that ed garden that leads to the beginning of the back-to-hack "truncated pyramids" as spatial
Le Corbusier will rely on often (and evi- exterior ramp. Le Corbusier's extraordinary sequence. For what is the Mundaneum's
denced, most elegantly, in the library of the crafting of ambiguity allows this area to be, at Musee Mondiale if not a highly ordered
Villa Church). On the right, in blue, Le Cor- once, both a room and an essential part of the mounding of head-to-tail Savoye ramps? And
!msier has painted pan de verre on the other- promenade. And here too, the image of the what is the La Tourette labyrinth if not the
wise blank wall of this presumably windowless Aquitania is recalled. The room's proportions same end-to-end schemata-this time termi-
room. Abstraction is heightened and a sense approach that of a long corridor, and its rib- nating in a kidney-walled crypt, an enigmatic
4JI the scenographic evoked. The space of rep- bon windows mimic those of a ship at sea, false perspective that translates into architec-
wamtation has all but usurped that of reality. permitting the horizon to be ever present. ture the resonance found in the space of rep-
It is with this icon in mind--one as salient, From the suspended garden, one continues resentation as it pushes to ultimate conclusion
i v.wm:Bld suggest, as that of the Maison Dom- the promenade, ultimately to arrive at yet an- the psychological "effect" of pyramid corridor
ino-that one returns to Poissy, to the prome- other curious convergence of the real and the construction? 28
~ architecturale, and to the illusory space representational. For when the budget re- It was not space, of course, but an image of
4JI truncated pyramid configuration recorded moved to the piano nobile Madame Savoye's absoluteness that made the Villa Savoye a
in the photographs of its beginning and its boudoir, nothing remained at the end of the canonical work of architecture. Self-contained,
And now one notices that not only does ramp to arrest one's view but the idea of the cubic, relentlessly ribbon-windowed, with a
promenade start and stop with such space, view itself. And from the solarium wall that foyer wall dictated by a turning radius and lev-
m.tt also that it is comprised almost entirely of terminates the promenade even as it creates itating planes tied to the ground by pure white
m.k-ro-back pyramids construed at each level the villa's "crown," Le Corbusier removes a cylinders, "Les Heures Claires" was a scantily
4JI ramp. Even the ramp's discontinuity- rectangle. A picture appears. The "view itself" clad Maison Dom-Ino that illustrated in dia-
~ until it arrives at the piano nobile, ex- is made manifest. Yet as one approaches the grammatic fashion Le Corbusier's famous five
_ . and accessed only from the suspended aperture,, this enigmatic image vanishes. The points. It was a memorable summation of a
P*o thereafter-contributes to the elated picture of the world beyond is gone, replaced decade of villas blanches, an icon that rivaled in
~ of ascent that the configured space in- by the reality of all that lies outside the Villa economy Mies's concrete office project, an
sdk For at exactly this interruption, Le Cor- Savoye. Only the idea of the view remains. eminently repeatable module stamped across
iaiu has situated the villa's principal public The view belongs not to the perceptual but to cui-de-sacs to make up an Argentine suburb.29
:era.. ..un vaste sejour," the dining-living the conceptual realm, though momentarily- But all of this neglects its categorically "rela-
~ The six-by-fourteen-meter room serves as in all the best Le Corbusier moments-the tive" interior comprised largely of contingen-
z ,a protracted landing of sorts, connecting two are one. cies that allow the boite en l'air parti to persist

FALL 2001 11
free and clear of the encumbrances of accom- rive retreat nor on similar manifestations that and distanced in its courtyard, content with elevations and
modation. Awkward cubic rooms, each with followed. Marseilles, for instance, is absurdly in little need of a facade, was the one new Parisian house
its often tedious and anonymous ribbon win- squat and unshaven on all sides. Its pilotis are that might have succeeded in avoiding charges of frivolity.
dow complemented by the requisite concrete not white cylinders, but muscular~ organ-like Its structural members, including glass block, dutifully
ledge, are connected by long, tight corridors, issuances. And with the Maisons Jaoul, the exposed themselves for all to examine. A new space result-
and everywhere the diagonal of the ramp im- cabanon at Cap-Martin, perhaps even Ron- ed from this way of building. Le Corbusier gready ad-
poses itself. Yet it was Le Corbusier's genius champ, an absorbent, barbaric, heavy archi- mired this house and adopted its materials as "facade"
to integrate all with a palette of pastels, the tecture is construed as eminently present and for his concrete Salvation Artny building and his Porte
occasional skylight, or, in the otherwise black inescapable-an artifact not a phenomenon, Molitor apartment, and more intrinsically, for the Maison
hole of its interiority, the famed S-shaped "lit an object not an image. It was by contrast that Clarte. His Maisons Jaoul are perhaps a domestic,
de repos," that brings to the Madame's boudoir texture and weight of this sort made apparent Parisian response to the Maison de Verre and to the
the splendors of a Pompeian atrium. Walls the essence of space while simultaneously ad- "problem" it resolved. Curiously, they seem close kin to
comprised of heavy masonry and concrete dressing the human need to dwell in the ob- the Pessac houses as they appear in construction pho-
were smoothed and cloaked in a whiteness jective and unmovable. Even as it employed tographs before being dressed in stocco. See, for instance,
that defies gravity. The ground-level garage "sensation," this inherently heavy materiality FLC Photo L2 (6) 1-4, showing three units under con-
was camouflaged in a dark green that allows it attempted to keep an architecture of space in struction, veiled in scaffolding of rough lumber.
to recede into "landscape" and permits the the realm of the authentic, the real, the palpa- However, Le Corbusier's '20s villas, in general,
botte its illusion of levitation, while oddly out- ble, the tactile. rejected both attachment to site and a sense of dwelling,
and neglected visual and acoustical privacy in favor of
continuity, openness, and "lightness." On this rejection
and neglect, see Philippe Boudon, Lived-in Architecture:
Le Corbltsier's Pessac Revisited, Gerland Onn, trans.
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972); on its late manifestation,
see Fran~;ois Barre's interview with Marie Jaoul in "La
maisonJaoul," L'Architectun: d'Aujourd'htti, September
1979, 85-86.
of-place windows and doors that service the For Le Corbusier, the Villa Savoye, canoni- It is interesting to note that Le Corbusier often pa-
rez-de-chaussee rooms of maid and chauffeur cal and without doubt a masterpiece, was but a raded acoustics as a selling point for his architecture, as
are edited out of images. All of this is to say point in the progress toward a more inherently with the League of Nations project, or with the Pavillon
that, when handled masterfully, certain con- "conservative" architecture, one that valued Suisse. Such campaigning-in the name of science, the
tingencies make of the Villa Savoye an ami- space as its essence but that sought its manifes- new means, and materials indicative "of our age"-was
able, even charming habitat, yet are of a tation in dialogue with immutable reality. Yet also undertaken for other technically weak aspects of his
decidedly different nature than the apparent in an age obsessed with image, the "sensation architecture: flat roofs, unprotected glazed walls, air
order that pervades Le Corbusier's visual and of the object" prevails. It should therefore conditioning, etc. It might be argued that each of these
verbal presentation. The exterior is absolute, come as no surprise that at Poissy today, as problem areas-sites for inventive engineering and thus
the interior relative and contingent. Both, no elsewhere, the phenomenal in the form of re- for "progressive" building-was in fact brought on by a
doubt, delight the observer; though if, in the- presentation persists in embalmed or resur- conception of architecture as industrial container.
ory, Le Corbusier believed that "Le plan est Je rected bodies, though hardly in a manner Change the paradigm, alleviate the problem? But to do
generateur" and took care to "procure Ia satis- agreeable to modern movement theory. so would be to relinquish "new space" and the iconic
faction de /'esprit" through an "obligation de value of novelty itself.
l'ordre" and an "assurance contre l'arbitraire," in Notes 5. Le Corbusier, Modular 2 (Let the User Speak Next),
practice, at least with the Villa Savoye, any l. Such proposed rooflines were later built in straight Anna Bostock and Peter de Francia, trans. (London:
obligation to order seems to have been satis- lines for practical reasons. See H. Allen Brooks, "Le Faber and Faber, 1958), 27.
fied more from the outside in than from the Corbusier's Formative Years at La Chaux-de-Fonds," 6. Le Corbusier, "L'espace indicible," L'Architecture
inside out. in Le Corbusier, H. Allen Brooks, ed. (Princeton, New d'Auj01trd'hui, special edition, January 1946, 9-10.
If what has been described here conforms Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987), 29. Republished in Le Corbusier, Modu!or 2; published in
comfortably with Le Corbusier's well-known 2. Such factories are pictured in Le Corbusier's 1920 English in Le Corbusier, New World of Space (New York:
definition of architecture as "le jeu savant, cor- L'Espnt Nouveau article, "Trois Rappels, La Surface," re- Reyna! and Hitchcock, 1948). Quotations here taken
rect et magnifique des volumes assemblis sous Ia cycled as chapter 2, part 2 in Le Corbusier, Vers une m- from Joan Ockman, ed., Architecture Culture 1943-1968:
lumiere,"3o and if photography-"the manipu- chitectltre (Paris: Edition Cres et Cie, 1923). A Documentary Anthology (New York: Columbia Books of
lation of light" in Moholy-Nagy's words-so 3. The Deutscher Werkbund was founded in 1907 on Architecture/Rizroli, 1993), 66.
clearly captured this condition and offered it the idea of such an alliance, but fme art, architecture, and 7.1n Germany and Holland, philosophers, theologians,
back to its author as a "spatial palette," it industry seem to reach a point of tangency around 1913, artists, and architects had already begun to consider
should not go unnoted that architecture of a the year in which Marcel Duchamp selected and signed space a distinguishing quality unique to this century. See,
purely phenomenal sort, so effortlessly pro- his first readymade and a young Walter Gropius sought for example, the philosophic writings of Schmarsow, En-
moted by photography and the printed page, to elevate his Fagus factory to the realm of architecture dell, Sorgell, and Lipps, and the theological inquiry of
once it was achieved at Poissy, seemed insuffi- in his "Die Entwicklung modemer lndustriebaukunst," Tillich. An excellent short history of space as related to
cient to persist as such in the "patient search" JahrbliCh des Deutschen Werkbundes,Jena, 1913, 17-22. It architecture is found in Anthony Vidler's "Space, Time
of Le Corbusier. For as soon as the essence of is in this article that Gropius presents the now renowned and Movement," in Russell Ferguson, ed., At the End of
this architecture became evident, Le Cor- photographs of American silos and warehouses. Similar the Century: One Hundred Years of Architectltre (Los Ange-
busier began to explore its opposite. Thus images would fmd their way into Vers une architectltre. les: Museum of Contemporary Art; New York: Harry N.
with the tiny Maison de Weekend in La- 4. Slick and ethereal when dressed in white stucco, the Abrams, 1998), 100-125.
Celle-St. Cloud, Le Corbusier set aside ele- new architecture appeared to many to be frivolous and 8. Carl Einstein, "Aphorismes Methodiques," DOCttments,
vated and ethereal absolutism, the anonymous urbane, particularly when slipped into a uniformly gray, 1929, 32.
and the universal, the Cartesian and the phe- eminendy heavy Paris. And when grouped in colonies, 9. The Diaries ofPaul Klee, Felix Klee, ed. (Los Angeles:
nomenal in favor of the natural, the authentic, as at Stuttgart or Prague or Vienna, these white and University of Califomia Press, 1964), 670, as quoted in
the earthen, the rough, the rotund. Ascension cream-colored boxes suggested themselves to others as Gillian Naylor, The Bauhaus Reassessed (New York: E.P.
was countered by a sense of shelter and bur- a somewhat unreal and exotic amusement, the Wei6en- Dutton, 1985), 90. Naylor traces these preoccupations
rowing in, and the five-point formula fulfilled hofsiedlung being pejoratively compared by locals to an with "sensation" and "making visible" to the Munich
at Poissy was imposed neither on this primi- Arabian village. Pierre Chareau's Maison de Verre, safe lectures (1894-1913) ofTheodor Lipps and also his book

12 HARVARD DESIGN MAGAZINE

on perception, The Aesthetics of Space and Geometrical volume 1, 186-187. duction, who is not necessarily the author of the photo-
Optical Illusions (Leipzig: J.A. Barth, 1897), and the 17. An advertisement for "'IJimmeuble Villas' en Villas graph (but who may well be a photographer who has
two-volume Aesthetics: the Psychology of Beauty and A11: de banlieue" found on page 220 ofLe Corbusier'sAl- purchased the work of another photographer). Le Cor-
(Hamburg and Leipzig: Voss, 1903 and 1906). manach d'm-chitecture moderne offers the Pavilion design as busier was only partially responsible for the photographic
10. Charles-EdouardJeanneret and Amedee Ozenfant, a kind of prefabricated suburban dwelling. It shows near- images of his work. Pierre J eanneret was, before his
"Purism," in Robert L. Herbert, Modern Anists on A11: ly blank side walls punctuated by the occasional door, a departure in 1940, the office photographer. When a
(New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1964), 58-73; "Le kind of "canopy" added to the rear facade, and the stan- building neared completion, Jeanneret would photograph
Purisme" initially appeared in L'Esprit Nouveau 4, January dard Le Corbusier "stair and bridge" clip-on that here it with his twin-lens Rolleiflex. Contact prints would
1921, 369-386. leads to the contained terrace room. This stair and then be submitted to Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier would
H. As recounted in Amedee Ozenfant, Memoires, bridge motif appears most famously on the garden facade make selections from, and edit, these images, and then
1886-1962 (Paris: Seghers, 1968), 109. This definition of the Villa Stein-de Monzie at Garches, but oddly use them to indicate his preferred perspectives to profes-
was later applied to architecture in Le Corbusier-Saug- enough it appears as well in the original scheme for the sional photographers (seldom hired directly by Le
nier, "Architecture: Pure Creation de !'esprit," L'Esprit Villa Savoye, where it allowed one to move directly from Corbusier but typically sent by journals or press agen-
Xouveau 16, 1922, 1903-1918. There, a caption to a the suspended garden to the ground. As such it gave pri- cies) when they arrived to photograph the newly finished
photograph of a detail of the Parthenon reads: "Voici macy to a certain "side" of the VIlla Savoye, thus eroding building. The least unadulterated versions of these pro-
Ia machine a emouvoir... "This article later appeared the sense of a facade-less building-in-the-round. It was fessional photographs are often found in a loose-leaf,
as a chapter in Vers uue anhitectun (Paris: Arthaud, removed from the final design, of course, but arguably it portfolio format in 'Architecture Vivante, which pub-
1977), 173. might have inspired the idea of a ramp-bifurcated build- lished special editions of Le Corbusier's work. Le Cor-
12.Jeanneret and Ozenfant, 369-386. ing, such as those that Le Corbusier would later realize busier himself chose, cropped, and placed on the printed
13. Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time aud Architectme with the Mill Owner's Building in India and the Carpen- page the illustrative text for most of his early books,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941), 416. The ter Center at Harvard, though more likely it was Mel- including the Oeuvre complete. By comparing "original"
notions of "new space" put forth in this book are often nikov's Soviet Pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exposition des photographs with those "ordered" by Le Corbusier (he
cunfused and contradictory, as pointed out most intelli- Arts Decoratifs, with its immensely bold diagonal ramp- sometimes used "regulating lines" to determine final
:g:ently by Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern stair motif, that initiated this notion. In the Pavilion de compositions), it is apparent that the "truncated pyramid
. ~nhitecture (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), 289-291. !'Esprit Nouveau, one of the side walls served as a bill- composition" is applied to the photographs by Le
Collins's review of the "concept of space" in architecture board, carrying a colossal "E" and "N." Corbusier-available but not readily evident in the origi-
;.:85-293), though written in the mid-'60s, remains 18. Oettvre complete, volume 1, 130. nal, unworked image. This is the case as well for the im-
.,,edible and thorough. However, Collins's conclusions 19. Anyone who has spent time in Le Corbusier's native ages selected from catalogues and other sources, images
ug-,miing "The Influence of the Allied Arts" on architec- La Chaux-de-Fonds will recognize the ascent as parallel not of Le Corbusier's architecture but of machines, the
tun: (271-289) seem categorically incorrect when he to the upward climb from the town's commercial main Parthenon, ocean liners, etc. For a detailed elaboration
daims that "there seems little reason to believe that the streets, located in a valley, through layers of at first dense on this topic, see "Le Corbusier and Architectural
<J:lntribution of painting and sculpture in the 1920s was housing and then occasional single-family houses, then Photography," in my unpublished dissertation, Le
mything more than a useful means of rejecting all ves- through the wooded hillside and ultimately to the Corbusie1's Seeing Things: Ambiguity and Illusion in the
of Revivalism" and notes that "painting and sculp- breathtaking meadows high above all-a wondrous Represmtatio11 ofModern Architecture (Philadelphia:
tur-e may well prove more of a hindrance to architectural world. Regarding movement from city to country, a bio- University of Pennsylvania, 1996), 49-121.
;n:ativity than an aid" (284). graphical parallel might also be found. Toward the end of 24. Perhaps the best known of these is the photograph of
C'r.:orge Nelson, Problems of Design (New York: his life, Le Corbusier spent more and more time "exiled" the interior of the Ozenfant Studio. For a more thorough
Publications, 1957), 104-109. Nelson's extensive from the suffocating urban conditions of Paris at his tiny survey of Le Corbusier's use of truncated pyramid con-
)v~- -re-evaluation" of the Villa Savoye is extremely and rustic Cap-Martin cabanon at the seaside near Roque- figurations, see Daniel Naegele, "Photographic Illusion-
Jth!g:htful. It insists on considering the villa as a weekend bronc. It was here that he died while swimming in the ism and the 'New World of Space'" in Le C01busier:
f<:tni%it, compares its underlying premises to those of Mediterranean. And if one ascends the steep hillside of Painte1 and Architect (Denmark: Arkiteckturtidsskrift B.,
<>imi.lar American vacation houses, and consistently Roquebrune, it is here-beneath the clouds and over- 1995), 83-117.
t'&l!ribits the unique perspective of the author, for exam- looking the sea, in the town's magnificent cemetery, its 25. See, for instance, Paul Klee, The Thinking Eye,]urg
in his offhand remark: "the main 'stair' is a ramp." "toit jardin"-that one fmds his remains, beside those of Spiller, ed. (New York: G. Wittenborn, 1961), in which
'\'d,;on upholds the Villa Savoye as a paradigm for con- his wife, in accordance with his wishes. he verbally and graphically analyzes "truncated pyramid
t<:mprn-ary building, indeed for contemporary life, while 20. All quotations in this paragraph are taken from Le space" in terms of perspective, horizontals, etc. Perhaps
scrutinizing its peculiar aesthetic and underlying Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Oettvre complete, volume the most concise visual statement on this is Jacques Vii-
z+n1mptions. Still, it is revealing to note that Nelson- 2, 1929-1934, 24. Ion's painting of 1932, Abstraction.
many who had written about the villa at that 21. See, for instance, 'Architecture Vivante, volume 4, 26. Oeuvre complete, volume 1, 74.
t;:::cw -had apparently never visited the house; for he plates 2 and 4. 27. For the colored version of this image, see 'Architec-
"hArt:> mid-critique that "some of the curved walls on 22. Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture, 3. My translation. ture Vivante, third series, spring 1930, plate 9. A black-
i:t!t tii:tn:l floor set off areas for sun bathing, and behind 23. Most, if not all, of the photographs of the Villa and-white version is featured in the Oeuvre complete,
::::n of these walls we finally locate the master Savoye reproduced in the Oeuvre c01nplete were taken by volume 2, 43.
:trt.irrPm1. placed in its own penthouse, with a fireplace Marius Gravot. Gravot's stamp, as it appears on the back 28. The early, pre-brutalized scheme for this
the bcr.:u..'lioir, a pair of huge dressing rooms and a of the occasional "original" print in the Fondation Le monastery-as drafted by Iannis Xenakis and featuring
O~niously, Nelson here describes the first pub- Corbusier, reads: "M. Gravot & Co./PHOTOGRAPHIE both taut skin and an external diagonal ramp that moved
.a0foJ fot~ne that was never built. He has formed ARTISTIQUE & INDUSTRIELLE/159, Boulevard St. from the entry level to the upper level-is remarkably
hw h1rt0RSti.oo.ably intelligent opinion based entirely on a Germain, PARIS (VI)." It is often difficult to determine reminiscent of the Villa Savoye, hollowed and enlarged.
ofotx:ct))1\' tJf '!WMI!s and images provided by Le Corbusier with certainty the photographers of Le Corbusier's work See Brooks, Le C01busier, 149.
for: :Lht '!1FO volumes of the Oeuvre complete. Interest- from this period, since as a rule he did not credit the 29. For a sketch of the villa as a standard cell in suburban
xth"i, :w::*'"-~ ooth "Sous le pilotis" and "Promenade" photographer in the articles and books that he wrote. Argentina and for a very thorough and insightful account
~ot'h>Ypps to illustrate his article. Other journals, L'Architecte for example, did carry by- of the making of the Villa Savoye, see Tim Benton, "Villa
{~and Pierre Jeanneret, Oeuvre complete, lines, and one must rely on these as well as on archival Savoye and the Architects' Practice," in Brooks, Le Cor-
t Boesiger, ed. (volume 3, Max Bill, ed.), research to ascertain authorship. The latter is not always busier, 83-105.
fruitful as very few of the prints that the Fondation Le 30. Le Corbusier-Saugnier, "Trois Rappel aMM. LES
\r'!:J:WS, 1991). This volume covers the years Corbusier holds in its collection carry the stamp of the ARCHITECTES," L'Esprit Nouveau 1, October 1920, 92.
;<,l hl9.:J, and 1!.115 originally published in 1929, before photographer and one is not permitted access to the glass
v:a&tfoirtm began on the Villa Savoye. plates from which the original prints were made. Con-
fu~, 43 "-1lJt:miWms in this paragraph are my translation founding the search is French law, which assigns credit Daniel Naegele is an architect and assistant p1ojessor
tJfli."'t (..lt'bHier and Pierre Jeanneret, Oeuvre complete, for the photograph to the o\\ner of the rights of repro- ofarchitecture at Iowa State Unive1sity.

FALL 2001 13