The Architecture of the Screen

by Graham Cairns

  Despite the polemic that was almost immediately instigated between its owners and its architect however, the Villa Savoye was appearing on the pages of architectural magazines across the world from the moment the architectural press were given access. One of the characteristics highlighted in this mediatic coverage, and later considered in greater detail by historians, was the promenade ramp. Flowing through the centre of the building, up two floors and onto the second-level roof terrace, and finally up onto the upper-level roof garden, this “built symbol of the promenade” takes pride of place. Here, a sense of continuous movement pervades the whole and becomes the very lifeblood of the project. Rising up through the building, along its curving ramp, movement is unchecked and continuous. If Nature morte à la pile d’assiettes can be described as Le Corbusier’s artistic tour de force, and the work through which “movement” became a key concept in his painting, this building must be defined as its architectural equivalent (Fig. 4).

  Figure 4: The Villa Savoye. 1928–1931. Ramp seen from entranceway.

  This “flowing” characteristic is emphasised by William Curtis, for whom it is a building of ramps, sequences and ceremonial pathways.59 For Tim Benton, it is a building characterised by circulation and bodily freedom,60 whilst for Stanislaus von Moos, it is an architectural ensemble of walkways, ramps and motion.61 Interestingly, the flowing sense of movement was not confined by the building; it was to begin when the automobile driving visitor entered the grounds, drove along the “ceremonial” path leading up to the building, and smoothly passed around it to the entrance at the back. Stepping down from the car, visitors were to be ushered into the ground floor lobby where their seamless entrance could continue along either ramp or staircase. The ramp would then weave its path, meandering smoothly up the building to the exterior balcony. Once there, the visitor’s journey could continue with equal ease as once more they would be drawn up to the garden terrace where, finally, they would be presented with a panoramic view of the countryside.

  In this project, the architectural promenade had reached its high point and movement had become the very essence of Le Corbusier’s architectural experience. It is what would lead the building to be described as a construction in “space and time”; a building designed to “frame views” and a building designed for “modern eyes”. Indeed, it is a project that would not just be described in cinematic terms; it was a building recorded as a cinematic sequence as early as 1929. In Beatriz Colomina’s writings, the Villa Savoye becomes a sequence of images designed to be seen by the eye of the visitor, an eye that becomes analogous to the lens of the camera.

  Focusing on Pierre Chenal’s 1929 film, L´Architecture d´aujourd´hui, she drives the point home by describing both the segments of the film dedicated to Le Corbusier’s projects and the buildings themselves, as one in the same phenomenon. Two of Corbusier’s projects are shown in this film, the Villa á Garches and the Villa Savoye, and in the description of its Villa á Garches segment, Colomina emphasises both the architect and his building. “He appears several times in the Villa á Garches, each time wearing the attire for which he was famous; formal suit, bow tie, slicked back hair. Placed in the background, he seems to be observing the family that occupy his creation with the satisfaction of a job well done”.62

  In the section of the film dedicated to the Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier leaves the starring role to somebody else; “an enigmatic female shown moving through the building” (Fig. 5). Chenal’s film places the viewer in the role of some sort of voyeur, argues Colomina. The camera follows this woman as she moves around the building and, in the process, presents us with images of the space that remind us of its inherent cinematic qualities. Certain images are framed whilst the promenade acts as a perfect spatial device for long takes. Here, the camera can pan and pick up on the panoramic views from the building’s horizontal windows, as intended by the architect or, alternatively, it can remain static and use architectural elements as framing devices.63

  In Colomina’s descriptions of the film, the Villa Savoye appears to have been conceived as an extended and interlocked film set. “The camera shows the building at a distance; as an isolated object; it pans outside and inside; the figure of a woman appears; she walks up the ramp and seems fragmented. Framed by the camera, but also by the house, she goes outside, but the outside becomes an inside; a wall wraps around her revealing a framed view to the landscape. She walks alongside the wall. It turns. She turns too, and disappears. The camera keeps filming. The space is empty”.64 It is a description of the film, and the building it shows, in which both the architecture and the medium of its representation become sequentially arranged framing devices for the eye. As Colomina describes it, the building is a cinematic framing device for the modern eye – and modern eyes move.65

  Figure 5: Still from L´Architecture d´aujourd´hui 1929.

  Conclusion: The cinematic promenade

  The movement of this modern eye in Le Corbusier’s icon of the Modern Movement is clearly deliberate and clearly manifest in the project’s principle feature. As a result, not only are writers such as Colomina capable of describing the building in cinematic terms, it becomes feasible to consider it as conceptually analogous to film. The idea that movement, or perceptual motion, was a concern in Le Corbusier’s work, and that this imbued his painting and his architecture throughout the 1920s is clear enough. So too is the inherent cross-disciplinarity in Le Corbusier’s approach; an approach that makes it easier to understand how he may have been open to film as an influence throughout this period.

  Furthermore, the peculiarities of Sergei Eisenstein’s approach to filmmaking, in particular his approach to film as a sequential narrative medium, also raises a question about his possible specific influence in this regard, in particular, given the personal affinity between the two. However, the nature of this relationship was not based on a one-way flow of influences and inspiration. On the contrary, given the director’s affinity with architecture in general, and that of Le Corbusier in particular, it is plausible to consider the relationship as two way. Certainly, the notions of the moving eye, the cinematic path and the architectural promenade were all concepts that, by the time of the meeting between the two on 16 October 1928, represented a form of theoretical background that the two men clearly shared.

  The nature of how these shared affinities directly influenced their work, however, remains to be investigated. Nevertheless, the two men did meet at the height of Le Corbusier’s interest in film, at a moment when film was considered the most influential and important art form of its day, and when Le Corbusier had already spent half a decade and more investigating the idea of optical sequences experienced in movement. It also coincided with the moment in which Eisenstein was at the height of his powers and most fully integrated into the international circle of avant-garde art. There are certainly enough grounds to contemplate a reconsideration of Le Corbusier’s architecture in cinematic terms and reappraise Eisenstein’s films through the prism of architectural experience and theory. What such reconsiderations may reveal is not clear but it may well shed light on an as yet unexamined architecture of film and, by contrast and extension, a form of cinematic architecture.

  Notes

  1Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity; Modern Architecture as Mass Media, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1996. p. 2.

  2Colomina, Beatriz. “Vers une architecture médiatique”. In: von Vegesack (ed.), Le Corbuiser; The Art of Architecture, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein. 2007. p. 248.

  3Gidieon, Sigfreid. Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (5th edition), Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, 1977. p. 529.

  4Bruno, Guiliana. Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film, Verso, London, 2002. p. 67.

  5Raeborn, Michael and Wilson, Victoria. Le Corbusier: Architect of the Century, Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1987. p. 64.

  6Cohen, Jean-Luis. Le Corbusier and the Mystique of the USSR: Theories and Proj
ects for Moscow, 1928–1936, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1992. p. 49.

  7Deriu, David. “Montage and Modern Architecture: Giedion’s Implicit Manifesto”. Architectural Theory Review. Vol. 12, Issue 1, 2007. p. 36–59.

  8Kiyak, Açalya. Describing the Ineffable: Le Corbusier, Le Poème Electronique and Montage, Thesis, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar, 2003. p. 161.

  9Bruno, Guilia. “Site-seeing: Architecture and the Moving Image”. Wide Angle. Vol. 19, No. 4, Ohio University School of Film, 1997. p. 8–24.

  10Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity; Modern Architecture as Mass Media, Ibid. p. 289–293.

  11Colomina, Beatriz. “Vers une architecture médiatique”, Ibid. p. 260.

  12Beatriz Colomina has identified that Le Corbusier is one of the most documented architects in history and that he was also one of the most prolific in terms of documentation. Between 1920 and 1925, she estimates that he wrote and published up to 10,000 words a month in various books and publications. His drawings from the same period are innumerable. He would build more than a building a year and, in addition, he documented everything he did. Today, the literature available on the man is immense; some 79 books, catalogues and pamphlets that have accompanied exhibitions around the world; 511 articles; 55 journal issues; 13 professional films; 16 amateur films; 20 radio programmes; 25 television programmes; an entire archive in Paris and up to 29 adverts make reference to him or his work. In addition, there would be over 50 buildings built across the globe before his death in 1965. See: Colomina, Beatriz. “Vers une architecture médiatique”. Ibid. p. 248.

  13For more information on the relationship between Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, see: Baker, Geoffrey, H. The Creative Search, E&FN Spon, London, 1996. p. 240–243; and Frampton, Kenneth. Le Corbusier, Thames and Hudson, London, 2001. p. 24–45.

  14Baker, Geoffrey, H. Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, Ibid. p. 243.

  15Ibid. p. 247.

  16Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Thames and Hudson, London, 1980. p. 158.

  17Frampton, Kenneth. Le Corbusier, Ibid. p. 37.

  18Baker, Geoffrey, H. Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, Ibid. p. 260.

  19Ibid. p. 260.

  20Green, Christopher. Concepts of Modern Art, Thames and Hudson, New York, 1981. p. 84.

  21Ozenfant, A and Jeanneret, C.E. “Sur la plastique”. L’Esprit Nouveau. No. 4, 1920. Cited in: Green, Christopher. Concepts of Modern Art, Ibid. p. 82.

  22Baker, Geoffrey, H. Le Corbusier: An Analysis of Form, Van Nostrand Reinhold, London, 1984. p. 262.

  23Baker, Geoffrey, H. Le Corbusier: An Analysis of Form, Ibid. p. 167.

  24Marcus. George H. Le Corbusier: Inside the Machine for Living, Monacelli Press Inc., New York, 2000. p. 50.

  25Ibid. p. 52.

  26Fox Weber, Nicholas. “Art: Russian Constructivism – Dynamic Aesthetic of a Revolutionary Era”. Architectural Digest. Vol. 50, Issue 9, September 1993. p. 167.

  27The art critic and promoter David Burliuk had been central to promoting Cubism in Russia in the years prior to the revolution. See: Railing, Patricia. From Science to Systems of Art: on Russian Abstract Art and Language 1910/1920, Artists Bookworks, East Sussex, 1989. p. 27.

  28D’Andrea, Jeanne. The Avant-garde in Russia 1920–1930, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1980. p. 30–33.

  29Milner, John. Russian Revolutionary Art, Oresko Books, London, 1979. p. 11–33.

  30Shvidkovsky, O.A. Building in the USSR 1917–1933, Studio Vista, London, 1971. p. 11.

  31Petrić, Vlada. Consructivism in Film: The Man with a Movie Camera – A Cinematic Analysis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987. p. 5.

  32Vertov’s filmic movement, The Kinoks, were a formidable group of documentary filmmakers who argued for the “true documentation” of real life events and people. They argued that through this “documentation of life as it is” they would alter our way of looking at the world. See: Vertov, Dziga. “The Essence of Kino Eye”. In: A. Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye; The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Pluto Press, London, 1984. p. 49.

  33Dziga Vertov examined the phi-effect; the now questioned idea that the retina’s retention of an image for one-hundredth of a second, which means that any sudden change of imagery, as in a cinematic cut, results in a blurring of the two images. For Vertov, this effect builds up “kinesthetic energy” through the natural location of actions in different parts of shots or images which, when shown in sequence, direct the eye in different and often random directions; the final result being a sensory experience of optical pulsation. See: Petrić, Vlada. Consructivism in Film, Ibid. p. 139.

  34Ibid. p. 55.

  35Eisenstein, Sergei. “The Problem of the Materialist Approach to Form”. In: S.M. Eisenstein – Selected Works. Volume 1, Writings, 1922–1934, BFI Publishing, London, 1988. p. 60.

  36Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Sense: Eisenstein, Faber and Faber, London, 1977. p. 14.

  37Eisenstein, Sergei. The Psychology of Composition, Methuen, London, 1988. p. 23.

  38Le Corbusier would use the Golden Section metaphor to explain and justify his interest in regulating lines and the geometrical and proportional system behind them. See: Deleuze, Gilles. “Montage – The American School of the Soviet School”. In: A. Vacche (ed.), The Visual Turn. Classic Film Theory and Art History, Rutgers, New York, 2003. p. 59.

  39Ibid. p. 60.

  40Eisenstein, Sergei. “Montage and Architecture”. Assemblage. No.10 December 1989, p. 131.

  41Ibid. p. 112.

  42Bruno, Giulina. “Site-seeing: Architecture and the Moving Image”. Ibid. p. 14.

  43Le Corbusier. Essential Le Corbusier: L’Esprit Nouveau Articles, Architectural Press, London, 1991. p. 191.

  44Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity; Modern Architecture as Mass Media, Ibid. p. 5.

  45Colomina, Beatriz. “Vers une architecture mediatique”. Ibid. p. 251.

  46Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture, 13th edition, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1986 (original in French, 1923). p. 37.

  47Cohen, Jean-Luis. Le Corbusier and the Mystique of the USSR, Ibid. p. 117.

  48Taylor, Richard. The Eisenstein Reader, BFI Publishing, London, 1998. p. 5.

  49Cohen, Jean-Luis. Le Corbusier and the Mystique of the USSR, Ibid. p. 28.

  50Ibid. p. 49.

  51Ibid. p. 49.

  52Ibid. p. 49.

  53Le Corbusier, dedication in L’art decoratif d’aujourd’hui Moscow 25 October 1928. Copy in Eisenstein archives, Moscow. See: Cohen, Jean-Luis. Le Corbusier and the Mystique of the USSR, Ibid. p. 49.

  54Le Corbusier. “L’architecture à Moscou”. L’Intransigeant. 24 December 1928. Quotation from te FLC manuscript p. 5. See: Cohen, Jean-Luis. Le Corbusier and the Mystique of the USSR, Ibid. p. 49.

  55Eisenstein, Sergei. “The Problem of the Materialist Approach to Form”. In: S.M. Eisenstein – Selected Works. Volume 1, Writings, 1922–1934, Ibid. p. 61.

  56See drawings reproduced in Benton, Tim. The Villas of Le Corbusier. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1987. p. 198–199.

  57Curtis, William. “Le Corbusier: Nature and Tradition”. In: M. Raeburn (ed.), Le Corbusier: Architect of the Century, Arts Council of Britain, London, 1987. p. 18.

  58Sbriglio, Jacques. Le Corbusier: La Villa Savoye, The Villa Savoye, Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris; Birkhäuser, Basel, 1999. p. 147.

  59Curtis, William. “Le Corbusier: nature and tradition”. Ibid. p. 18.

  60Benton, Tim. “Villa Savoye and the Architect’s Practice”. In: H.A. Brooks (ed.), Le Corbusier, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1987. p. 85.

  61Von Moos, Stanislaus. Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1986. p. 88.

  62Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, Ibid. p. 289.

  63Ibid. p. 293.

  64Ibid. p. 296.

&nb
sp; 65Ibid. p. 5.

  The historical construction of cinematic space: An architectural perspective on the films of Jean Renoir and Yasujiro Ozu

  Introduction

  More than five centuries ago, a diminutive Florentine artisan in his late forties conducted a “modest” experiment near a doorway in a cobbled cathedral piazza. Modest? It marked an event which was ultimately to change the modes, if not the course, of Western history.1

  The modest experiment to which Samuel Y. Edgerton refers here was the demonstration by the Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi in 1425 of what is generally recognised as the world’s first documented perspective drawing; a panel painting that would set the trend for spatial representation in the Western world for the next five centuries. His now lost image of the Battistero di San Giovanni in Florence is credited as marking a definitive step in Renaissance humanism, the world’s first proportionally correct image in perspective. As such, it is attributed the status of the first mathematically explainable and reproducible image that optically reflects the spatial reality perceived by the human eye.

  The influence of Brunelleschi’s achievement would take at least one generation to be felt; the publication of Leone Battista Alberti’s Della Pittura, 1436, and its mentioning of Brunelleschi and Filarete’s Treatise on Architecture 1460–1464, being key historical texts.2 They turned the undistinguished small and forgettable image by a regional architect into a drawing of international importance for the history of Western art. Alberti’s explanation and mapping of the science and mathematical formula for the reproduction of this spatial reality ushered in a set of codifiable rules for artistic representation. It also laid down the grammar and syntax of a new Western visual language, a language which would give us a “window onto the reality of the world”.3 From this point onwards, the mastering of optical realism in Western art was just a matter of time. Maurice Merleau-Ponty would refer to it as the invention of a world that is “dominated and possessed in an instantaneous synthesis”.4