Le Corbusier

by Nicholas Fox Weber

  But Raoul La Roche was a man of exceptional humor. Violaine de Montmollin, the seven-year-old daughter of another of Le Corbusier’s Swiss banker friends, Jean-Pierre de Montmollin, was invited, with her brother, to the formal inauguration of the villa in 1927. The little girl found Le Corbusier, with his strong mountain accent, amusing and extremely charming to her in particular. While others drank champagne, the two de Montmollin children continually slid down the gallery ramp on their backsides; Raoul La Roche and Le Corbusier were the only people present who approved.6

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  Le Corbusier chose the furniture and interior fittings for the Villa La Roche: white curtains, a blend of flannel and cambric, from the department store Printemps; graceful bentwood Thonet side chairs throughout; classic French garden chairs for the roof garden; leather armchairs from the designer Maples. The client mostly acquiesced, but not always. Sometimes, he initially tolerated something he did not like but then changed his stance. In December 1927, when pipes in two of the gallery radiators burst in a cold snap, the complicated repair required rebuilding the wall that supported the gallery ramp, and La Roche used the occasion to change the floor covering.

  It was in this period that the remarkable marble-topped table, nesting on a V-shaped tubular-steel support and a tiled miniature wall, appeared in the gallery. In a splendid embrace of modern technology for domestic design, the parquet floors were replaced with pink rubber made by a company called Electro-Cable. Lighting fixtures that looked like gigantic arms were installed. By this time, Le Corbusier and others in his office had become more active in creating furniture and lighting, and the Villa La Roche was a showcase for their snappy new designs. La Roche was the epitome of forbearance, graciously dispensing substantial sums of money to improve his house. In February 1928, the client received a cost estimate of nearly thirty-three thousand francs for revisions; by the end of the year, he had spent almost fifty-one thousand.

  Within the next decade, the banker from Basel shelled out even more substantial funds to repair or replace items that should have functioned correctly initially. When the handsome, modern windows failed to shut properly, he paid for replacements. The roof leaked, threatening his precious collection; he had it fixed. The coal-burning boiler Le Corbusier had designated was never sufficient to heat the large spaces of the house; La Roche replaced it with an oil-burning one that, alas, was noisy, smelly, and also inadequate.

  Then Raoul La Roche had his patience tested even more severely. He felt cold dampness on the sleek white walls of his gallery; the smooth continuous surfaces the architect had given him had become a breeding ground for mold. Knowing that a creeping incursion of blue fur would have followed, the collector insulated the gallery walls with panels of isorel—a trademark hardboard. It was less aesthetically pure but sufficient to stop the slime.

  There was no rage or talk of legal action that today would occur between a wealthy client and his impractical architect. Because of the problem with condensation, La Roche simply relined the space he had already rebuilt once following the radiator disaster, and he rehung his art on walls that now had seams. The pristine had to yield to the practical, and that was that.

  Master bedroom of the Villa La Roche, known as the “Purist Bedroom”

  IN THE COMPLETE WORK, Le Corbusier described the Villa La Roche as “an architectural promenade. You enter: the architectural spectacle immediately presents itself; you follow an itinerary, a great variety of prospects open; you enjoy the afflux of light illuminating the walls or creating shadows…architectural unity…. The assertion of certain volumes, or, on the contrary, their effacement…. Here, living again before our modern eyes, the architectural events of history: pilings, vertical windows, roof gardens, glass facades. Still, you must know how to appreciate, when the time comes, what is presented and you must also renounce things you have learned, in order to pursue truths which inevitably develop around new techniques instigated by a new spirit born of the profound revolution of the machine age.”7

  The villa in Autheuil, sleek and modern on the outside, also has, in its interior, a religious dimension. The large open space is a paraphrase of a cathedral interior. The small balconies that jut into it resemble pulpits. Light floods in from above. With the whiteness, boldness, and simplicity, the building offers a spiritual awakening.

  Le Corbusier’s roof garden for Raoul La Roche is also a setting for reverence. The large terrace on top of the villa, with its cantilevered overhangs and smokestack-like chimneys and immaculate tiles, is the stage for a rich array of plantings that present the luxuriance of nature. Le Corbusier had organized the “arbor vitae, cypresses, okubas, euonymus, Chinese laurels, privet, and tamarinds” with even greater care than the paintings downstairs.8 One of the architect’s proudest moments was when his client invited him to see his lilacs and exclaimed, “There are more than a hundred clusters of bloom!”

  This more than anything was Le Corbusier’s goal: to bring sunlight, and the natural growth it facilitated, into urban life.

  NEVERTHELESS, the architect was not totally satisfied. In his own words, “The plan seems tormented, because certain brutal constraints have required and strictly limited the use of the site: the constraint of non-edificandi, age-old trees to be respected, constraints of height. Further, the sun is behind the house, the site being north-oriented, so that it was necessary, by certain stratagems, to look for the sun on the other side. And despite this torment imposed on the plan by antagonistic conditions, one idea obsesses: this house could be a palace.”9 He was heading toward that dream; orienting himself toward the sun, Le Corbusier was soon to build its palace.

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  Passion can create drama out of inert stone.

  —LE CORBUSIER, Toward a New Architecture

  When the first edition of Toward a New Architecture came out in 1923, on its cover and title page the name given for the author was “Le Corbusier–Saugnier.” With their new names combined, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret and Amédée Ozenfant left behind their individual personalities as readily as they discarded ornament and brownstone. That attitude changed with the appearance of the second edition, a year later, which cited as its author Le Corbusier. It was, however, now dedicated to “Amédée Ozenfant.” In the next edition, that dedication was removed.

  Beyond the disagreements over the Villa La Roche, there had been further discord between Ozenfant and Le Corbusier because of Ozenfant’s infatuation with Surrealism, which Le Corbusier mostly disdained as poorly executed and self-indulgent. Then Ozenfant designed his own dress boutique, for which he used the name Amédée. Le Corbusier considered this emporium a frivolous endeavor.

  Le Corbusier told Ozenfant that the lack of dedication in the third edition of the book had been a mistake on the part of the printer. Ozenfant responded that La Roche and Lipchitz had told him that Le Corbusier had deliberately thrown it out. Then Le Corbusier wrote one of his vituperative letters. After voicing concern for the health and well-being of “mon cher ami,” he lambasted Ozenfant for his connection to the world of fashion, accused his former hero of vanity and selfishness, and labeled him a dilettante jealous of Le Corbusier’s greater abilities. Now that he had a live-in girlfriend and a burgeoning architectural career, the symbiotic relationship that Jeanneret had so cherished when he was serving oysters to his soul mate was over.

  LE CORBUSIER achieved his objective concerning the authorship of Toward a New Architecture. Today, the book is considered his alone, although both men wrote the Esprit Nouveau articles that comprise it.

  An attack on almost all current architecture, this entreaty for a fresh approach proposes a revolution based on “the Engineer’s aesthetic”: “The Engineer, inspired by the law of Economy and governed by mathematical calculation, puts us in accord with universal law. He achieves harmony.”10 With that equilibrium derived from necessity, architecture can give a sense of order, move our hearts, increase understanding, and induce “plastic emotions.”

  These wonderful
occurrences depend on the use of simple forms arranged systematically, according to a well-conceived plan. It is requisite for the architect to listen to materials and suppress his own ego to achieve balance and rhythmic harmony, qualities elusive in everyday life. Airplanes and automobiles and boats succeed brilliantly because of their designers’ knowledge of the impact of materials and their awareness that the exterior must be determined by the requirements of an interior designed on human scale. All machines for living should be built for the creatures whose living they are meant to improve.

  In the era when Bolshevism, Fascism, and Nazism were all on the rise, the book accords architecture the power of a political movement that can provide the solution to all of society’s problems: “It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of to-day: architecture or revolution.”11 Photos of Le Corbusier’s own work are used throughout the book to illustrate that he and his buildings were the salvation of humanity.

  XXII

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  Le Corbusier was becoming everything Charles-Edouard Jeanneret intended. By the end of 1923, not only had he published Toward a New Architecture and begun the villas La Roche and Jeanneret, but his latest paintings were on view at the Salon des Indépendants and in the gallery of the renowned art dealer Léonce Rosenberg on the rue de la Baume.

  Then he made a decision as calculated as the adoption of his new name. He decided to conceal his “painter” side. For the next fifteen years, he painted for four to five hours per day, but he was resolved to show the work to virtually no one, claiming that it would detract from the way he was regarded as a designer and urbanist.

  At 20 rue Jacob, mid-1920s

  As an architect, his international importance was soaring. Swamped with work, in the spring of 1924 he complained to Ritter about the hectic pace, but, in his usual disjointed language, exulted in the overload: “Existence continues to be exhausting but quite interesting, complex, impossible even to dream of such a thing as rest: one is squeezed into rigid postures. Life augments, and difficulties as well; luckily, one is not too fond of money and there are other satisfactions.”1

  Even if money was tight, there was now enough work for Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret to open a larger office. They did so in the hallway of a Jesuit convent at 35 rue de Sèvres, just a minute’s walk from a major Métro stop and in the middle of one of the liveliest neighborhoods in Paris. They were diagonally across from the great department store Le Bon Marché and half a block from Le Lutétia, the largest hotel on the Left Bank, with the perennial whistles of its doormen summoning taxis for visitors from all over the world. The artists’ neighborhood of St. Germain, and Le Corbusier and Yvonne’s own apartment, were nearby. The setting where Le Corbusier was to create the buildings that have come to define modern architecture lay behind a quiet, classical facade. It was as seemingly traditional as its boss’s appearance. Yet once one had passed through the convent and a courtyard, under the surveillance of a concierge, and passed through “a huge, white gallery-corridor some thirty yards long, five yards wide,” another world awaited.2 Up a dark flight of stairs, one was in a secret hub of power.

  This was the “old, dirty, smelly, and brokendown” atelier.3 It had the same form as the corridor below. On one side, windows faced the courtyard; on the other, a long wall backed up on the Church of Saint Ignatius, from which Gregorian chants or Bach fugues could be heard. There was a hodgepodge of drafting tables, easels, and architectural models, with drawings hanging everywhere. In the beginning, the average number of people working in the office was about twelve; in time, it would swell to thirty.

  Once he was in the new office, Le Corbusier established a routine he pretty much maintained for the rest of his professional life, except when he was traveling or stymied by a world war. He started his day at 6:00 a.m. with forty-five minutes of calisthenics; then he served Yvonne her morning coffee. They breakfasted at 8:00. For the rest of the morning, he painted, made architectural sketches, or wrote. By the time he arrived at the office at 2:00 p.m., he was charged with new ideas and put his employees to work making alterations to what they had done at home in the morning. If the afternoon went poorly, it wasn’t long before “he would fumble with his wristwatch—a small oddly feminine contraption, far too small for his big paw—and finally say, grudgingly, ‘It’s a hard thing, architecture,’ toss the pencil or charcoal stub on the drawing, and slink out.”4 But generally, by the time he headed back to the apartment for his evening pastis with Yvonne—she liked him there by 5:30—he felt triumphant.

  He rarely socialized. Occasionally he and Yvonne ate with friends at the St. Benoit, their neighborhood bistro, or Le Corbusier recieved visitors like Gropius—the director of the Bauhaus, where Le Corbusier was greatly respected, who called on him for the first time on his honeymoon in 1926—but for the most part he devoted his time to designing, painting, or being quietly at home.

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  Le Corbusier did, however, delight in proselytizing his new faith to a widening audience. He lectured on architecture and on “L’Esprit Nouveau” at the Sorbonne early in 1924 and later in the year in Prague and Geneva. His lecture technique became legend. Dressed in his wide-lapeled, double-breasted suit, and hand-tied bow tie, with his signature round glasses and hair brushed back hard off his forehead, Le Corbusier spoke and simultaneously drew with feverish intensity. In charcoal, colored pencil, pastel, and chalk, he made his visions of urbanism more concrete by sketching away freehand on long bands of paper, about a yard wide, that he had unrolled and tacked to the walls. It might be tracing paper, cheap brown wrapping paper, or fine cream-colored stock, but the method was always the same.

  The architect never used notes. Rather, he gave the impression that his ideas were still being developed. His audience felt the excitement of his thinking process. Sometimes he left meters of paper on the walls afterward; to this day, there are architects who proudly hold on to these souvenirs of having witnessed Le Corbusier in the act of creation.

  LE CORBUSIER treated himself like an enterprise that needed to produce annual reports. Starting in 1924, he began to work on the publication of The Complete Work of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. By 1938, there were four volumes. Once that publication ceased, it was replaced by Le Corbusier: The Complete Work—a series in which, for the rest of his life, he wrote texts to track his achievement for others.

  The people whom he wanted to impress above all with his autobiographical report card on his diverse achievements were his mother and father. He made clear to them, however, that the modest house he was designing for them, to be on Lac Leman, was the building that counted most of all.

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  In June 1924, Edouard, as he still was to his parents, sent them a postcard saying he was finishing plans for their new home and was about to send them all the details to hand over to the builder: “This house will be exquisite, and I am quite happy with the solution arrived at. Count on us, we know what must be done so that there will be no delays.”5 The “we” was he and Pierre, in whom they could have confidence as a fellow member of the Jeanneret clan.

  While Edouard never referred to the disaster of the Maison Blanche, he now gave them a house that was completed on schedule and within budget. After their five years of exile in rented chalets, the retired watchcase enameler and piano teacher would finally have a little paradise.

  For more than a year, Edouard had been negotiating, in a fairly nefarious manner, to buy a parcel of land from some farmers in Vevey. When he was there with his parents for the Christmas holidays in 1923, he had written Yvonne, “One must use a certain amount of cunning with these peasants, and one spends one’s time in grim dives where the talk goes on forever. I am exhausted and invoke the aid of all the devils in creation to reach a conclusion.”6 Nine months later, it had all paid off; in September 1924, he wrote his girlfriend back in Paris, “The little house will be like an ancient temple at the water’s edge.”7 By the time he arrived there on December 23, Le Corbusie
r had seen to every detail—the linoleum for the floors, the medical-style sink, the plain-white open-weave window curtains that were such a contrast to the patterned brocades of rue Léopold-Robert. This house for two people, without servants, looking south over the lake, was without an iota of waste, as impeccably organized and efficient as it was celestial and poetic. All that was left to do before Christmas was arrange the furniture, which Le Corbusier quickly did. Once he had put the last object in place, the thirty-seven-year-old son had achieved his dream.

  LA PETITE MAISON is a cosmic house. Inside, one feels perfectly aligned within the solar system. Daylight pours in through a high window facing east. To the south, a window eleven meters in length opens the interior to the water. The oceanic Lac Leman is separated from the house by only a couple of meters of land; to be in the living room is like being on board a ship, with only the deck between you and the sea. The reflections and smooth light from the lake flood the rooms.

  The Maison Blanche had been excessive; La Petite Maison is reduced and taut. In this structure measuring four meters by sixteen meters—a sequence of four squares—the harmony of the plan pervades. Another architect might have made such tight organization seem stingy. Le Corbusier renders it, for all the smallness of scale, grand and sublime. The little house is neatly subdivided into rooms that provided everything Georges and Marie needed. There is a salon with a simple dining table cantilevered under the window ledge, their bedroom, and a compact galley kitchen. On the east end, there is a guest room that doubles as a second sitting room or, alternatively, can open up completely—thanks to a wall panel on hinges—to become part of the salon. To accommodate overnight visitors, Le Corbusier included a hidden closet, an extra mattress stored in the basement, and a sink concealed within a wall.