In his solitude, Le Corbusier found that the cabanon and the studio were ideal for living and working; at last, he had in his own life the “perfect refuge” he had long been trying to create for others.14
In high spirits, Le Corbusier wrote his mother, in anticipation of the end of winter, “In a month’s time you’ll have sunshine. That will be the vernal equinox. You’ll open your laughing eyes of a fifteen-year-old peasant girl in your bed one morning, and you’ll smile at life.”15 He was back on a high; Roquebrune-Cap-Martin was proof that good architecture in combination with nature was the perfect medicine.
XLVIII
1
Nothing more came of Marguerite Tjader Harris’s dream of her lover creating a little colony for her on the Connecticut coast. But the idea was reincarnated in a surprising way. Nearly two years after approaching Le Corbusier about her wish to build a small artists’ community, Tjader Harris again booked herself into the Hotel Lutétia, a minute’s walk from her lover’s office and halfway across Paris from his and Yvonne’s apartment. She was there in part to discuss her financial support for a development of holiday dwellings Le Corbusier wanted to create up the hill from l’Etoile de Mer.
The initial agreement had been established by a formal proposal prepared by Le Corbusier’s office. It referred to a meeting held at 35 rue de Sèvres on May 3, 1954, in the presence of M. Ducret, the office administrator. Le Corbusier was to construct five holiday dwellings on land belonging to Rebutato. The total costs were estimated at 15,700,000 francs—about $350,000. Tjader Harris was to provide those funds with an interest-free loan. The five units were to be offered for sale before July 1, 1956.
In return for his design services, Le Corbusier was to own one of the five dwellings, with the other four sold to buyers of his choosing. One of those four was to be reserved for Marguerite Tjader Harris. Thus, in their old age, the couple that had seen each other periodically for two decades would be together, living modestly at the edge of the ocean, albeit in separate digs and with Yvonne living with Le Corbusier in their cabanon only a few meters away.
Marguerite Tjader Harris had opened a special bank account in Le Corbusier’s name to facilitate the arrangement. On June 8, 1954, the heiress and the architect signed a document in which she agreed to write to her banker that “M. Le Corbusier is my silent partner in this matter.”1 They scheduled payments first for the purchase of the property and then for the construction costs, with Tjader Harris providing 14,130,000 francs and Le Corbusier 1,570,000 francs.
E. C. Llewellyn, at the Hanover Bank near the Ritz Hotel on the place Vendôme, acted on Tjader Harris’s behalf in the transaction. The undertaking had the ingredients of a Henry James novel: an elegant banker, a rich American heiress, an artist, and intrigue in the heart of Paris.
Problems soon arose. André Wogenscky, who was the liaison in Le Corbusier’s office with Llewellyn, was notified in December that Tjader Harris was not going to make payments until construction actually began. Le Corbusier, who had been in India, then returned to Paris and tried to smooth matters over by writing her warmly and assuring her that he was achieving miracles in the subcontinent.
At the start of January 1955, Tjader Harris wrote him to say she would immediately authorize payments once she was sure they were for bricks and mortar rather than for something still only on paper. Meanwhile, her son had married a woman she very much liked, and all three of them wanted to go to Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Tjader Harris voiced her hope that Yvonne was doing better, and that Le Corbusier’s beloved mother was in form, too. They were like an extended family.
2
During his period of solitude in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in February 1955, Le Corbusier wrote a long, sprawling letter to his “Chère amie de Darien Connecticut.” Le Corbusier was, he told her, living alone and in total silence, exhausted by “the harbingers of the ‘nervous breakdown’ so dear to Americans.” He was mostly sleeping, he claimed. “20 hours a day my ears ring with the racket of the grasshoppers,” he wrote her.2 Le Corbusier observed that both he and she were next to the sea, if on different continents.
He was eager for her to picture his life in detail. He told her with pride how he had built his shack. Tjader Harris was the soul mate who would understand the pleasure the boxy enclosure afforded him: “I work here like a prince, but in possession of my freedom (hence happier than a prince).”3
Le Corbusier assured her that construction would proceed rapidly on the holiday dwellings, which he called “Rob” and “Rog.” Their completion “required the presence, the action, the perseverance of a creature like me. Years of preparation, of focusing. Now everything’s in order. I’m prepared to make a minor masterpiece on that wave-battered rock.” The architect proffered one of his grand conclusions: “Dear friend, I’m blooming or fructifying (as you choose). I prefer blooming. Blooming like an apple tree in spring. For this is just what’s happened: if you live your life severely but strongly, youth comes to you, everything blooms. Not a maturity, a harvest, but an authentic flowering. Of course, this doesn’t keep my hair from falling out.”4
The future was bright because “you’ll be there. What a blessed creature you are…. There is no nationality but beings of flesh and blood with a brain and a heart. Be careful! Make no promises. Don’t commit yourself to anything!”5
Following that window to his unique mix of faith and confusion, his sincerity and sarcasm in tandem, Le Corbusier signed off by saying, falsely, that he had never before written such a long letter. When he added, however, that with her everything was different, he was being truthful.
3
Marguerite Tjader Harris responded by return mail. She was now vacating the Connecticut mansion to turn it over as a convent for the sisters of St. Birgitta and would keep for herself a modernized studio in the garage.
A week later, for unknown reasons, Le Corbusier abandoned their plan in France. He asked Ducret to repay, from the account in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin where Tjader Harris’s loans had been deposited, the full amount to the Hanover Bank. This was, he had decided, the wise course. He was not in the least bit bitter: “In life one must know how to keep one’s eyes and ears open when it matters and be able to turn the page when that seems important. In any case I want you to know you have all my gratitude and my friendship on the occasion of the gesture of trust you’ve made to facilitate our undertaking.”6 Le Corbusier’s only request of Tjader Harris was the counsel he had given to more than one woman: that she be sure to write him at the office and not at home.
The American was gracious and understanding in response, regretting the turn of events but telling Le Corbusier that it made her life simpler. She assured him she was writing and swimming and proposed that he take a vacation with her in Connecticut. Even if they were not working together, they could enjoy each other’s company.
THE FIVE HOLIDAY houses were completed in 1957, but there is no evidence of Marguerite Tjader Harris ever having visited them, and her name appears nowhere in the publications about them. The units are distinctive mainly for their economy and austerity; they comprise a bare-bones retreat hardly distinguishable from other campgrounds. Their romance and charm lie mainly in their history.
But Le Corbusier did give each of these simple dwellings isolation, a view, direct sunshine, and the requisite shade. He achieved those modest goals with simple construction techniques, utilizing aluminum, and he built each standardized unit as a 226-centimeter cube. Putting this low-income housing with rudimentary materials not far from Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici’s luxurious villa, he also had the last word in an ongoing feud—the result of his having painted, unbidden, those murals nearly two decades earlier—by making a statement of moral superiority through architecture.
THE MOST LIKELY REASON that Le Corbusier removed Marguerite Tjader Harris from the project when he did is that he recognized how unrealistic he was to imagine her holidaying there with Yvonne nearby. After Yvonne finally went from her wretched alcoholic state to
death in 1958, Le Corbusier would, however, manage to see his lover at least one more time in Paris.
XLIX
1
At the start of March, his mother fell in an accident caused by her cat. Le Corbusier did not, however, go to Vevey, since on March 15 he had to leave for Chandigarh for the inauguration of the High Court. This was one ceremony in India he could not miss. Having initially telegraphed to say that he would not be attending unless the many millions that had now been owed him for fourteen months were received before the event, he made the journey.
PRIME MINISTER NEHRU once again presided. Almost the entire population of the new city turned out to greet the popular leader as he arrived from New Delhi, with thousands of children lining his route for nearly two miles and waving multicolored flags. Once Nehru was in front of the new building, Le Corbusier made a speech linking his architecture with social change and defending his designs for Chandigarh against their critics, who, he told his audience, were too cowardly to accept progress. Then two thousand visitors watched as Nehru “pressed an electric button and the doors of all the court rooms opened automatically” to reveal Le Corbusier’s tapestries and his and Pierre’s furniture.1
The building was the first monumental structure completed in the controversial new city. The Indian papers referred to the roof of the structure as an “inverted umbrella” and its overall appearance as “cold and rugged.”2 But what was at first startling to wary journalists and a skeptical public was given a rare boost by having the public endorsement of a beloved leader, and soon enough the building’s intrinsic splendor helped dissipate the initial resistance to its many surprises. The unprecedented composition of rough concrete quickly assumed the status of a monument of modern architecture.
THE HIGH COURT encourages faith in government and the possibility of true justice. Authoritarian without being arrogant, this completely original building has a nobility of form and emanates a wonderful energy and optimism.
When you first see it, from afar, it draws you in, like a magnetic force, the way the Gothic spires of Chartres summon you nearer. Part of that pull comes from color. While it was under construction, Le Corbusier asked everyone with whom he was working if they should put color on the three great columns. Without exception, the other architects and engineers said no, the forms themselves had such majesty that the addition of hue would be an unnecessary distraction. Le Corbusier listened attentively. Nonetheless, day after day, he continued to pose the same question. The negative response was unvarying. Then he went ahead and had the colors of the Indian flag applied to the columns anyway.
Le Corbusier may have initiated the consultation in earnest, convincing himself that he cared about what the others would say. But his decision making came, as always, from within himself and from some vague source of inspiration. It was as if his art happened to him, and he was merely the agent. In that vein, once he had received the impetus and executed its directives, he was unequivocal; as M. S. Sharma pointed out, this was the same person who said of his paintings, “If you like them, very nice. If you don’t, forget it.”3
The columns are painted, from left to right, in vibrant pastel tones of green, yellow, and salmon pink. As you face these pillars and look up, generous amounts of blue sky come through wide openings between the building and its roof, which is like a flapping canopy, so that the blue, too, becomes an element. To the left and right as well, color is everywhere—showing up through further openings and the windows—and is always changing and surprising you. But for all that fury of hues and forms and sense of reckless abandon, the columns support the roof with impressive strength and muscular grace. The color is not overkill; rather, it gives music to the concrete. In the bright sunlight, the green, yellow, and salmon are as bold in spirit as the robust cylinders they cover.
The three entrance columns have the lasting power of a force of nature, like a mountain peak or a giant waterfall. Yet they declare themselves as having been constructed by man. Those great stiltlike legs are monumental in the same way as the buttresses of Notre-Dame, manifesting their builder’s capability. The High Court at Chandigarh is different in scale and purpose from the cathedral, but like that great edifice, it has both a grandeur and the quality of not diminishing the viewer. Like Notre-Dame, Le Corbusier’s court makes you feel tall and strong; its radiant energy enters you.
The fenestration of the High Court is one of Le Corbusier’s finest abstract compositions, precisely orchestrated to suggest randomness and improvisation. The well-organized complex network of interior ramps that lead visitors to courtrooms and offices is equally dynamic. In its framework, it is comparable to the human skeleton; in its ongoing motion, it resembles the human circulatory system—the miraculousness of which Le Corbusier was particularly aware, having sketched the varicose veins that had only recently been removed from his own body. Nature, after all, is the greatest architect ever.
2
Most photographs show the High Court brand-new. In those images, it might as well be a building model, rather than the living and breathing entity it has since become. For a virtual village has developed at its feet, and the building itself has acquired signs of age and use.
As a sculptural object, the High Court is a fine amalgam of forms, with rhythmically charged verticals and horizontals and a perfect balance of small and large elements. But half a century or so after its completion, while it remains a virtuoso visual performance, it is richer still. For not only does the High Court connect harmoniously to the plateau that surrounds it and to the distant mountains, and relate to the adjacent buildings in view, but it also interacts with the people perpetually entering and leaving it.
As you approach the looming structure, you walk amid women in brightly colored saris, many of them sitting on the ground and selling peanuts; half-clad children milling about; old men stooped on walking sticks; and judges and lawyers and their clients pacing purposefully toward the courtrooms. You hear the composite sounds of the assembly of people, and the justices in their black robes speaking both Hindi and Punjabi.
The High Court seems to succor them. All these unexpected elements—the people selling their wares, the piles of faded legal documents visible in the windows of the offices and courtrooms—are at home in Le Corbusier’s creation, rather than intrusive on a pristine design. The building is a setting for justice and life-altering decisions in the same way that a Gothic cathedral is a vehicle for religion and faith.
IN JANUARY 2000, the building entrance was partially obliterated by all the cars of Indian officials parked in front. The interior was appallingly filthy and decrepit. There was a distinct lack of maintenance—apparent in dirt, crumbling plaster, faded paint, and, on the roof, a pile of discarded tires and inner tubes.
But for all that, what force! And what a new way of thinking about the role of justice and the ability of color and form to add confidence and joy to the minute-to-minute experience of human beings.
3
Inside the High Court, there is a tapestry designed by Le Corbusier that is 144 square meters. It was woven over a period of five months by the men in Kashmir who had also made the 64-square-meter tapestries he designed for each of the eight smaller courts. The woolen hangings absorb noise, mitigating the resonance of the reinforced concrete and making the acoustics comfortable. They also give energy to the judicial proceedings. Bright abstract forms play against somber ones, while depictions of lightning, sun, clouds, and stars are present. Like work by Kandinsky and Miró, to which they refer, the tapestries evoke the entire universe.
Shortly after the High Court was put into use, Le Corbusier heard from Pierre Jeanneret that some of the justices had removed his tapestries from their courtrooms. The chief justice, however, had kept his, and was enthusiastic about it.
Le Corbusier wrote to Nehru. He began by obsequiously heaping gratitude on the prime minister for the commission of the new capital. Then he got to the point. He asked how these “subalterns” could possibly have the
right to make such a decision. What gave them the temerity to countermand the taste of the person who, because of Chandigarh, had become “the first architect of today’s world?” While apologizing for his conceit—“a thousand pardons for the lack of modesty”—Le Corbusier said he would not tolerate the maneuver.4
Subsequent details are lost to history, but the tapestries are back in place.
4
Balkrishna Doshi had a particular perspective on this building, starting with its political implications: “His bow to democracy lay in not placing his buildings on a pedestal—both the Assembly and the High Court do not have flights of steps. They’re not imposing that way. He put them on the ground—perhaps he didn’t want to change the level, he felt that in a democracy you do not put buildings on platforms.”5
Of the billowing roofline of the High Court, Doshi observed, “As always, silhouette was important for him. You see these shapes, almost like an umbrella, but look at the negative space and it’s like a dome…so he had this play of positive-negative, of floating form against the light.”6 Doshi recognized that the reason for this form was that it was essential for Le Corbusier that the sky actively penetrate his buildings. Earlier, this had been through geometric vistas, as in the Villa Savoye; now it was through a more organic interaction.
This desire for a connection between solid structure and the amorphous gases surrounding the earth was not always easy to realize. While Le Corbusier intended the shells in the High Court to be very thin (like the roof he was concurrently designing for Ronchamp), the realities of engineering did not permit this. They had to be redesigned as a heavier slab that in turn was curved and cantilevered.
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