Editing Le Corbusier (section)

==Ideas==
===''The Five Points of a Modern Architecture''===
{{Main|Le Corbusier's Five Points of Architecture}}
Le Corbusier defined the principles of his new architecture in ''Les cinq points de l'architecture moderne'', published in 1927, and co-authored by his cousin, [[Pierre Jeanneret]]. They summarized the lessons he had learned in the previous years, which he put literally into concrete form in his villas constructed in the late 1920s, most dramatically in the [[Villa Savoye]] (1928–1931).

The five points are:
* The '''Pilotis''', or pylon. The building is raised on reinforced concrete pylons, which allows for free circulation on the ground level, and eliminates dark and damp parts of the house.
* The '''Roof Terrace'''. The sloping roof is replaced by a flat roof; the roof can be used as a garden, for promenades, for sports or a swimming pool.
* The '''Free Plan'''. Load-bearing walls are replaced by steel or reinforced concrete columns, so the interior can be freely designed, and interior walls can be put anywhere, or left out entirely. The structure of the building is not visible from the outside.
* The '''Ribbon Window'''. Since the walls do not support the house, the windows can run the entire length of the house, so all rooms can get equal light.
* The '''Free Façade'''. Since the building is supported by columns in the interior, the façade can be much lighter and more open or made entirely of glass. There is no need for lintels or other structures around the windows.

==="Architectural Promenade"===
The "Architectural Promenade" was another idea dear to Le Corbusier, which he particularly put into play in his design of the [[Villa Savoye]]. In 1928, in ''Une Maison, un Palais'', he described it: "Arab architecture gives us a precious lesson: it is best appreciated in walking, on foot. It is in walking, in going from one place to another, that you see develop the features of the architecture. In this house ([[Villa Savoye]]) you find a veritable architectural promenade, offering constantly varying aspects, unexpected, sometimes astonishing." The promenade at Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier wrote, both in the interior of the house and on the roof terrace, often erased the traditional difference between the inside and outside.<ref>Le Corbusier, ''Une maison – un palais'', G. Crès & Cie (1928), pp. 70–78</ref>

===''Ville Radieuse'' and Urbanism===
In the 1930s, Le Corbusier expanded and reformulated his ideas on urbanism, eventually publishing them in ''[[Ville Radieuse|La Ville radieuse]]'' (The Radiant City) in 1935. Perhaps the most significant difference between the Contemporary City and the Radiant City is that the latter abandoned the class-based stratification of the former; housing was now assigned according to family size, not economic position.{{Sfn|Fishman|1982|p=231}} Some have read dark overtones into ''The Radiant City'': from the "astonishingly beautiful assemblage of buildings" that was Stockholm, for example, Le Corbusier saw only "frightening chaos and saddening monotony." He dreamed of "cleaning and purging" the city, bringing "a calm and powerful architecture"—referring to steel, plate glass, and reinforced concrete. Although Le Corbusier's designs for Stockholm did not succeed, later architects took his ideas and partly "destroyed" the city with them.<ref name=dalrymple>{{cite journal|last=Dalrymple|first=Theodore|url=http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_otbie-le-corbusier.html|title=The Architect as Totalitarian: Le Corbusier's baleful influence|journal=City Journal|date=Autumn 2009|volume=19|issue=4|access-date=18 March 2014|archive-date=6 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306231319/http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_otbie-le-corbusier.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Le Corbusier hoped that politically minded industrialists in France would lead the way with their efficient [[Taylorist]] and [[Fordist]] strategies adopted from American industrial models to reorganize society. As Norma Evenson has put it, "the proposed city appeared to some an audacious and compelling vision of a brave new world, and to others, a frigid megalomaniacally scaled negation of the familiar urban ambient."<ref name=evenson>{{cite book|last=Evenson|first=Norma|title=Le Corbusier: The Machine and the Grand Design|publisher=George Braziller|location=New York|year=1969|page=7}}</ref>

Le Corbusier "His ideas—his urban planning and his architecture—are viewed separately," Perelman noted, "whereas they are the same thing."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://news.artnet.com/art-world/new-books-claim-le-corbusier-fascist-289334|title=New Books Claim Le Corbusier Was a Fascist|last=Munro|first=Cait|date=17 April 2005|website=Artnet news |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230419174158/https://news.artnet.com/art-world/new-books-claim-le-corbusier-fascist-289334 |archive-date= Apr 19, 2023 }}</ref>

In ''La Ville radieuse'', he conceived an essentially apolitical society, in which the bureaucracy of economic administration effectively replaces the state.{{sfn|Fishman|1982|page=228}}

Le Corbusier was heavily indebted to the thought of the 19th-century French utopians [[Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon|Saint-Simon]] and [[Charles Fourier]]. There is a noteworthy resemblance between the concept of the unité and Fourier's [[phalanstery]].<ref name=serenyi>{{cite journal|first=Peter|last=Serenyi|title=Le Corbusier, Fourier, and the Monastery of Ema|journal=The Art Bulletin|volume=49|number=4|date=December 1967|page=282|doi=10.2307/3048487|jstor=3048487}}</ref> From Fourier, Le Corbusier adopted at least in part his notion of administrative, rather than political, government.

===Modulor===
{{Main|Modulor}}

The [[Modulor]] was a standard model of the human form which Le Corbusier devised to determine the correct amount of living space needed for residents in his buildings. It was also his rather original way of dealing with differences between the metric system and the British or American system since the Modulor was not attached to either one.

Le Corbusier explicitly used the [[golden ratio]] in his [[Modulor]] system for the [[scale (ratio)|scale]] of [[proportion (architecture)|architectural proportion]]. He saw this system as a continuation of the long tradition of [[Vitruvius]], [[Leonardo da Vinci]]'s "[[Vitruvian Man]]", the work of [[Leon Battista Alberti]], and others who used the proportions of the human body to improve the appearance and function of architecture. In addition to the [[golden ratio]], Le Corbusier based the system on [[anthropometry|human measurements]], [[Fibonacci number]]s, and the double unit. Many scholars see the Modulor as a humanistic expression but it is also argued that: "It's exactly the opposite (...) It's the mathematization of the body, the standardization of the body, the rationalization of the body."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/arts/design/le-corbusiers-architecture-and-his-politics-are-revisited.html|title=New York Times|last=Donadio|first=Rachel|date=12 July 2015|website=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref>

He took Leonardo's suggestion of the golden ratio in human proportions to an extreme: he sectioned his model human body's height at the navel with the two sections in golden ratio, then subdivided those sections in golden ratio at the knees and throat; he used these golden ratio proportions in the [[Modulor]] system.

Le Corbusier's 1927 Villa Stein in [[Garches]] exemplified the Modulor system's application. The villa's rectangular ground plan, elevation, and inner structure closely approximate golden rectangles.<ref name=padovan>{{cite book|last=Padovan|first=Richard|title=Proportion: Science, Philosophy, Architecture|date=2 November 1999|page=320|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-419-22780-9|quote=from Le Corbusier, ''The Modulor'' p. 35: "Both the paintings and the architectural designs make use of the golden section."}}</ref>

Le Corbusier placed systems of harmony and proportion at the centre of his design philosophy, and his faith in the mathematical order of the universe was closely bound to the golden section and the Fibonacci series, which he described as "rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms are at the very root of human activities. They resound in Man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability which causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages, and the learned."{{sfn|Padovan|1999|page=316}}

===Open Hand===
[[File:Open Hand Monument in Chandigarh.jpg|thumb|''[[Open Hand Monument]]'' in Chandigarh, India]]

The Open Hand (La Main Ouverte) is a recurring motif in Le Corbusier's architecture, a sign for him of "peace and reconciliation. It is open to give and open to receive." The largest of the many Open Hand sculptures that Le Corbusier created is a {{convert|26|m|ft|adj=mid|-high}} version in Chandigarh, India, known as ''[[Open Hand Monument]]''.