Corbu

Okay so let’s get back to some architecture.

Funny how the historic, the Burnhams and the Sullivans were about just trying to be taller, more efficient. Sullivan was philosophical about his building, but from what I can tell, the historic fellows were about trying to build a skyscraper, the rest of the stuff fell to the wayside, again, with the exception of Sullivan.

But now I’m reading about the modernists, the men building in the 1920’s and 30’s and not in America.

My first “master builder” was Le Courbusier. He was all german and French and he was a part of the art noveau movement. This was when the Europeans were all trying to get back to nature (Sullivan and Wright were already doing this back in the States, Chicago specifically). But of course every major architectural push is in rebellion to something, so the modernists decided to strip their buildings. Screw nature, screw the greeks, screw the ornamentation, take it all off, make it simple.

Corbu as he’s known in my book, was one of the first to rebel against the noveau movement. He started working in the style of “machine art”. Instead of reveling in nature, as men moved towards the industrtial age, he wanted his art and his buildings to reflect the beauty of the machine made technologies. He worked with concrete, building big boxy buildings, on stilts, with punctuated windows and lots and lots of gardens. While Wright wanted to build on the prarie, Corbu wanted to build for the cities. His tall apartment buildings and such were really long streets on their sides. So he had retail, private gardens, and a rooftop playground for conversing on the top. Take a street in France and turn it on it’s side. That’s Corbu.

The United Nations building in NYC was strongly influenced by him, he was on the design committee and they pretty much used his design, even thought it was built by committee. He was big on plazas, stilts (pilotis) and a non symmetrical window design. The sides are blocked with no windows, as to create a perfectly equal building, no one has a corner window eh?




I’ve just moved on to Mies, so curious to read about him. These guys turned architecture into religion, into an exact precise religion that they had faith in as if it were faith in God.

Fascinating.

But this will be it for a few days, as I HAVE A FOUR DAY WEEKEND COMING UP IN AN HOUR AND 47 MINUTES.