Le Corbusier’s urbanistic utopia
Every architect and urbanist has their own vision of a perfect city. Among them there is one that highly deserves attention – Le Corbusier. This self-taught architect, son of a watchmaker, is well known and accomplished, regardless of having no university degree. One of his bold ideas was 5 rules of modern architecture, perfectly pictured in a movie attached.Every architect and urbanist has their own vision of a perfect city. Among them there is one that highly deserves attention – Le Corbusier. This self-taught architect, son of a watchmaker, is well known and accomplished, regardless of having no university degree. One of his bold ideas was 5 rules of modern architecture, perfectly pictured in a movie attached (Video by Alix Bossard)
Rules of the modern housing were a beginning to the urbanistic passion for Le Corbusier. For most of his life his passion has driven him to creating urbanist plans for towns (among others: Antwerp, Algier, Barcelona, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Chandigarh, Saint Die of Stockholm, Marseille, Moscow, Montevideo, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Zurich. And between 1912 and 1960 for Paris). These plans were not completed because they were seen as overly radical. Le Corbusier often recommended demolishing old towns and leaving only the most important monument standings.His unfulfilled dream was to rearrange heart of Paris. He proposed to demolish the city center in the north of Seine river, where he planned to build a spacious estate “Plan Voisin”. This area was really cramped, reconstruction’s purpose was to change downtown into city-garden.
Plan Voisin is a rendering of Ville Contemporaine – an urbanistic utopia consisting of the three million people – onto a real space. According to Plan Voisin, central part of Paris was supposed to be leveled to the ground (apart from the most precious monuments) and developed as universal grid of streets, resembling the urbanistic plan of Manhattan. The plan embraced 60 level buildings which would be evenly spaced in a shape of a cross and some lower square buildings. The whole area was meant to be filled with green spaces and recreation areas. Materials were supposed to be unified and prefabricated. City would be cut through by highway and the city center would be full of collision free crossroads. Pedestrians wouldn’t have to travel across the city, green areas would be in the vicinity of their houses.Ideas of Le Corbusier were criticized which lead them to be never completed. Despite of that, his plans had big influence on postmodernism architecture, in 1943 under Le Corbusier’s leadership Athens Card was published. Plan Voisin broke off from tradition, it has stimulated the development of a modern city, devoid of corridor which made the cities more spacious, brighter and cleaner.
