Modernism in Europe in the
1920s:
The Villas of LeCorbusier
La Maison Citrohan (1922)
Project (“Citrohan” sounds
like “Citroen” in French).
This design was intended to
be as efficient as that of a
Citroen automobile.
Model
Drawings
This arrangement of spaces became a signature
treatment in LeCorbusier’s housing projects.
Paris, House and Studio for Amedee
Ozenfant, 1923
Garches, Villa Stein, 1926
Villa Stein, Garden Facade
Villa Stein, regulating lines underlying the composition of the
facades.
Villa Savoye (“Les heures claires”), Poissy-sur-Seine, 1928-30
The Villa Savoye is one of the classic achievements of European
modernism in the abstract/functionalist category. Designed by
LeCorbusier for a wealthy Parisian family, the villa was one of the
first in which he embodied his philosophical and aesthetic ideas about
architecture most adroitly. The nickname of the villa--”Les heures
claires”--is probably a pun. In French this term refers to leisure time
(lit. “clear hours”), but it also contains the notion of clearing one’s
head and of purifying one’s thought processes.
The villa was originally suburban and in the middle of fields. The
approach to it by car and then the movement through it on foot were
carefully calculated to produce a series of experiences that were not
only memorable but thought-provoking.
Beginning with the approach, one sees the villa as a “machine in the
garden.” It is clearly a human production, unconfusable with nature.
The villa is in essence a simple volume lifted on columns above the
ground. While this idea is rooted in the “Dom-ino” house, it moves
well beyond the basic notion to explore a subtle shift in the column
grid as well as the enclosure of part of the ground floor space and the
use of ramps as well as a variety of stairs to move from level to level.
The columns also shift from round to square cross-section where the
grid changes on the interior.
The ramp became an important theme of modernism, not because it
was invented here but because its purpose and disposition in this
design is so well conceived. The ramp is a subtle spatial experience
that takes the observer from the darker lower level to the more
brightly illuminated main floor and then on up to the completely
exposed roof garden.
The climax of the procession up the
ramps occurs when the house, first seen
in the midst of nature (the “machine in
the garden”), turns out to enframe a view
of nature through the window opening in
the wind screen.