Le Corbusier A contemporary city

							  LE CORBUSIER
‘A Contemporary city’
From The City of To-morrow
  and Its Planning (1929)




           Iulia Munteanu
          MPA I, NGO Management
               Le Corbusier
  (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris)
• (1887-1969) - Swiss-French Architect,
city planner, designer, painter, writer and
philosopher;
• one of the pioneers of the Modernist
Movement (International Style) in
architecture;
• his designs for modern houses –
“machines for living”
   A Contemporary City Of Three
        Million Inhabitants

• “the skyscraper in the park”- idea today
ubiquitous
• Plan Voisin presented in Paris in 1922
→ controversial
• rows of identical, strictly geometrical
skyscrapers→ Right Bank (Paris)
• the city of today!
                     Site
• level site – ideal site for contemporary city

                 Population


  citizens         suburban       mixed sort
                    dwellers

→ define areas to be allotted to the 3 sections
Areas proposed:
1. The City – business and residential centre

2. The Industrial City

3. The Garden Cities – workers’ houses
- legal establishment of a protective zone
  between industrial city and garden cities
Population – more dense, small distances to
  cover → increase density
                    Traffic
• 3 types: heavy goods traffic + lighter goods
traffic + fast traffic
• → 3 kinds of roads:
       - below ground – for heavy traffic
       - at the ground floor level
       - arterial roads for fast one-way traffic
• cross-roads = enemy to traffic
• tramway – shouldn’t exist in modern city
            The Plan of the City
Basic principles:
1. decongest the centres of the city
2. augment city density
3. increase the means for getting about
4. increase parks and open spaces
• gridiron system- streets every 400 yards
• main arteries for fast traffic run N-S and E-W
→ elevated roadways
• great open space at the base of skyscrapers
• around the city – protected zone (green fields)
• garden cities – form a wide encircling band
• right at the centre of city→ railway station:
landing platform (aerodrome) + mezzanine +
ground floor + ‘basement’ + ‘sub-basement’ +
‘sub-sub-basement’
                    The city
• 24 skyscrapers – only for business purposes
→ 10,000 to 50,000 employees
• residential blocks – 600,000 inhabitants
• garden cities – 2,000,000 inhabitants or more
• open space → squares, gardens, theatres,
restaurants, cafes, museums, shops, sports
grounds, public services, universities;
• protected zone – building prohibited →
reserved for the growth of the city
   Further principles and City aesthetics
• city of today is dying for it is not geometrical
• We must build in the open!
• achieve uniform lay-out of city → result of
true geometrical lay-out is repetition →
standard, a perfect form
• to introduce uniformity into the building, we
must industrialize building
• A city made for speed is made for
succes!