against harmful and undesirable noise. He also
advocated basing dwelling designs on human
scale, because the house is humankind’s assertion
within nature. All these qualities characterize Le
Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (FIG. 35-75), located at
Poissy-sur-Seine near Paris. This country house
sits conspicuously within its site, tending to
dominate it, and has a broad view of the land-
scape. Several colors appear on the exterior—
originally, a dark-green base, cream walls, and a
rose-and-blue windscreen on top. They were a deliberate analogy for
the colors in the contemporary machine-inspired Purist style of paint-
ing (FIG. 35-22) Le Corbusier practiced.
A cube of lightly enclosed and deeply penetrated space, the Villa
Savoye has an only partially confined ground floor (containing a three-
car garage, bedrooms, a bathroom, and utility rooms). Much of the
house’s interior is open space, with the thin columns supporting the
main living floor and the roof garden area. The major living rooms in
the Villa Savoye are on the second floor, wrapping around an open cen-
tral court. Strip windows that run along the membranelike exterior
walls provide illumination to the rooms. From the second-floor court,
a ramp leads up to a flat roof-terrace and garden protected by a curving
windbreak along one side. The Villa Savoye has no traditional facade.
The ostensible approach to the house does not define an entrance. Peo-
ple must walk around and through the house to comprehend its layout.
Spaces and masses interpenetrate so fluidly that inside and outside
space intermingle. The machine-planed smoothness of the unadorned
surfaces, the slender ribbons of continuous windows, and the buoyant
lightness of the whole fabric—all combine to reverse the effect of tradi-
tional country houses (FIG. 22-29). By placing heavy elements above
and light ones below, and by refusing to enclose the ground story of the
Villa Savoye with masonry walls, Le Corbusier inverted traditional de-
sign practice. This openness, made possible by the use of steel and fer-
roconcrete as construction materials, makes the Villa Savoye’s heavy
upper stories appear to hover lightly on the slender column supports.
The Villa Savoye was a marvelous house for a single family, but
like De Stijl architects, Le Corbusier dreamed of extending his ideas of
the house as a “machine for living” to designs for efficient and humane
cities. He saw great cities as spiritual workshops, and he proposed to
correct the deficiencies in existing cities caused by poor traffic circula-
tion, inadequate living units, and the lack of space for recreation and
exercise. Le Corbusier suggested replacing traditional cities with three
types of new communities. Vertical cities would house workers and
the business and service industries. Linear-industrial cities would run
as belts along the routes between the vertical cities and would serve as
centers for the people and processes involved in manufacturing. Fi-
nally, separate centers would be constructed for people involved in in-
tensive agricultural activity. Le Corbusier’s cities would provide for
human cultural needs in addition to serving every person’s physical,
mental, and emotional comfort needs.
Later in his career, Le Corbusier designed a few vertical cities,
most notably the Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles (1945–1952). He
also created the master plan for the entire city of Chandigarh, the
capital city of Punjab, India (1950–1957). He ended his career with a
personal expressive style in his design of the Chapel of Notre Dame
du Haut (FIGS. 36-56and 36-57) at Ronchamp.America
America also embraced the new European architecture, particularly
the Bauhaus style, which rejected ornament of any kind. But other
styles also won wide followings, some of which were reactions
against the severity of Bauhaus design.
ART DECOAccording to Bauhaus principles, pure form emerged
from functional structure and required no decoration. Yet popular
taste still favored ornamentation, especially in public architecture. A
movement in the 1920s and 1930s sought to upgrade industrial de-
sign as a “fine art.” Proponents wanted to work new materials into
decorative patterns that could be either machined or handcrafted and
that could, to a degree, reflect the simplifying trend in architecture. A
remote descendant of Art Nouveau, this movement became known as
Art Deco,which acquired its name at the Exposition des Arts Déco-
ratifs et Industriels Modernes (Exposition of Modern Decorative and
Industrial Arts), held in Paris in 1925. Art Deco had universal appli-
cation—to buildings, interiors, furniture, utensils, jewelry, fashions,
illustration, and commercial products of every sort. Art Deco prod-
ucts have a “streamlined,” elongated symmetrical aspect. Simple flat
shapes alternate with shallow volumes in hard patterns. The concept
of streamlining predominated in industrial-design circles in the
1930s and involved the use of organic, tapered shapes and forms. De-
rived from nature, these simple forms are inherently aerodynamic,
making them technologically efficient (because of their reduced re-
sistance as they move through air or water) as well as aesthetically
pleasing. Designers adopted streamlined shapes for trains and cars,
and the popular appeal of these designs led to their use in an array of
objects, from machines to consumer products.
Art Deco’s exemplary masterpiece is the stainless-steel spire of
the Chrysler Building (FIG. 35-76) in New York City, designed by
William van Alen(1882–1954). The building and spire are monu-
ments to the fabulous 1920s, when American millionaires and corpo-
rations competed with one another to raise the tallest skyscrapers in
the biggest cities. Built up of diminishing fan shapes, the spire glitters
triumphantly in the sky, a resplendent crown honoring the business
achievements of the great auto manufacturer. As a temple of com-
merce, the Chrysler Building celebrated the principles and success of
American business before the onset of the Great Depression.964 Chapter 35 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1900 TO 1945
35-75Le Corbusier,Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-
Seine, France, 1929.
Steel and ferroconcrete made it possible for
Le Corbusier to invert the traditional practice of
placing light architectural elements above heavy
ones and to eliminate weight-bearing walls on
the ground story.