ISSUES AND PROBLEMS IN MODERNISM FALL 2012

VILLA SAVOYE BY LE CORBUSIER

Mustafa Hasanovic
International Burch University, Department of Architecture, student, Bosnia and Herzegovina muato369@hotmail.com

THEMATIC AREA: Form, space, structure, material, landscape and other characteristics of Villa Savoye

ABSTRACT
The Villa Savoye was the culmination of many years of design, and the basis for much of Le Corbusier's later architecture. The plan of the building is square; one of the ideal shapes which the architects so admired. Within this strict geometry, dynamic curved forms are added, like the staircase and the solarium on the roof screened by curved walls. Interlocking ribbon windows are repeated on all sides of the building providing openness and light.

Key words: Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier, Five points of Architecture, modernism, modular, revolutionary way of living, roof garden.

1. FIVE POINTS OF NEW ARCHITECTURE

Villa Savoye is the most famous of the villas built by Le Corbusier . He wrote of it: 'The house must not have a facade. Situated at the top of a dome-like hill, it must open on to all four directions. The living area with its hanging garden will be raised above the columns so as to give views right to the horizon.' He characterized the plan for the Villa Savoye as 'trs gnreux' since it enable him to express his architectonic conception on the exterior as well as to solve all the functional problems
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Charles-douard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier (French pronunciation: [l kbyzje]; October 6, 1887 August 27, 1965), was an architect, designer, urbanist, and writer, famous for being one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout Europe, India and America. He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. (source: Wikipeia)
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in the interior. This is one of the most famous houses of the modern movement in architecture. Based in modular design - the result of Corbusier's researches into mathematics, architecture (the golden section), and human proportion. Here there is the total application of Le Corbusier's "five points of a new architecture". All five points are clearly present in this house: 1. "Pilotis" (the house is raised on stilts to separate it from the earth to use the land efficiently) 2. Free faade 3. Ribbon window 4. Open floor plan and 5. Roof terrace. The Villa Savoye is a masterpiece of Le Corbusier's purist design. It is perhaps the best example of Le Corbusier's goal to create a house which would be a "machine a habiter, " a machine for living (in). The house is as beautiful and functional as a machine.

Picture 1: Sketch of five points of architecture

2. WHITE BOX
The first impression you get when approaching the house is of a horizontal white box appearing to have landed on stilts, which are in Le Corbusier - Villa Savoye, fact columns of reinforced concrete, the Villa Savoye offers a truly revolutionary way of living. The plan of the building is square; one of the ideal shapes which the architects so admired. Within this strict geometry, dynamic curved forms are added, like the staircase and the solarium on the roof screened by curved walls. Interlocking ribbon windows are repeated on all sides of the building providing openness and light. The access sequence is arranged so that visitors arriving by car from Paris parked out of sight in a garage and service area which are visible among the columns. This ground floor area contains the entrance and servants' quarters. Visitors entered the house though a glass box beneath the main floor washed at a prominently located basin and then climbed the sloping ramp or spiral stairs, to the main living floor. This ramp begins at ground level and swings upwards through the house, it is the very spine of the plan, acting as a kind of conductor wire for what the architect has described as 'la promenade architecturale', connecting the activities taking

The Modulor - Le Corbusier explicitly used the golden ratio in his Modulor system for the scale of architectural proportion. He saw this system as a continuation of the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man", the work of Leon Battista Alberti, and others who used the proportions of the human body to improve the appearance and function of architecture. In addition to the golden ratio, Le Corbusier based the system on human measurements, Fibonacci numbers, and the double unit. He took Leonardo's suggestion of the golden ratio in human proportions to an extreme: he sectioned his model human body's height at the navel with the two sections in golden ratio, then subdivided those sections in golden ratio at the knees and throat; he used these golden ratio proportions in the Modulor system. (source: Wikipeia)

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place inside the house with those on the roof garden, with its plantings and architectural (sculptural) shapes. The whole structure is painted in pure color - white on the outside, a color with associations of newness, purity, simplicity, and health and planes of subtle color in the interior open living areas.

3. TYPE HOUSE
Villa Savoye also contains built-in furniture something Le Corbusier has explored in previous villas. One is never clear as to what is outdoors and what is indoors: the villa is a homage to light, and air, as well as a complex geometry and plan that can be quite baffling on first encounter. The Villa Savoye was the culmination of many years of design, and the basis for much of Le Corbusier's later architecture. Although it looks severe in photographs, it is a complex and visually stimulating structure. As with his church of Notre Dame du Haute, Ronchamp, the building looks different from every angle. Although this villa was intended as a unique model, Le Corbusier always looked upon each one of his works as the prototype for a series. In deference to the principle of reproduction in series which was fundamental to his way of thinking, he proposed to use the Villa Savoye as the 'type' house for a building on a site on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
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4. ANALYSIS 4.1. Form - Le Corbusier incorporated the structural ideals from the Maison Domino, called the Domino Structure it is characterized by planar slabs connected by
a dogleg staircase. In the Villa Savoye, a ramp was added to the mix, allowing for a form with a dual role of being meant to be viewed while simultaneously allowing for viewing Le Corbusiers architectural promenade as it flows upward travelling inside and outside from the ground floor to the solarium. He started with a cubic volume and eroded elements to create the final form. The Villa Savoye uses rectangles, cylinders, and cubes to fill in the voids created by his erosion of the overall cubic volume. By carving out the volume Le Corbusier creates a form that appears to float above the horizontal plane, one that draws a person into the building.

4.2. Relationship to Landscape This object is located on a flat open area of grass, and is surrounded by high trees. The promenade on the roof allows a
framed high viewpoint looking over to Paris. The house seems like a pure symmetric object, standing out in the open. It does not blend in to the landscape but the constant 360 degree view makes the landscape as part of house for the occupants.

4.3. Use of the spaces - The free plan system allows flexibility for design. Any room can be located or shaped anywhere. But this house has several thematic
designs. Living and private spaces and zones such as bedrooms are all located on the eastern side of the house. This allows morning sun to reach the living area.

Le Corbusier began experimenting with furniture design in 1928 after inviting the architect, Charlotte Perriand, to join his studio. His cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, also collaborated on many of the designs. Before the arrival of Perriand, Le Corbusier relied on ready-made furniture to furnish his projects, such as the simple pieces manufactured by Thonet, the company that manufactured his designs in the 1930s.

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All other public spaces are located facing the west side of the house. This allows afternoon and evening sun to reach those areas, encouraging activity. The stairs and ramp are central elements of the house. It is visible on all levels, on not tucked away in a corner to serve as a utility. The stairs and ramp are actual spaces themselves. The hanging garden is also a major part of the house. It has many visual connections to many parts of the house. The hanging garden is an open area. Its openness makes it as if it were an equivalent backyard of a traditional house. However, it is not part of the landscape; hence it is a backyard within the house.

4.4. Structural System - Column, beam, reinforced concrete slab system that supports the weight of the building. All loads are distributed across slabs on to
the beams, and on to the columns. Le Corbusier was one of the first architects to use columns also called the pilotes to cr eate free spaces on concrete floors instead of load-bearing walls in his very famous five points of Modern Architecture.

4.5. Materials - One of the elements that give villa such a strong character and make the villa as one unity is the material usage of the facade. The key material
is the white plaster in the facades. The white plaster is typical for Le Corbusier and he is known for using plaster and it can therefore be found in nearly all of his designs and buildings. By using white plaster the house strongly refers as one unity and one solid element even though there are a lot of elements and different parts in the house like the terraces and for example the solarium on the roof top. Besides the white plaster, glass is highly present in the facades. The glass contributes to the transparency of the house and proportions.

4.6. Movement - The circulation of the house is design by the corridors and the main ramp/stairs. The ramp/stair on the ground floor in front of the entrance
makes it first obvious pathway to the 1st floor. The corridor to servant rooms are secluded at the back of the house, hence traffic is not encouraged/obvious to those area. On the 1st floor, there is a cross road. a small corridor makes the secluded pathway to the childrens rooms and other utility area. a large corridor shows the obvious/encouraged pathway to the main bedrooms. The visual connection to the hanging gardens and living room are also obvious/encouraged pathwa y to the luxury area. Hence the circulation is designed to encourage traffic to the main areas of the hanging garden, living room, and main bedrooms.

5. CONSLUSION
For Le Corbusier, ideas mattered a great deal. Often, the abstract purity of the idea would be compromised by the practicalities of its realization, but the underlying idea and driving force remains. Because of this, one can put together, in a tapestry-like fashion, a collage of the ideas of Le Corbusier. The urban ideas that infuse the Voisin plan are reflected in the Villa Savoye. When you observe, many of the references found in the Villa Savoye are self-referential. This sentence means that a mental construct is envisaged that does not have a direct bearing in everyday perception or reality. The ordering systems and compositions then masterfully reinforce this mental construct, and this in part adds to the deep intellectual resonance of the work.

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It appears that for Le Corbusier, the person perceiving the architecture cannot comprehend the essence of architecture directly. This essence must be comprehended through visibly expressed ordering systems. It is these ordering systems that mediate between the absolute and the individual. For all of the rational arguments and explanations by Le Corbusier, the design of the Villa Savoye was largely intuitive. There are many examples where theoretically rigorous rules have been broken (e.g., regulating lines, proportioning ratios, etc.) with the resulting composition being one that ultimately decided by personal judgment. The wellspring from which these designs emanated is deeper that the ability of Le Corbusier to rationally explain. This perhaps accounts for why the texts are often contradictory, as Le Corbusier was not necessarily rationally certain as to what he was trying to express.

6. REFERENCES
Books 01] Precisions (on the present state of architecture and city planning), Le Corbusier (translated by Edith Schreiber Aujame), 1991, Massachusetts Institute of Technoloy, London, page 133 139 02] The Poetics of Machine and Metaphor, Le Corbusier (Alexander Tzonis), 2001, Thames & Hudson Ltd, London, page 37 -81etc.] 03] Toward an Architecture, Le Corbusier (translated by John Goodman), 2007, Frances Lincoln Limited Publishers, London, page 131 -144 04] Design strategies in Architecture, Geoffrey H. B., 1996, E&FN Publishers, Great Britain Internet 05] wikipedia; http://www.wikiarquitectura.comindex.phptitle=Villa_Savoye.html 06] Great Buildings; http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Villa_Savoye.html 07] wikipedia; http://www.wikiarquitectura.comindex.phptitle=Le_Corbusier.html Pictures (Sketches) 08] Five points of architecture - source: internet

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