Meanings of Le Corbusiers Villa Savoye

Wong Weng Yew, Joshua

Introduction

Le Corbusiers Villa Savoye was a building commissioned by the Savoye family, completed in the early twentieth century, and located in Poissy, near Paris. One cannot deny that the building is of importance to the development of ideas in architecture and also its status as an iconic purist milestone, in particular, of modernist architectural ideas. In this essay, instead of attempting to explain how exactly do the architectural principles of Le Corbusier play out tangibly in the design and construction of the Villa Savoye, we focus on the less tangible aspects of the building with respect to the many meanings constructed for it and on how do these diering interpretations of the building in uence us and the way in which we perceive the building and its symbolic meaning in history. We explore the origins of the villa and see in what way did Le Corbusier mean it to be more than a place for living. e idea of a machine of living needs clari cation, and there have been attempts to link the buildings meaning to the architects own psyche. We survey the place and meaning assigned to the building in architecture and national history, referencing the myriad ways in which the meaning of the building was an outcome of processes that, while directed by the architect himself, was also inextricably linked to a creation narrative of a historic monument involving various players interacting with the spirit of the age.
1. Constructed within a year, beginning in April 1929, the Villa was nonetheless not t for living in until 1931. See Le Corbusier, Giedion, and the Villa Savoye: From Consecration to Preservation of Architecture. Also, there is evidence that despite the Villa being a place of residence, Le Corbusier did not really care about it being habitable. In a letter dated 6 September 1936, Madame Savoye complained to the architect that Its raining in the hall, its raining in the ramp, and the wall of the garage is absolutely soaked. Whats more, its still raining in my bathroom, which oods every time it rains. See Tim Benton, Villa Savoye and the Architects Practice, in Le Corbusier, ed. H. Allen Brooks, Reyner. Banham, and Le Corbusier (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), xix 2. Le Corbusier, Five points of a new architecture (1975) is the document Corbusier wrote as he took on the role of rule-making for modern architecture on himself. ese principlespilotis, free plan, free faade, at roof, and ribbon windows were all evident in the design of the Villa Savoye. 3. But Figure 5 gives a plan of the building as well as a picture of the interior.

We suggest that the study of the development of the Villa Savoye into its iconic status today represents a principle of idea development and preservation that runs through architecture history, and it is in this sense in which this study contributes to the debate over the utility of the doctrinal tradition of architecture.

1.1

A short history of the Villa Savoye

e Villa Savoye was built and completed by 1930. By May 1940, the owners, fed up with the various physical defects of the building and constant leaking from the roof, decided to abandon the building for good. e Second World War saw the dereliction of the building under successive German and American forces and was in very bad condition by the 1950s. e development of Poissy prompted the appropriate of the building by the Mayor of Poissy in 1956 as the site of a new secondary school for 1,271,875 francs. As a result, the building was altered in many signi cant ways. Mme Savoye, upon the appropriation of her property conveyed the news to the architect, who immediately sent out telegrams for nancial assistance to save the Villa Savoye. While Le Corbusier intended the building to function as a research center focusing on the development of Western architecture from Antiquity to the present by routes other than the academic ones, the collective actions of those whom the architect sought help from eventually led to the Villa Savoye being the rst building of modern architecture listed as monument historique in France.

A Villa

In e Villa as Paradigm Ackerman attempts to articulate the meaning or paradigm that the Villa represents. In contrast to other building types, he argues that the villa is not subject to as much to architectural rules as much as it should be a re ection of the unique status of the individual in the city. e villa, ful lling the psychological and ideological needs of the owners, is distinct in its meaning and thus the paradigm of the villa is unchanging. According to Ackerman, two contrasting models [of the villa] were rmly established in Roman times: the condensed-cubic and the open-extended, and it is within this tradition
4. e rst architectural treatise written, P. Vitruvius, e ten books on architecture. Translated by Morris Hicky Morgan (Dover Publications Inc, New York, NY, 1960) was essentially a rulebook: prescribing the right ways to build civil buildings or temples, or the correct proportions for dierent kinds of columns. 5. See Figure 8 showing masonry deterioration of the building. 6. e former poured concrete down the toilets when they left; when the Americans arrived they shot bullets through the windows. Quote from Kevin D. Murphy, e Villa Savoye and the Modernist Historic Monument, e Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 61, no. 1 (2002): 6889 7. See Figure 7 for the new walls that Le Corbusier highlighted in sketches to the Ministry of Culture. 8. It was the second building of the twentieth century listed, after the eatre des Champs Elyses. 9. James Ackerman, e Villa as Paradigm, Perspecta 22 (1986): 1031.

that Le Corbusier attempts to connect his design of the villa to. Le Corbusier, writing to a client states: e inhabitants come here because this rustic landscape goes well with country life. ey survey their whole domain from the height of their jardin suspendu or from the four aspects of their fentres en longeur. eir domestic life is inserted into a Vergilian Dream. e reference to the clients whole domain is interesting as it re ects the privileged position of the owner in society, and Le Corbusier, by appealing to the need of the Savoye family for distinction, further creates a reason for the Villa to be built. We also see the allusion to classical Greek mythology further cementing the wish of Le Corbusier to place his design within the greater scheme of architecture history and progress. us we can see that the architect, in espousing his new Five points of a new architecture, wanted his building to be seen as a modernist interpretation of age-old principles of villa design.

e Hidden Meanings of the Villa

In Le Corbusier and the Problems of Representation, Carranza develops the thesis that Le Corbusier subconsciously maintained an aversion to women that can be seen by careful psychoanalysis of his works. A large part of the evidence presented relies on Le Corbusiers artwork, architecture and photography of his architecture. In particular, the resources for the latter two representations of his works derive mainly from the design and his photographs of the Villa Savoye. e author argues that the Villa Savoye, construed as a machine for living by Le Corbusier should be viewed within the constructs of feminism as a sharp representation of the active nature of the male in contrast to the passive role of the female. For example, by representing the machine as the generating element in his building, Le Corbusier assigned a gendered distinction to the building. To further the thesis that Le Corbusier maintained a dislike to women, the author used extensive use of the artwork and photography of Le Corbusier, particularly the photos of
10. See Figure 6 for a view of the building from the exterior. 11. Ackerman, e Villa as Paradigm. 12. Luis E. Carranza, Le Corbusier and the Problems of Representation, Journal of Architectural Education (1984-) 48, no. 2 (1994): 7081. 13. Le Corbusier, in Essential Le Corbusier : Lesprit nouveau articles, meant in more literal terms that the house should be conceived as a machine to aid in the regular actions of life: the use of the house consists of a regular sequence of de nite functions. e regular sequence of these functions is a trac phenomenon. To render that trac exact, economical and rapid is the key eort of modern architectural science. 14. e curvilinear shape on the ground level of the Villa Savoye was obtained as a result of the maximum turning of a car ibid.

the interior of the Villa Savoye. Figure 1 for example shows a masculinized woman and her exaggerated breasts depicting the refusal or inability of Le Corbusier to accept the feminine form. Figures 2 and 3, pictures taken by Le Corbusier of the kitchens of the Villa Savoye and the Villa at Garches respectively are analyzed closely and the objects in these pictures individually and collectively represent the control of man over women. As a purely architectural analysis of the Villa Savoye, the author fails to portray a fully convincing narrative of the hidden meaning of the building. While there was mention of the architectural promenade in the Villa Savoye being an element that serves to objectify women as she traverses space, the author at no point makes explicit what exactly does he mean with respect to the actual architectural space of the building. Instead, the only form of evidence presented is in the form of photographs and artwork interpreted under subjective terms and repudiated Freudian theory which severely undermines the conclusion of the author. Nonetheless, this paper has the merit of pointing out the psychological factors aecting the architect and further research should widen the perspective of the motives and meanings that Le Corbusier attached to his building beyond his modernist ideals and sense of self importance. Critically, we suggest further research into the meanings that speci c architectural spaces in the building convey, and attempt to tie it in with the psychological motives of the architect.

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4.1

Architecture and Historical Meaning

e Script of the Meaning of the Villa Savoye

In Le Corbusier, Giedion, and the Villa Savoye: From Consecration to Preservation of Architecture, the author argues for how a holistic look at the various words (written for and about the building) and photographs, which together form the script for the history of
15. For example, the teapot, the author tells us, can be said to represent the phallus through the shape and placement of the nozzle, while the sh, according to Freud, is a standard metaphor for the male organ. Even the open door and fan have a speci c meaning: the door signi es the passage of man through space, or the female genital ori ce which can only be opened by the male keys, while the fan as a machine represents an element of activity and represents man. In Figure 4 the woman is similarly objecti ed under the gaze of the privileged male viewer and is subjected to the voyeuristic power of the male. Carranza, Le Corbusier and the Problems of Representation 16. Ibid. 17. See Malcolm MacMillan, Freud evaluated the completed arc (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997) for a comprehensive critique. 18. Panayotis Tournikiotis and Georey Cox, Le Corbusier, Giedion, and the Villa Savoye: From Consecration to Preservation of Architecture [in English], PD: Bibliographic footnotes; Illustration; Portrait; WRK: Le Corbusier et larchitecture contemporaine [Essay]: Giedion, Sigfried, Future Anterior 4, no. 2 (2007): XII, 111.

modern architecture, is the germane way to regard the symbol of the Villa Savoye as an architectural symbol of the modern movement. e story picks o after Le Corbusier sends o his telegrams to his friends. One of them, Siegfried Giedion, was then a professor at Harvard University, and Le Corbusier was counting on him to amass funds from American institutions to repurchase the Villa Savoye. is was ultimately unnecessary because the building was accorded the status of a historic monument, thanks to the many letters that were sent from all over the world to the French State minister Andr Malraux, in large part to the credit of Giedions eorts. Admittedly, the authors aim is not to provide a working full theory of how the various letters and communications and support of Le Corbusiers friends in actual fact constitute a script which we can accept as being fundamentally part of the symbol of the Villa Savoye. However, what the author does is show in very factual terms how we cannot neglect the importance of how the international movement contributed to the perceived importance of preserving the Villa Savoye. In this sense, the evidence presented and the detailed chronology of this paper is a valuable adjunct to the arguments of the next paper that we shall consider.

4.2

French National Ideals

Andr Malraux has been claimed to have saved the Villa Savoye, and while it is true that his cultural policy of preserving key canonical works was instrumental in the preservation of the Villa Savoye, Murphy in e Villa Savoye and the Modernist Historic Monument considers other players and factors that played a decisive role in the preservation of the Villa Savoye. Is it possible that the defense of the Villa Savoye can be equated directly with the defense of the French nation itself? Murphy claims that Paul Nelson, architect, made this striking argument. By asserting that France was the source of modernist architecture, and contending that the Villa Savoye represented directly the centrality of France to the Modern Movement, Nelson argued for the preservation of the building as a historic monument.
19. See Figures 9 and 10 for a sample of what the author considered to be part of this script. 20. A Swiss from Zurich, Giedion was the secretary of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture, of which Le Corbusier was the principal founder. 21. Frances rst Minister of Cultural Aairs from 1959 to 1969. 22. Tim Benton, Historic architecture: Le Corbusier: Villa Savoye, monument of the modern movement at Poissy [in English], RW: Benton, Tim. Architectural digest 43, no. 5 (1986): 182187,232. 23. Murphy, e Villa Savoye and the Modernist Historic Monument. 24. In a similar vein invoking French history, the architectural history scholar Nikolas Pevsner, in Time and Le Corbusier also argues that the Villa Savoye was transformed into a site where international visitors would visit to see the maturation and expression of modern architecture just as the medieval churches in France had been transformed into places of cultural and religious pilgrimage. 25. Ibid.

is argument is novel in two ways. First, it claimed historic signi cance for a contemporary building, which shows how the Modernist Movement has already been accepted as some to have come and past to form part of history. More interestingly, the nationalistic argument suggests, as Murphy argues, that the Villa Savoye was incorporated into a nationalist understanding of the architectural patrimony that equated the destruction of buildings that possessed no real functional importance for the national government with political threats to the state. e meaning of the Villa Savoye was subsumed under and made bigger because of the overarching ideals of French nationalism.

Progress of architectural ideas

As noted earlier, the Villa Savoye was seen even during the lifetime of Le Corbusier as a building important enough to be preserved as part of a historic and yet modern movement. e many ways in which scholars have attempted to ascribe, interpret and explain the meaning of the Villa Savoye suggest the wide degree of latitude of conditions under which this building can be construed. is suggests that further research be done to unify these dierent perspectives under a more general theory. e wishes of Le Corbusier to link his building to architectural traditions and his fervent attempts to preserve it together with the artistic, architectural and cultural collective impetus to wish that the building was preserved suggest a fundamental principle of idea preservation and linkage of architectural innovations to previous traditions. In this sense, the meaning of the preservation of Le Corbusiers Villa Savoye is not merely in its importance as a building and an exposition of the architects ideals, but more signi cantly in its representative symbolism of the Modern Movement and the place of this movement in architectural history.

26. Murphy, e Villa Savoye and the Modernist Historic Monument.

References
Ackerman, James. e Villa as Paradigm. Perspecta 22 (1986): 1031. Benton, Tim. Historic architecture: Le Corbusier: Villa Savoye, monument of the modern movement at Poissy [in English]. RW: Benton, Tim. Architectural digest 43, no. 5 (1986): 182187,232. . Villa Savoye and the Architects Practice. In Le Corbusier, edited by H. Allen Brooks, Reyner. Banham, and Le Corbusier, xix. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. Carranza, Luis E. Le Corbusier and the Problems of Representation. Journal of Architectural Education (1984-) 48, no. 2 (1994): 7081. Corbusier, Le. Essential Le Corbusier : Lesprit nouveau articles. Oxford; Boston: Architectural Press, 1998. . Five points of a new architecture (1975). MacMillan, Malcolm. Freud evaluated the completed arc. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997. Murphy, Kevin D. e Villa Savoye and the Modernist Historic Monument. e Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 61, no. 1 (2002): 6889. Pevsner, Sir, Nikolaus. Time and Le Corbusier [in English]. RW: Pevsner, Nikolaus. Architectural review 125 (1959): 159165. Tournikiotis, Panayotis, and Georey Cox. Le Corbusier, Giedion, and the Villa Savoye: From Consecration to Preservation of Architecture [in English]. PD: Bibliographic footnotes; Illustration; Portrait; WRK: Le Corbusier et larchitecture contemporaine [Essay]: Giedion, Sigfried, Future Anterior 4, no. 2 (2007): XII, 111. Vitruvius, P. e ten books on architecture. Translated by Morris Hicky Morgan. Dover Publications Inc, New York, NY, 1960.

List of Figures
1 2 Le Corbusier, Nude Female, 1931. Copyright 1995 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Kitchen of the Villa Savoye, from LArchitecture Vivante (Editions Albert Morance, 1931). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Kitchen of the Villa at Garches, from L Architecture Vivante (Editions Albert Morance, 1929). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Exterior of the Immeuble Clart, from LArchitecture Vivante (Editions Albert Morance, 1930). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Villa Savoye, from Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (1941) 13 G. E. Kidder Smith, photograph of Villa Savoye, published in Historic Preservation 11 (1959) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier drawing showing new walls shaded in red, 2 April 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Villa Savoye, photo by Jean-Yves Le Guyader showing masonry deterioration 16 e rst page of the letter sent by Giedlon to Le Corbusier on March 5, 1959 (FLC H1-12-187). Copyright Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. . . . . 17 e Villa Savoye as photographed by Jullian on April 30, 1960, before any preservation work (FLC L2-17-136). A comparison of these photographs with those of the Cahiers dArt of 1930 reveals a remarkable resemblance. Photograph copyright Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. . . . . . . . . . . . 18

5 6 7 8 9 10

A Figures

Figure 1: Le Corbusier, Nude Female, 1931. Copyright 1995 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris.

Figure 2: Kitchen of the Villa Savoye, from LArchitecture Vivante (Editions Albert Morance, 1931). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris.

10

Figure 3: Kitchen of the Villa at Garches, from L Architecture Vivante (Editions Albert Morance, 1929). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris.

11

Figure 4: Exterior of the Immeuble Clart, from LArchitecture Vivante (Editions Albert Morance, 1930). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris.

12

Figure 5: Villa Savoye, from Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (1941)

13

Figure 6: G. E. Kidder Smith, photograph of Villa Savoye, published in Historic Preservation 11 (1959)

14

Figure 7: Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier drawing showing new walls shaded in red, 2 April 1960

15

Figure 8: Villa Savoye, photo by Jean-Yves Le Guyader showing masonry deterioration

16

Figure 9: e rst page of the letter sent by Giedlon to Le Corbusier on March 5, 1959 (FLC H1-12-187). Copyright Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris.

17

Figure 10: e Villa Savoye as photographed by Jullian on April 30, 1960, before any preservation work (FLC L2-17-136). A comparison of these photographs with those of the Cahiers dArt of 1930 reveals a remarkable resemblance. Photograph copyright Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris.

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