5 POINTS OF ARCHITECTURE

1. THE SUPPORTS
2. THE ROOF GARDENS
3. THE FREE DESIGNING OF THE GROUND PLAN
4. THE HORIZONTAL WINDOW
5. FREE DESIGN OF THE FAÇADE
CARPENTERS CENTER FOR THE VISUAL ARTS(1963)
• It was designed to be home to Harvard’s visual arts, the
Carpenter Centre houses large open studio spaces for
students to work and showcase their art.

• In addition to being a place for art, it holds the largest

collection of 35mm films in the New England region often
holding screenings of independent, international, and silent
films.

• It was meant to be the synthesis of the arts where architecture

would join with painting, sculpture, photography and film.
La Ville Contemporaine Le Corbusier
(The Concentric City – 1922)

to create urban surroundings as

definitely contrasting to rural areas.

The centrepiece of this plan was a group of sixty-story cruciform

skyscrapers built on steel frames and encased in curtain walls of
glass. The skyscrapers housed both offices and the flats of the most
wealthy inhabitants. These skyscrapers were set within large,
rectangular park-like green spaces.

At the centre of the planned city was a transportation hub which

housed depots for buses and trains as well as highway intersections
and at the top, an airport.
Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths from the
roadways, and glorified the use of the automobile as a means of
transportation.
Critic
"...the car would abolish the human street, and possibly the human foot.
Some people would have aero planes too. The one thing no one would
have is a place to bump into each other, walk the dog, strut, one of the
hundred random things that people do ... being random was loathed
by Le Corbusier ... its inhabitants surrender their freedom of movement
to the omnipresent architect." Robert Hughes ~ The shock of the new
urban design 10
 The Plan Voisin de Paris (1925) Le Corbusier

The design is based on vertical expansion of

the city.
• 60 storey sky-scrapers office
buildings were placed in the vast
open space.

• The main traffic highways were

defined with complete separation
of traffic and parking spaces for
vehicles.

rectangular arrangement of streets but local and through traffic is

distinctly separated and large open spaces are treated with informal
pedestrian circulation and are landscaped.

urban design 11
urban design 12
D The Radiant City (1930) Le Corbusier

The Radiant City grew out of the new CIAM (1928-1959)

conception of capitalist authority. The plan
had much in common with the
Contemporary City - clearance of the
historic cityscape and rebuilding utilizing
modern methods of production.
pre-fabricated apartment houses, “les
unites”, were at the center of urban life.
“Les unites” were available to everyone (not
just the elite) based upon the size and
needs of each particular family. Sunlight
and recirculating air were provided as part
of the design. The scale of the apartment
houses was 50 meters high, which would
accommodate, according to Corbusier,
2,700 inhabitants with 14 sq meters of space
per person.
Design of Chandigarh, India (1952)
Le Corbusier

17
Buildings in Chandigarh
‘Taureau’. (Bull). Cover of the
Assembly Building in
Chandigarh (India)
http://www.nclurbandesign.org/architecture/chandigarh
-le-corbusiers-master-piece/
Plan of parliament building
The “Monument of the
Open Hand,”
Chandigarh. (About 1951-
'52)
Saint-Pierre, Firminy, France(1965 – 2006)
• The building is in the shape of a pyramid with a square base of 25
meters side playing in a truncated cone which rises to 33 meters in
height.
• On the ground floor, the church has four exhibition halls and a
conference room.
• The structure on the top floor has a square base and an internal
spiral leads to a sphere. It contains a pulpit and an altar and can
accommodate Christian religious celebrations.
• In the nave main, the play of light and contrast reveals the extent
of the elevation of the building.
• Light enters the church through openings in the dome that draw
the constellation Orion (Le Corbusier had not defined what
constellation would appear on the wall).
• However, the shape and the material used (raw concrete) give this
monument poor acoustics.
Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France