Le Corbusier

by Nicholas Fox Weber

  When Le Corbusier was then informed that Stalin had deliberately determined that architecture for the proletariat should be Greco-Roman, he decided to sever all ties with the Soviet Union. Although a version of the Centrosoyuz was built, Le Corbusier’s flirtation with the new way of life in Moscow now came to a full stop.

  But the controversy surrounding his travels and work in Russia was just beginning.

  9

  On Monday, March 14, 1932, in the Salle Wagram, a large Parisian auditorium, Gustave Umbdenstock, an architect who was a professor at l’Ecole Polytechnique and head of the studio at l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, lashed out against the leader of the contemporary style that deprived human beings of the joy and optimism for which tradition in architecture was imperative. Umbdenstock accused his unnamed foe of making shoe boxes and vilified him for his use of concrete and his ideas about automobile circulation.

  Le Corbusier considered the address an act of war. In response, he wrote Crusade, or the Twilight of the Academies. The small book, which appeared a few months after Umbdenstock’s diatribe, amplified Le Corbusier’s theory that a major campaign against modern architecture was being financed by large building companies, whose management felt threatened by the new technology he advocated. Businesses that specialized in slate, tile, zinc, and wood—rather than reinforced concrete—had joined forces against him and his allies. There was, Le Corbusier was convinced, a complete conspiracy determined to prevent him from realizing his ideas.

  THE ATTACKS CONTINUED in a series of twelve articles that appeared in Le Figaro, the most widely read of Paris’s many newspapers. Under the title “Is Architecture Dying?” they were written by Camille Mauclair—a poet, novelist, and critic whose real name was Séverin Faust. He linked L’Esprit Nouveau, the Bauhaus, and other modern movements to Bolshevism and declared Le Corbusier a Bolshevik.

  The diatribe inspired a pleasant surprise. One of the people who came to Le Corbusier’s defense was Amédée Ozenfant. Ozenfant wrote the paper a letter characterizing his former colleague’s Russian engagement as a demonstration of French influence “on people who are looking to find a way,” not as an adherence to anything Russian.40

  Yet nothing compensated for the pain inflicted by the fate of Le Corbusier’s design for the Palace of the Soviets. The architect had to deal not only with his own disappointment but also with that of the fifteen draftsmen in the office who had worked so diligently on the project. He felt that they had addressed the fundamental issues of circulation, acoustics, and ventilation, only to have these essential matters completely overlooked by the jury. Le Corbusier did not mind the attacks against him in Switzerland and France so much as he regretted the failure of the new Russia to understand the magnificence of what it was refusing.

  10

  Le Corbusier made his own rules for social behavior. One evening, at about six o’clock, he invited Charlotte Perriand to the construction site of the Swiss Pavilion. The architect pointed out corrections that needed to be made to the emerging structure, and Perriand took notes. Suddenly, Le Corbusier stopped in his tracks and, out of the blue, asked Perriand, who had been divorced two years earlier, how her life was going. She answered that all was well.

  Then Le Corbusier blurted out: “Do you love women? I could understand that.”

  Sketch based on an Etruscan fresco he had seen in Tarquinia, drawn from memory, June 11, 1934

  Perriand’s reply was instant: “Of course not, what an idea!” To this, Le Corbusier replied, “In my studio, there’s a tall boy, Pierre, who dreams about you night and day. Think it over.”41 Then the architect continued the working walk through the site as if nothing had been said.

  A few days later, Perriand asked Pierre Jeanneret if Le Corbusier had told him about their discussion. He said that he had and asked Perriand how she felt. She told him she liked her freedom; he replied that he liked his.

  Perriand eventually decided to continue the conversation with Le Corbusier. He cut her off right at the start, announcing, “I’m not your nanny.”42 Nothing was ever the same between them again.

  11

  The Swiss Pavilion, on the outer edge of Paris on the campus of the Cité Internationale Universitaire, has as its core an elegantly cantilevered rectangular slab that stands on graceful, anthropomorphic pilotis. The south facade is a pristine glass curtain wall, the north a clear composition of concrete blocks punctuated by minimalist square windows. Inside and out, there is a medley of sheer curved walls.

  Le Corbusier made this vanguard structure, which was completed in 1932, despite spite of being hampered by severe budget constraints. Only three million francs were allotted for it, whereas similar buildings on the same campus were given twice that. He considered his creation of “a veritable laboratory of modern architecture” with such élan, in spite of the parsimony of his resources, a deliberate act of revenge at Swiss miserliness.43

  On a curved wall near the entrance, there was a mural of photographs. They showed enlarged images of microbiology and micromineralogy, testifying to the combined wonders of technology and nature. As one proceeds through the building, Le Corbusier’s ability to transform the ordinary is evident in the imaginative lamps and radiators and the energetic arrangement of hot-water pipes; it’s as if he had taken dry, characterless Swiss bread and turned it into a brioche. Through his graceful manipulation of rudimentary components, the students’ spartan bedrooms are light and amusing. White linoleum becomes fresh and mirrorlike; neatly integrated shelves, cupboards, and counters come to life like music.

  But it was not well received. Le Corbusier himself was quick to point out that the naysayers were calling for something that more closely resembled a traditional chalet. He compared the inauguration ceremony to a funeral. Following a prosaic speech by a renowned Swiss mathematics professor, the audience had responded with complete silence. The overall style, and the photographic mural with its unusual content, shocked critics.

  After World War II, the architect wrote, “In my innocence, I had been guilty of praising the wonders of nature, the glories of Almighty God.”44 “Fortunately” the mural had been destroyed by the Germans, who occupied the building in 1940. Edouard might tell his mother to accentuate the positive, but he still periodically played the role of Sarcasm.

  12

  The mayor of Algiers gave Le Corbusier free rein to redesign his city. With such a supportive client, Le Corbusier set out to create a plan that could revolutionize urbanism all over the world.

  Le Corbusier proposed building upward. Skyscrapers would create space for two hundred thousand or more inhabitants within the city core. The Casbah would remain, but next to it there would be a new financial district, as well as a civic center with a courthouse and other public buildings. A second residential neighborhood would consist of skyscrapers built into the hillside and vast apartment complexes constructed on a 108-hectare property currently covered with vineyards. This plan allowed for the landscape of hills and valleys on the outskirts of town to remain undisturbed, still available for agricultural purposes, while also accommodating swimming pools and parks for walking and sports.

  Le Corbusier believed that Algiers could be the fourth and final point of the star that already included Barcelona, Paris, and Rome. His efforts to realize his dream there would, within a decade, lead him inside the corridor of power at one of the lowest points in the history of France.

  13

  Le Corbusier attended the fourth CIAM, which took place in Athens from July 29 until August 10, 1933. On the day of his departure, he received an anonymous letter at his hotel, signed “X the Greek.” “X” asked, “Without ornament, and with the present-day uniformity of construction materials, can the new architecture manage to express the specific character and the various sentiments of each country? I can see you eagerly answering me yes, and I am absolutely in agreement with you. You speak of geometry as only an ancient Greek could have done. You have opened my eyes, and I thank you with all my heart.”45
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br />   “X” was responding specifically to the lectures Le Corbusier had just given, which became the basis of CIAM’s Charter of Athens. Their premise was that the essential elements of urbanism were “the sky, trees, steel and concrete, in that order and that hierarchy.”46 That same year, Le Corbusier completed an apartment building near the outskirts of Paris that exemplified this philosophy. The seven-story structure at 24 rue Nungesser-et-Coli had floor-to-ceiling double-glazed windows front and back, so that light from both east and west flooded into apartments that spanned the entire building.

  Aboard the Patris II, on his way to CIAM IV in Athens, 1933

  24 rue Nungesser-et-Coli, 1933

  The tradition in Paris apartment buildings was to put the servants in small rooms under the roof. Le Corbusier knew these spaces better than most people, since his first Paris office and apartment, as well as the apartment in which he still lived, were initially maids’ rooms of this type. On the rue Nungesser-et-Coli, he wanted to “free the servants from the frequently dreadful subjection of their rooms under the mansard roofs.” He therefore put the servants’ rooms on the ground floor and basement level, with the ones in the basement facing a courtyard that received ample sunlight. It was not, however, only the servants whose needs Le Corbusier was considering. The unusual distribution of space left the roof free for “the best-situated apartment in the whole house: instead of slates: lawns, flowers, bushes.”47

  Shortly after its construction, that duplex penthouse was reproduced in the latest volume of The Complete Work. The dwelling is shown to have a handsome modern dining room with large sliding glass doors that open onto a terrace with lovely plants and a garden chair. It also has an unusually high and austere platform bed on tall and lean stovepipe legs and several large paintings by Léger, as well as one by Le Corbusier himself. There is a cavernous studio with a brick wall and an efficient, shipshape kitchen in which a shapely dark-haired woman, wearing a blouse with wide ruffled lapels and short sleeves, is on view taking something out of a cabinet; she is the model of domestic perfection.

  In another shot that presents the boldly geometric streamlined fireplace and the wide-open space of the living and dining areas, the same woman appears, this time from behind, on the balcony; now she is accompanied by a man, also seen from behind, in a robe. They look like the perfect urban couple from a film of the period: elegantly at home, happy together, impeccably dressed in their chic surroundings. What the photo captions fail to mention is that the woman is Yvonne and the man Le Corbusier himself. At the end of April 1934, they had moved from the rue Jacob to this penthouse.

  14

  It had not been an easy transition. Le Corbusier had found it hard to pack up and organize all of the papers he had accumulated over seventeen years. Yvonne was unhappy to give up St. Germain-des-Prés and leave the neighborhood where she knew the shopkeepers and could walk to her favorite cafés. For Le Corbusier, the vast amounts of space, the vistas, and the satisfaction of living in one of his own designs were worth the inconveniences. For her, it was Siberia.

  Of course, there were some compensating amenities. They were again on the seventh floor, only now they could reach it by a small elevator. The duplex apartment was large and airy, and every last niche had been thought out carefully. Hinged walls that served as both doors and closets, and built-in shelves and cupboards were positioned ingeniously. The clean geometry of the straightforward plan, the bold planes of the floors and ceilings, and the lively staircase made the apartment a place of refreshment amid the complexity of Parisian life.

  The textures of the apartment provided interesting juxtapositions: wood and plaster, marble and cane. The presence of water was also unusually strong. The bathroom, rather than being separated by a door, was open to the bedroom, with the bidet conspicuous as a piece of bedroom furniture. The sink was also in plain sight. Le Corbusier did not conceal the scenes of everyday ablutions in the usual manner of western designers; nor did he hide the water pipes. This most urbane of men never wanted to lose touch with the raw and vital elements of nature (see color plate 14).

  Le Corbusier and Yvonne at 24 rue Nungesser-et-Coli, ca. 1935

  The apartment gave Le Corbusier a superb studio, two stories high, full of daylight. With its curved ceiling and rough brick wall, that studio had aspects of the barn to which, in his youth, he had so happily retreated on the outskirts of La Chaux-de-Fonds. It was like being in the country in the city, and it made painting the central act of his life at home. If now the office that was formerly a ten-minute walk away required about an hour’s travel time, whether by taxi or Métro, he did not mind. Le Corbusier would live at 24 rue Nungesser-et-Coli for the rest of his life.

  15

  Le Corbusier traveled to Algiers regularly. One evening there, he went to the Casbah to sketch in the light provided by streetlamps. Shortly after midnight, he was returning to his hotel along the narrow, empty streets when he was attacked with an expert maneuver called “le coup du père François.”48 While the origins of its name remain uncertain, this ancient technique involves one assailant addressing the victim with a question while an accomplice strangles him from behind by pressing hard on the jugular vein or carotid artery.

  Le Corbusier was left unconscious. An hour later, when he began to come to, he instinctively asked himself who he was. Once he grasped what had happened, he knew how exceptionally lucky he was not to have been killed. Fascinated by the proximity of death, he recorded his impressions: “The ambience—in the depths of my unconscious—seemed to me a sort of shimmering golden puddle. Experts say all that gold and all that light are characteristic of moments of passage from life to death.”49

  Focused on death and danger following that attack, just before Le Corbusier and Yvonne moved to their new apartment, he wrote to the prefect of police to report a series of strange events that had occurred three doors down on the rue Jacob. At number 14, two renters had died of tuberculosis in 1927. In 1930, another resident had died of the same illness; so had a husband and wife in 1932. They had owned a boutique in the building, and now the wife of the new owner also had died from tuberculosis. All of them were hearty country people from the Auvergne. Since another couple was coming from the Auvergne, Le Corbusier alerted the prefect that they would die two years hence. The outcome of his prediction is unknown, but Le Corbusier had no doubt of his knowledge that a space could have a terminal impact on its inhabitants.

  16

  Winnaretta Eugénie Singer-Polignac, born in 1865—in a vast granite mansion called the Castle, overlooking the Hudson River in Yonkers, New York—was the twentieth of the twenty-four children of Isaac Merritt Singer, the tall, brawny, foulmouthed son of a German immigrant who, in 1850, had borrowed forty dollars to make a prototype for an improved sewing machine. He managed to get a patent, although it essentially copied someone else’s idea.

  Singer had begun fathering children when, at age nineteen, he married a fifteen-year-old. Winnaretta’s beautiful mother, Isabelle Eugénie Boyer, half French and half English-Scottish, said to be Bartholdi’s model for the Statue of Liberty, was the fourth woman to give him progeny. In 1863, she was seven months pregnant when she married Singer—although two other women claimed to be his wife, one as Mrs. Singer and one as Mrs. Merritt—in his large Fifth Avenue town house.

  At about age five, Winnaretta was alone in her room at Brown’s Hotel in London when it began to fill with smoke; the stranger who rushed in, threw her on his shoulders, and carried her to the street was Ivan Turgenev. She grew up in the English countryside in a hundred-room, four-story house called the Wigwam. Her father, whom she adored, died when she was ten years old, leaving her some nine hundred thousand dollars. For the rest of her life, she treated the anniversary of his death as a sacred day, saying she never recovered from her grief; sixty years later, she wrote, “the one thing I had, I lost then.”50

  When Winnaretta’s mother remarried, they moved to Paris, and the girl became consumed by a passion for both ar
t and music. Her stepfather had a title, but he also had a hunger for the Singer fortune. Winnaretta, at age twenty-one, decided to take her inheritance in her own hands and have it managed by Rothschild’s bank. She began to indulge her own interests, buying a bold Manet from the artist’s widow and a Monet from the painter himself.

  At age twenty-three, the sewing-machine heiress acquired a large mansion not far from the Trocadéro. She married Prince Louis-Vilfred de Scey-Montbéliard, an aristocrat passionate for the hunt, at a ceremony from which her mother and greedy stepfather were conspicuously absent. On her wedding night, she stood on a wardrobe and threatened her husband with an umbrella, saying she would kill him if he touched her. That marriage was annulled, freeing her to marry, at age twenty-eight, someone who preferred his own sex as she preferred hers. The fifty-eight-year-old Prince Edmond de Polignac was a penurious composer who descended from a family high in the court of Louis XIV; the couple entertained creative geniuses like Jean Cocteau and were patrons of Gabriel Fauré and Diaghilev.

  The prince didn’t live long, but the former Winnaretta Singer honored his memory by being a great supporter of modern music. She added Stravinsky to the list of beneficiaries of her largesse, and on May 17, 1917, she had been, like Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, in the audience at the Théâtre du Châtelet when the Ballets Russes performed Parade, the collaboration of Picasso, Cocteau, and Satie that had inspired Apollinaire to use the term “L’Esprit Nouveau.”

  In 1921, after Marcel Proust encountered Winnaretta at a party in honor of the duke of Marlborough’s marriage to another rich American, he described her as “icy as a cold draft, looking the image of Dante.”51 One wonders what Le Corbusier thought when he met her five years later. He had, after all, sculpted a likeness of Dante when he was fifteen.