What Le Corbusier got right about office space
timharford.com
timharford.com
So what exactly did Le Corbusier get right, according to the article? "The very fact that his designs were so easily modified was, arguably, their strength." -- this is what fans of Le Corbusier always praise him for, and it always sounds really bad to me. The main strength of the architecture is that you have to radically change it to make it liveable...? That he said “You know, life is always right; it is the architect who is wrong.” when people made radical changes? I guess that's more laudable than trying to fight the change, but also a very low bar.
The fact that Pessac was easily modified appears to be accidental, and the article finishes with a passing comment by LC that I wholeheartedly agree with, but doesn't really amount to much.
Feels like something dashed off to somehow prove a point?
I very much like Tim Harford's reporting when it comes to statistics and numbers in life and the news (his More Or Less radio programme/podcast is great) and his older stuff on economics, but his more recent obsession with "cautionary tales" (the title of his other podcast) frequently seems to involve stories that are superficially interesting but frequently fail to convince me that they have a strong point.
Why is it accidental in your opinion?
Corbusier's Five Points of Architecture[1] specifically dictate free design of f.x. the ground plan, in order to facilitate further modification.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier%27s_Five_Points_o...
My comment was more a criticism of the article than of Le Corbusier, whose work I mostly like (much more so than many contemporary architecture). A better article would have pointed to those 5 points, rather than simply repeating one pithy quote, which seemed to be the entire supporting evidence.
Completely impractical since every developer will choose the standard closed in, windowless and unadorned hallway because it is the cheaper option.
If you search for floorplans of it, it looks like there are also interior corridors but I think every apartment has access to one of those wide corridors. I'm not sure what the point of having both interior and exterior corridors is, I would think it would be better to get rid of the interior corridor and give the extra space to the exterior one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit%C3%A9_d%27habitation#La_C...
Edit: Well this is disappointing. After further research, it looks like that corridor is just the main one and the rest of the floor have dark, internal corridors and then enclosed balconies. What a missed opportunity, imagine a whole building full of corridors like the ones in the image, if you're going to build two story apartments then why not do it that way?
That's one theory I've heard a few times, it served as a basis for urban renewal in the 60s but dumb down on every level to the point of being rapidly unliveable (cue the movies about housing project blues that came soon after)
Urban renewal did not fail because it was done cheaply, or dumbed down (which it was). It failed because it was fundamentally the wrong approach to city building.
We're still living with the consequences. Our current built environment is modernist; mediated by technology, planned, bureaucratic.
It's due time Le Corbusier is getting his comeuppance. It took a long long time. The first criticism were in the 70s, but postmodernism could not get beyond pageantry. And when I was in college 20 years ago, modernism was still venerated in the architecture departments, because the architect-as-god remained so appealing (btw Ayn Rand was similarly infatuated, it's an odd quirk of history how both communism and libertarians found common ground in this one domain). It's slowly fading. I think the dyke is going to break, and we'll put Le Corbusier where he belongs. A hugely influential misanthrope, who made categorically bad architecture.
(also really sad, because early in his career, Le Cobusier's single family homes were really quite appealing).
https://brill.com/view/journals/fasc/6/2/article-p196_196.xm...
Urban renewal wasn't necessarily the wrong solution in itself.
The 18th and 19th centuries weren't necessarily any better at humane building. In the UK postwar worker housing stock was terrible - outside toilets, little or no insulation, no central heating, and often poorly built.
So blocks were a solution of sorts. But they usually were poorly built and unimaginatively designed, optimised for low cost, but with no practical understanding of community or community spaces.
A typical UK block has some decorative grass around it, but that's it. There's no common space, no common facilities, and no colour or texture.
Later renovations which add at least some of the above are more popular and have fewer social problems.
Just do deviate a little from LC in particular. But both communism and fascism are the political realizations of modernism, in that they only can function through the mediation of high technology.
In communism, equity is achieved through perfect bureaucracy; the system of production and wealth reallocation being a well-oiled machine, perfectly transparent and predictably manipulated. It is in communism, that humans completely submit to the machine the most.
In fascism, dominion is achieved through incessant violent action. Technology is the necessary lever to maintain dominance over the enemy. It is in fascism that humans submit to their leader, exhilarated by their shared power through technology (Tanks! Bombs! Nuclear Reactors!)
Since no technology is perfectly reliable, or technological dominion is never guaranteed, both are doomed to fail.
In this respect the gradually growing criticisms of modernism and the fraying of the postwar political order go hand-in-hand. A criticism of a one-size-fits-all lifestyle equally applies across the fascist/communist spectrum, and the "Californian ideology" that SV represented drove a stake into it by standing up for the individual, albeit in an amoral, Randian sense: cool toys for those who could afford them, digital sharecropping for the rest. The highly provisioned, toy-like offices of Google etc follow from that premise.
> the gradually growing criticisms of modernism and the fraying of the postwar political order go hand-in-hand
fwiw - I think the growing criticism of modernism are a good thing. The alternative, a more humanistic attitude to life and liberty (corny I know), and a more organic model of political organization seem preferable.
I also agree that the amoral SV-ethos was wrong, because of the elitism you point out.
That said I'm not pro big-structures[0], I understand it spoils the area too much. Near my town, an ex no-go zone has been replaced by smaller buildings, that was enough to regrow a peacefulness that left for 30 years. It's walkable, the woods nearby are walkable, almost shocking.
[0] even though, I still love them for some reasons
But "big apartment building" only works well in a big thriving city, within its existing fabric. Not as in, let's raze the city, and put a big building in this new empty space. And I think Le Corbusier was explicitly about the latter.
In the US all units in a new residential building with an elevator must be adaptable for accessibility. If each individual apartment was two floors then each would need accommodation for an elevator or staircase lift.
And this was built more than 100 years ago.
"Life is always right;it's the architect that is wrong" -Le Corbusier
Ergo, make sure employees retain some control.
Well, he was 100% the opposite of that in pracrice. Forcing the architect's will.
> The very fact that his designs were so easily modified was, arguably, their strength.
Some famous architects make/made terribly unusable buildings that were also hard to modify to make usable. Having a famous architect that contemplates that his design may not be correct is amazing progress.
His work tends to be utilitarian and not visually exciting (especially earlier work); but avoiding load bearing walls and having lots of windows was innovative and useful. Although, apparently the occupants found too much light and added shutters.
I work in a building from an era that preceeds Modernism and adapting the building to anything other than was originally 250 years ago envisioned is a nightmare of limitations, reshuffles and regulations, a stairway that goes down into an hallway just to go up on the other side. Accessability nightmare etc.
Reminds me of a building influenced/designed by Christopher Alexander. IIRC there was a 2D array of unformly spaced ca 6x6in wooden beams -- to mount walls/dividers etc against as needed.
> American ideal of the ultra-zoned, socially-stratisfied, car-centric city
IMO the best thing about America. Lots of land. Lots of space to build things. I am not a fan of crowded hectic life, $2M houses, having to ration electricity, live in a cardboard box sized apartment in a highly dense but "walkable" city.
Unfortunately, this desire is at odds with the fundamental nature of a group of organisms, but you are welcome to fashion your own personal life/community into a machine if you so choose.
> Seems like your personal belief system does not align with Le Corbusier.
It does not, but that’s okay, we’re discussing the pros and cons of architectural philosophies here! Unfortunately, Le Corbusier put no value on the expressed desires and needs of the communities who had to live in his projects, whose buildings were torn down to make way for Le Corbusier’s machines.
Humans and communities are not machines and cannot be engineered.
> I am not a fan of crowded hectic life, $2M houses, having to ration electricity, live in a cardboard box sized apartment in a highly dense but "walkable" city.
The issues with car-centricity go far beyond dense urban areas. The most easily-recognized example is probably the stroad [1], which also discretizes and alienates formerly human-oriented areas. I grew up in rural Maine and have lived in two of America’s largest cities, and I’ve seen our mechanization throughout.
What a myopic perspective on a man who thought that workers should be treated to a life beyond that of misery on the ant-hill of cramped tenements which grew up around factories in which they worked.
Just because someone's solutions grew ubiquitous and the flaws in this paradigm grew too obvious, does not mean that these flaws were the plan all along.
Once when the business unit was failing and my room only had me in it.
Once when I worked for a small old school family company.
Once when I made principal engineer after years of work in a large-ish company.
And finally now that I’m working from home.
One job I had was really noisy and distracting. Rather than install sound mitigation, I found out the CEO liked it that way. “So it sounded like things were happening.”
It’s going to take a lot to get me back to a cube farm or open office.
* unless, you know, I need to feed my family or whatever
As long as you have a certain number of square feet and things aren't bolted down, you can still exercise a certain amount of control over your environment. You can rotate your desk to face a different way, put up pictures or a coat rack, what have you.
It's when you start getting squeezed in the minimal legal square footage that all the options start to go away -- you literally can't move your desk without disrupting the entire floor, you can't add a bookshelf and any plants or pictures need to fit on your suspiciously narrow desk.
Sure, cube farms have many of the other problems of noise pollution, minimal privacy, and bad lighting, but as long as you have your own cube, or a cube with few enough people to haggle over rearranging, and a few extra square feet it's still possible to put your stamp on it.
Implementation of the changes had already started when COVID hit. People who have been to the office recently say things like, don't hit your knees where the PC is mounted.
I was fine with our (pretty standard sized) cubes before COVID. But I'm so glad we have the option to continue working from home now.
I hated it. Too noisy. To much distraction and now the culture of the company seemed to encourage distraction and interruption. I managed to maneuver my way into one of the few private offices just so I could have a door to close. Even then I had to put up a sign that basically said “if the door is closed and the building isn’t on fire, don’t open it.”
In some regards for me the pandemic was a blessing. Fully remote now, company decided to shut down the office in our location and rely on rentable conference space if we need a day together. It’s just my wife, dog, and I in a shared office with each of us respectful of distractions. It’s bliss. It would be nearly impossible for me to return to an office again. I’ll opt to retire first.
My method of dealing was to eliminate noise with earplugs and headphones.
But visual distraction was more destructive and depended on the orientation of the desk - depending more on luck.
It should be, but most companies offer uncomfortable furniture in an open, noisy room with drab carpet and the stench of burnt coffee and burnt popcorn.
“Few people can afford the space for a well-designed, well-specified home office. Many are reduced to perching on a bed or coffee table. “
Maybe this is true in Silicon Valley, but the rest of the world could easily outfit a corner of a room to a better standard than most corporate offices.
In the beginning I would use the breakfast bar and just put the laptop up after work. Later on I bought an Ikea arm chair and an end table that just stayed in a corner I didn't use. This is all in addition to the partitioned off area for my side projects that had it's own desk and chair.
I disagree. Most people don't make enough money to have on room they can dedicate to work. In germany where I live rent is so expensive that for a single person a 2 room apartment is the standard. You basically need 3 rooms which means you're paying significantly more rent unless you live in very rural areas.
Hell, the private bathroom alone makes even the working-from-a-coffee-table version competitive with typical tech offices.
Having three devs that work on the same thing in one room can be beneficial if they like each other.
It's awesome. It feels so comfy. It's got the lighting I like. My chair could be better, but it's okay. I can hide in there.
There are a number of reasons why this argument doesn't make any sense
-commutes are expensive, and time consuming.
-surveillance produces a worse working experience, but is a major goal of office design.
-A desk with a computer on it is 90% of the way towards a fully equipped office.
-Many modern offices are also built with recreation in mind, equipped with ping pong tables and other such nonsense.
-I have come to believe that the primary business rationale for having people "in the office", is that it makes it harder for you to look for other jobs, and that process means that employees get more expensive.
There is no greater symbol of the absolute anti human idiocy of the movement than: A) constructing a flat roof building on the west coast of Scotland (200+ rain days a year) B) declare it a master piece
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter%27s_Seminary,_Cardr...
Edit: to be fair, this criticism could also be levelled at programmers and interface designers.
Thank all gods for that!
But what has really curbed the possibility of anything like those movements to happen again is the neoliberal economics in contrast to the post war socialist policies of the time.
Anyway, for anyone wondering about all these flat roofs in modern architecture I recommend watching this video:
Why Do Architects Insist on Using Flat Roofs? - Stewart Hicks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW0ydAMVQ2w
Much of 19th century style was built around millwork, because millwork let you use this wide flat boards and linear patterns that were all but impossible to do at scale before.
For the 20th, you had glass, steel and concrete -- because again, there were things you could do with concrete that you just couldn't before.
So it was back to the beginning of time; you give an architect a flying buttress, and he's going to use it.
The difference with modernism, which is really a mindset, and so deeply seeped in we barely recognize it anymore, is that technology, in and of itself, is a value. That is why we have the flat roof in Scotland. The value is not keeping the inhabitants dry, or being mindful of long term maintenance issues. Technology, especially high technology, demands its application. That is modernism. It's a curse.
Contrast this very clearly against humanism. Man is measure of all things. Not, as in modernism, that man should adapt to the measure. It's not that technology wasn't valued, but only as a tool, a means to an end. Or a means of understanding, a metaphor. The telescope is an implement of science, not a fetisj. In modernism, the tool is fetishized. The concrete that enabled shaping walls at large scales, now must be everywhere. Why, why would a living space demand that it be harsh, and in odd large shapes? It does not. But because at one point reinforced concrete was high technology, it must. It's a very infantile mindset, like a toddler, who has similar infatuations.
Of course, that only applies to the traditional hierarchical organisation - there are much more worker-friendly organisational structures organised around autonomy for the individual and democracy for the collective, like the VSM [1] and cooperatives [2]. Of course, we don't see them very often because people usually found companies to control for themselves.
Since coming back though all those decorations are gone. The place feels even more lifeless then before. Part of this because many people just aren't coming in, and partly because a lot of people have moved to WFH, or another company. I don't think those decorations are ever coming back, and it sure feels a lot worse.
> Le Corbusier’s Pessac is now viewed as an architectural success. The picket fences and the pitched roofs and the garden gnomes are gone, and his original vision is restored. I wonder if Le Corbusier himself would have approved of that. The very fact that his designs were so easily modified was, arguably, their strength. When he was told about the garden gnomes of Pessac, he replied, “You know, life is always right; it is the architect who is wrong.” Managers should remember that.
It's somewhat run-down, if not poor. But it doesn't strike me as being particularly terrible. It seems to have had quite a bit variety even from the start.
Compare to what may have been the alternative, right across the train tracks: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cité+Frugès,+33600+Pessac,...
I can appreciate that it was "hey, here's a new material, and new techniques, let's see what we can do", but it all went a bit to far with Brutalism.
To be honest, we're back at that point again over the last couple of decades with office buildings that are largely glass exteriors where the current glut of architects are putting "frilly bits" on the buildings to make them a bit less bland, but at the same time making them look very much "of the moment".
As for current homes, in the UK, at least, the architecture has never been blander. Boring boxes with 2 car spaces and a bit of grass out the back. In terms of the article, I don't see how modern homes can be given much extra character by the owners versus those designed by Corbusier mentioned in the article. If anything modern house architecture is at a worse, lower point than in previous years.
This is an article that I find sums well the issues, even as the author is I think more aligned with your views and wished for more “Architecture” as Art. https://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/architecture-form-function...
I had never heard about this "cautionary tale", so I dug around a bit and found this Wired article [1] plus some pictures of the tiny lockers for the "dog pictures, or whatever" in this other article [2]. I'm not sure I would take it as the final nail in the coffin for the open-office concept, seeing as some of the problems are no longer relevant (such as not enough mobile phones for everyone), but it's an interesting article nonetheless.
[1] https://www.wired.com/1999/02/chiat-3/
[2] https://workplaceinsight.net/a-just-in-time-lesson-about-off...
I spent several years working in a monumental modernist building. The place succeeded in its primary design goals: glorifying the architect and patron. Some of the exteriors & public spaces were not hideous. But the buildings as a place to work were awful and not fit to purpose.
[1] https://www.pessac.fr/a-decouvrir/tourisme-patrimoine/cite-f...
* edit: I hadn’t read the article! It’s awesome
The book is on archive.org https://archive.org/details/howbuildingslear00bran_0/page/n5...
His videos are on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/brandst/videos
While it's popular to dump on Corbusier today, especially with the hindsight of history and what we know about urban planning now (and I mostly agree with it), you have to look through the lens of what he was working with at the time. City centers were areas of blight, not hip places with third wave coffee shops on them. Waterfronts were dilapidated docks, not pleasant beaches with views of the sea.
On the flip side, cars were new, shiny, and free of any of the negative connotation we see in them today (traffic, pollution, noise). Any infrastructure built to support them was fresh and efficient.
It's no surprise that you'd have some people going all in on the latter. In hindsight, it turns out to be unfortunate that viewpoint won so thoroughly in the US.
The... steeple, I think it's meant to be? Also kinda looks like a mistake, rather than something done on purpose.
The inside's OK but I concur with it still being one of the uglier "nice" churches I've ever seen. Overall looks like it'd be better as, I dunno, part of a monastery or something? Maybe Tony Stark's vacation home or something, from the better angles.
Hacker News art criticism at its best.
Absent context I'd definitely take the mismatched-windows exterior shot as the result of something like the Internet-famous time that amateur (in Spain, I think?) tried to restore a painting of Jesus.
[EDIT] My point is, if someone told me some other parts of the building were a mistake, much less something like the Sistine Chapel, I'd be like "no way". That particular view of the building? Someone told me it was a mistake, I'd be like "haha, yeah, clearly, hope they fix it so it doesn't keep dragging down the rest of the building"
It's hideous.
This building looks like a first draft of the final design, and really does not deserve to be used for religious purposes.
The crazy thing is that Le Corbusier spent months on the design of the south wall. It wasn't a rushed project at all; this was late career Le Corbusier at the height of his creative vision.
To me the south wall looks externally like a knock-off computer with a bunch of random ports, but that may just be personal idiosyncrasies.
I'm not a fan of much of Le Corbusier's works, if any.
I have no idea who these people are that think a company office intended for hundreds or thousands of people will be a better work environment than private offices per person or dedicated home offices. In my home office, I put significant effort into comfort and ergonomics and it yielded a huge improvement in my quality of life and a cost-savings to my employer due to not needing regular physical therapy for back pain anymore, and solving RSI that would have otherwise required surgery. Yet, if I go into an office to work they buy the cheapest "task chair" they can get and put everyone at tiny minimum spec desks. Even when I had a private office earlier in my career when that was still a thing, the furniture was garbage.
At home, I have a sit/stand desk with electric lift, ergonomic monitor and laptop arms, a nice herman miller ergo chair, an ergonomic mechanical keyboard, and a vertical mouse, with everything properly adjusted by an ergo consultant I hired. I've never seen a company that would be willing to provide a similar setup, even setting aside the privacy and quiet aspect of a dedicated office vs cube/open. At the end of the day, company office space is expensive and management cost optimizes by reducing worker quality of life. I'd much rather they allow permanent remote work and pass the cost savings on to workers by covering the cost of ergonomic equipment. I've now been permanently remote for almost a decade, and I will never go back to the office.
The evolution of the open plan is told in a fascinating way, but also the origin of the office worker.
For what it's worth I actually prefer a bed or sofa. Way more flexible and less painful if your back is shot.
I find this quote very interesting and resonates with UX engineering as well.
http://arts-plastiques.ac-besancon.fr/2018/03/03/la-cite-fru...
Having those pictures included in the article would make a mockery of its content and intended points (whatever it was). Would any sane person object to the renovation from that squalid state to a bright and inviting building? Were those "modifications" sound or was poor Corbu overestimating the occupants (his actual error as an architect).