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> 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...?

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.

Designing architecture in such way it can be easily changed when down the line inevitebly the usage changes is a value in itself. A big chunk of architecture IMO suffers from architects thinking they know how living or working is supposed to look like and push that ideology onto others while most often the offices of that architect look suspiciously different..

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.

> Designing architecture in such way it can be easily changed when down the line inevitebly the usage changes is a value in itself

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.

You have to read to the last line where he points out the takeaway for managers:

"Life is always right;it's the architect that is wrong" -Le Corbusier

Ergo, make sure employees retain some control.

>"Life is always right;it's the architect that is wrong" -Le Corbusier

Well, he was 100% the opposite of that in pracrice. Forcing the architect's will.

That's the opposite of the point here.

> The very fact that his designs were so easily modified was, arguably, their strength.

Well, most weren't. They stand looking as bad/gloomy and unlivable decades after as they did their first day.

That doesn't detract anything from the observation, even if true.

That's fine, since my point wasn't that the idea is wrong, but that "he was 100% the opposite of that in practice".

And you should read @jules' full comment, because that sentence is mentioned at the end of the comment.

That's not the best picture of it. There are better pictures here: https://www.archdaily.com/940878/le-corbusiers-cite-fruges-l...

And this was built more than 100 years ago.

They were building pretty spiffy stuff 100 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Frank_Lloyd_Wright_wor...

Those are not exactly factory workers housing though.

He never got to make it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadacre_City

https://franklloydwright.org/revisiting-frank-lloyd-wrights-...

At least from the outside these are pretty cool buildings if you give them a pressure wash and maybe add a couple more windows.

That's one of the practical things wrong with this style of architecture: it looks bad with even a little bit of staining on the walls, and it stains very quickly because it lacks an overhanging roof that protects the walls.

Looking at the pictures I can’t tell what’s exactly wrong with those buildings.

The fronts looked to me like they were unfinished or had been really, really badly renovated. Those back photos look much better.

Most of what I saw of him feels cold and failed. That said the "cite radieuse", when inside, felt cozy, original and well built (from walls, orientation thus lighting, heating). People living there said they were very pleased.

Agreed on the Cite Radieuse, the hallways are what I wish all apartment building halls looked like. Essentially interior streets, two stories high with apartment windows facing onto them, large windows to the exterior, benches or places for people to sit and enjoy the sunlight and meet their neighbors. The highrise as the modern incarnation of a village with all of the communal charm would be a delight. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/84/79/92/84799263a8dfa6fef6bf...

Completely impractical since every developer will choose the standard closed in, windowless and unadorned hallway because it is the cheaper option.

Is that just the first floor or is every floor like that? I can't find pictures of what the interiors of the apartments look like.

Can't say for sure but here's a 15min video with a tour of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-ISAAZsq4Y

> Inside, wide corridors ("streets in the sky") run along the central long axis of every third floor of the building. Each apartment lies on two levels, such that the room on one side of a corridor belongs to the apartment that is mostly below the corridor floor, while that on the opposite side belongs to the apartment above. On those floors without corridors, the apartments stretch from one side of the building to the other, and each has a balcony on the western side.

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 gorgeous, thank you for sharing. It's a bit silly to say, but I'm not sure I knew what a hallway could be before seeing that picture.

> Completely impractical since every developer will choose the standard closed in, windowless and unadorned hallway because it is the cheaper option.

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 was the realization of Le Corbusier's ideology at a large scale. It really was his vision. Focussing on a detail whether corridors have light or not, I think is somewhat of a diversion.

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).

LC was - somewhat credibly - accused of fascist sympathies.

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.

Thanks for that link. I don't know about his personal thoughts, but just judging from his work, LC's architecture certainly had a fascist tinge, in the sense that through that kind of architecture man submits to authority. A-tower-in-the-park is a very authoritarian top-down way to house people. There was also his exaltation of destruction, to create a clean slate from which a new architectural order can arise, and fascists certainly appreciate violence as a force of change.

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.

There's a commonality between modernism and the realization of an the industrial mass consumer society in the 20th century that transcends the ideological divides of the time. Factories, warehouses, office buildings, tower blocks, shopping malls, highways and suburbs all have the same rationales of mass production economics beating at their heart. A skyscraper is simply a "people warehouse".

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.

+100

> 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.

I think that modernism was a natural fad which has run its course and people realize that we overshot and forgot counter intuitive details that aren't addressed by comfort or "progress".

I kinda disagree, a little bit. You can live happily in a big housing project, as long as some basics are there. No noise, not too dense, some green spaces and also a fair owner. Lots of buildings failed because owners stopped caring, so everything rot, and people here didn't help either. Some of my family lived in these and it felt ok enough. Some other projects 500m for them became no-go zones. Quite surprising.

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

tbf, I do agree with you. For sake of argument, "big housing project", is just another name for "big apartment building". And I agree that many places do "big apartment building" quite well.

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.

That hallway gives me strong middle school vibes. Or maybe that one older building on a university campus.

chapman court in LA was originally built with that kind of hallway on the 2nd floor of a series of work-loft spaces (studio below, living space above). i got to see it via an LA Conservancy tour a few years back. unfortunately, i couldn't find pictures of the hallway, but here are promo pages for the recent renovation with some other pictures ('creative offices' in the 2nd shows one of the loft interiors):

https://kfalosangeles.com/project/chapman-court/

https://www.ottodesigngroup.com/07_chapman-court

I think the bigger thing would be accessibility.

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.

It's a very light article with a title that over-promises.

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.

> The fact that Pessac was easily modified appears to be accidental

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...

The accidental thing seemed implied by the article, that the changes were an act of "resistance", rather than something that was designed for.

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.

Le Corbusier was also partly responsible for the American ideal of the ultra-zoned, socially-stratisfied, car-centric city. Le Corbusier saw society as a machine, not an organism, and his work reflects this outlook; a comprehensive plan for alienation and the decay of community.

I want society to be like a machine and less like an organism. Seems like your personal belief system does not align with Le Corbusier.

> 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.

> I want society to be like a machine and less like an organism.

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad?wprov=sfti1.

> Le Corbusier was also partly responsible for the American ideal of the ultra-zoned, socially-stratisfied, car-centric city. Le Corbusier saw society as a machine, not an organism, and his work reflects this outlook; a comprehensive plan for alienation and the decay of community.

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.