Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

He only really excelled at creating inhumane structures that only serve to impress the intelligentsia. It's not like you'd ever want to live in his austere glass boxes.

View on HN

> It's not like you'd ever want to live in his austere glass boxes.

I have had the pleasure (or misfortune?) of working for a number of years in buildings designed by Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry, and Norman Foster.

Was the Le Corbusier building I worked in clearly of its time? Yes. But also strangely it was the least clinical of all three. It had a surprising amount of warmth. I can't speak to his residential work, but it was clear that great thought had been given into how people use the building. Unlike when I worked in the Gehry building, where no thought had been given at all.

And if anything, it was the opposite of what you say - Le Corbusier thinks a lot about glass, and is surprisingly restrained in its use (compared to, say, Foster). I remember the concrete stairwells with their frosted glass bricks well.

I'm not saying that we should aspire to build more Le Corbusier-like buildings, but my experience of his buildings was the total opposite of inhuman.

They are not glass boxes though? If anything he inspired Brutalism with its blocks and swoops of concrete.

Maybe you’re thinking of Mies van der Rohe? His rectangular glass façades feel a lot more omnipresent in today’s architecture than Le Corbusier.

That is because Mies van der Rohe designed modern architecture in a more appealing way than Le Corbusier - Le Corbusier was a brutalist, while van der Rohe was not.

My take is that people are frequently sad to see brutalist buildings go (they are honest, show their bones, frequently use materials that somewhat match up with the environment) but many people hate those glass and steel modernist buildings, not least the people who live and work in them because of poor lighting and thermal properties. I’m left with the feeling that modernist buildings were meant to impress somebody else.

I had the chance to visit „La Cite Radieuse“ in Marseille. All these years later it is still more stylish and … dare I say it … comfortable than all the apartment high-rises surrounding it.

He designed it as a village inside a single building. And the apartments are still sought-after.

I tend to think that Habitat 67 is more successful in all regards.

Check out "les étoiles d'ivry" from Jean Renaudie then, you might like it. Habitat 67, but triangles. And a lot more green.

https://hiddenarchitecture.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/n8... https://hiddenarchitecture.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/E-...

Unfortunately that's what modern architecture has largely devolved into: inhumane austere glass boxes devoid of any individuality or character. And robbing places of their local character and tradition: Copenhagen looks exactly like London exactly like Shanghai exactly like Rio exactly like Melbourne...

> He only really excelled at creating inhumane structures that only serve to impress the intelligentsia. It's not like you'd ever want to live in his austere glass boxes

I read your comment while perched on a stool next to my kitchen island. The city stares at me in the background while I glance back at the city from time to time.

I used to live in one of the "austere glass boxes" you speak of that is pictured on the cover of Douglas Coupland's City of Glass. I live a couple blocks down the street now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Glass_(Coupland_book)

The metaphorical stones of others can not shatter this beauty.

He certainly helped push the high rise isolated developments, mostly turning into the utterly despised high rise projects in Europe and America.

The place most built in the spirit of Le Corbusier is Brasília, Brasil. Lived my latter teens there. It was ok, I prefer Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo.

Edit: spell

You'd count yourself lucky if Le Corbusier designed a glass box for you. More often he'd design a concrete box with small windows.

It seems obvious now, but it was different. And not worse than most contemporary architecture either. But it would be nice to return to a more human, beautiful and sustainable style, true.

Agree. I can't stand the coldness of brutalist architecture, it's dystopian. It's disagreeable in summer, let alone on a grey winter day.

I appreciate its novelty at the time, and its nostalgia now. It was used in a lot of public buildings in the 1970's because it tended to be more economical than Ivy League looking brick buildings with white trim. I appreciate that its design had something to say, even if that thing wasn't clear or useful. Now public buildings look like boring brick boxes with maybe a curved wall or some other "accent".

Boring beats ugly, IME. A certain amount of ambition is welcome, and a certain amount of failure is an inevitable cost of that, but textured concrete should have been consigned to the history books a long time ago.

Honestly, I liked the brutalist behemoths more than the tilt-ups with fake italian villa crown molding, arches, and weird curves.

At least the buildings usually convey one specific message instead of a mish-mash of "I'm a big cheap commercial building but I wish I was this other thing instead"

I think of the federal building in Manchester, NH which looks like something the lizardman aliens would have built in “V” or might make you think the government faked the 9/11 attacks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com