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"the FIVE POINTS". |
| THE TRACES OF THE AFRICAN
PRECEDENTS THROUGH THE FREE-PLAN |
| I took the past
as my witness, the past which was my sole tutor and which continues to be
my permanent mentor...Those witnesses to the past that have survived the
passing of the centuries possess eternal value for mankind. Respect for
the past is an attitude that comes naturally to those who create; it is an
attitude of love and respect... (L-C: In Entretien avec les etudiants des ecoles d'architecture, 1943) |
"It was LC's strategy of inversion that enables him to reinterpret classical PARADIGMS in such a way as to open them toward the ready assimilation of industrial and vernacular elements... " . (Colquhoun). |
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classic |
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| Le Corbusier prescribed five rules,each of which takes its departure from an existing practice and proceeds to reverse it. (Colquhoun) 1. the Pilotis is the reversal of the classical podium. 2. the Roof Terrace contradicts the pitched roof and replaces the attic story with an open-air-room. 3. the Fenetre en Longueur is a contradiction of the classical window aedicule. 4. the Free Facade replaces the regular arrangement of windows openings with a freely composed surface. 5. the Free Plan contradicts the principle by which distribution was constrained by the need for vertically continous structural walls and replaces it with a free arrangement of nonstructural partitions determined by functional convenience. |
the PLAN LiBRE  |
 PILOTIS as a shift of COLUMNS from front to bottom |
modern  |
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Precisions,
p.123: the dogma of 7 points : the plan of the modern house free plan, free facade, independent skeleton, long windows or pan de verre, pilotis, roof garden and the interior equipped with casiers and stripped of furniture. |
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| PURITY AND TRANSGRESSION: REFLECTIONS ON THE ARCH AVANT-GARDE'S REJECTION OF KITSCH - (Midgard no1). "The primitive was appropriated by some members of the architectural avant-garde via cubism... More suggestive, however, was the impact of the primitive on the structure itself, most evident in Le Corbusier's work, where the traces of the primitive mask were incorporated into architecture through the exploitation of the 'free-plan'." |
| "...the rational Cartesian framework
was then transgressed through the introduction of distorted anthropomorphic forms with close kinship to
African masks. A mask was not literally represented in the
elevation, but rather operated as a palimpsest
myteriously guiding the location of the walls. The space was thus a
dislocation induced by the forms of the masks. The effect was to create
within the rational space of the grid a violent juxtaposition of
perplexing spaces. The Villa Stein at Garches
was then considered as the prototype of modern architecture. Rather than a
simple fetish, the mask here served as subversion for the order of reason
through its spatial implications." Bernard Tschumi (in Architecture and Transgression - Opposition 7, 1976-77) |
| References: 1. Essays in Architectural Criticism: modern architecture and historical change - Alan Colquhoun - MIT Press - ISBN 0-262-03076-4. 2. Midgard number ONE. 3. Papyrus - Investigation on Phenomenal Transparency in African Architecture. |
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