UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

August 14, 2006

Date:___________________

Aleksandra Simic
I, _________________________________________________________,
hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of:
Master of Science
in:
Architecture
It is entitled:
Le Corbusier's Purist Period and the Concept of Truth in Architecture

This work and its defense approved by:

John E. Hancock
Chair: _______________________________
Nnamdi Elleh
_______________________________
David Saile
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
Le Corbusier's Purist Period and the Concept of Truth in Architecture

A thesis submitted to the

Division of Research and Advanced Studies

of the University of Cincinnati

In partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE

In the School of Architecture and Interior Design

of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning

August 2006

by

Aleksandra Simić

B.S. in Architecture
University of Belgrade, Serbia, September 2003

Committee chair: John E. Hancock

Committee members:
Nnamdi Elleh
David Saile
 Abstract

Le Corbusier remains a very challenging and elusive subject in architectural scholarship

today due to the complexity and depth of his work. Critical analyses on his work generally stress

one particular design theme or interpretive concept, such as the classical tradition,

universalization, machine aesthetics, synthesis of the arts, or mysticism and ambiguity; thus, they

never fully explain the depth of his art. This research demonstrates that what underlies all these

concepts is Le Corbusier’s open quest for “the truth”--something that grounds the making of

architectural art as well as the world in general.

The search for “truth” was Le Corbusier’s major, inner concern in his formative and

Purist years, and remained a central concept for him throughout his whole life--a basic and

primordial abstract notion from which he derived all other concepts that defined his art works

visually and structurally. To undertake such a search, with the goal of discovering fundamental

“truth(s)” about the nature of things around us, is very much the paradigm of Modernity itself.

The goals of this research are, first, to analyze and define more thoroughly Le

Corbusier’s different interpretations of truthful architecture, and second, to explain how they

were translated into visual language. Through an examination of Le Corbusier’s written works

from the Purist Period (1918 to 1928), four different concepts of truth in architecture are

revealed: truth of nature, lyrical truth, historical truth, and ethical truth. The research also traces

the translation of these abstract ideas into the universal visual language or formal principles of

his buildings, paintings, and city plans from the Purist Period.

With these findings, the research offers deeper understanding of Le Corbusier’s works.

The reasons why he used motifs like cubic shapes, cylindrical columns, horizontal strip
windows, white plaster walls, enclosed balconies, and the other recognizable elements that

distinguish his architecture, are elucidated. This research also provides new insight into his

influence by the broad system of values of Modernity.

Keywords: Le Corbusier, Purism, truth, truthful architecture, visual language

 Acknowledgments

I am deeply thankful to Professor John E. Hancock for the support and encouragement of

my research work since the very beginning. His insightful comments and enormous patience

motivated me through the difficult times. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professors

Aarati Kanekar, Nnamdi Elleh, and David Saile whose inspiring remarks and critiques helped me

stay on the right track. My thanks as well goes to the remaining SAID faculty members involved

in the MS ARCH Program and the fellow students for the exciting and stimulating discussions in

our classes.

I would also like to thank the University of Cincinnati for the financial support.

Last but not the least, I would like to thank my husband, Nebojša Pantelić, for the

constant support and encouragement.

 Table of contents

List of figures..................................................................................................................... 2

List of tables....................................................................................................................... 4

Preface................................................................................................................................ 5

1. Introduction.................................................................................................................. 9

2. Literature review ....................................................................................................... 13

3. Le Corbusier’s search for truthful architecture ..................................................... 22

A search in the early years ................................................................................. 22
Purist or “golden” years..................................................................................... 32
1. The truth of nature ................................................................................... 37
2. The lyrical truth........................................................................................ 42
3. The ethical truth ....................................................................................... 46
4. The historical truth................................................................................... 48

4. Le Corbusier’s Purist artworks................................................................................ 53

General Purist ideas and design concepts......................................................... 53
Translation into the formal elements of painting and architecture ............... 55
1. Themes and objects.................................................................................. 57
2. Concept of space ...................................................................................... 61
3. Rules of composition ............................................................................... 63
4. Color ........................................................................................................ 66
Urbanism ............................................................................................................. 69

5. Conclusions................................................................................................................. 75

Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 80
 List of figures

Figure 1. Illustration from the article “Sur la plastique” in L’Esprit Nouveau, no 1, 1920,
in L’Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925, Carol S. Eliel (Los Angeles:
Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams,
2001), 28.

Figure 2. Still Life with Red Violin, 1920, Oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm, Minoru Mori
Collection, Tokyo, in Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in
Architecture, Charles Jencks (New York: Monacelli, 2000), 115.

Figure 3. Pages 164-165 from Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Cubism and Abstract Art (Cambridge,
Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press).

Figure 4. Wash basin in the Villa Savoye, View from the interior exit of the garage, in
Walking through Le Corbusier: A Tour of His Masterworks, José Baltanás
(London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2005), 63.

Figure 5. Representation of objects as in descriptive geometry in Still Life, 1920, Oil on

canvas, 80.9 x 99.7 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Van Gogh
Purchase Fund, 1937, in L’Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925, Carol
S. Eliel (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with
Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 26.

Figure 6. Villa Stein-De Monzie, Garches, 1927, Axonometric drawing, Foundation Le

Corbusier, Paris, in Architecture in the Twentieth Century, Peter Gössel and
Gabrieke Leuthäuser (Köln, London: Taschen, 2001), 172.

Figure 7. Still life from the Pavillion de L’Esprit Nouveau, 1924, Oil on canvas, 81 x 100
cm, Foundation Le Corbusier, Paris, in L’Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris,
1918-1925, Carol S. Eliel (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 65.

Figure 8. Use of regulating lines in paintings as illustrated in L’Esprit Nouveau, no 17,

1922, in L’Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925, Carol S. Eliel (Los
Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with Harry N.
Abrams, 2001), 55.

Figure 9. Still Life with Egg, 1919, Oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm, Foundation Le
Corbusier, Paris, in L’Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925, Carol S.
Eliel (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with
Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 170.

Figure 10. Pale Still Life with Lantern, 1922, Oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm, Foundation Le
Corbusier, Paris, in L’Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925, Carol S.

2
 Eliel (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with
Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 54.

Figure 11. Villa La Roche-Jeanneret, Paris, 1923-25, Interior, in Le Corbusier: Architect

of the Twentieth century, Kenneth Frampton (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
Inc., Publishers), 119.

Figure 12. Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1929-31, North view, in Architecture in the Twentieth
Century, Peter Gössel and Gabrieke Leuthäuser (Köln, London: Taschen,
2001), 172.

Figure 13. Villa La Roche-Jeanneret, Paris, 1923-25, Interior, Photograph by John E.

Hancock, Courtesy of author.

Figure 14. Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1929-31, Living room and terrace, in Walking through
Le Corbusier: A Tour of His Masterworks, José Baltanás (London: Thames &
Hudson Ltd, 2005), 75.

Figure 15. Pavillion de L’Esprit Nouveau, 1925, Exterior view, in L’Esprit Nouveau:
Purism in Paris, 1918-1925, Carol S. Eliel (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County
Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 50.

Figure 16. Maison Cook, Boulogne-sur-Seine, Color axonometric of interior, 1926,

gouache on paper, 92 x 90 cm, Foundation Le Corbusier, Paris, in L’Esprit
Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925, Carol S. Eliel (Los Angeles: Los
Angeles County Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001),
57.

Figure 17. Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants, 1922, Overall plan, in Le
Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture, Charles Jencks (New
York: Monacelli, 2000), 146.

Figure 18. The Radiant City, 1930, Overall plan, in Modern Architecture Since 1900,
William J. R. Curtis (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1996, 1982), 324.

3
 List of tables

Table 1. Relation of Purism to Cubism as viewed in the eyes of the Purists, in Cubism
and Abstract Art, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London,
England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 166.

4
 Preface

Truth in Architecture

The “truth,” as a metaphysical concept in relation to art, has existed since ancient times;

and it continued to be a major theme in the philosophical discourse right up to the 20th century.

Plato was the first to pose the question of truthful representation in art. His well-known

argument that art is twice removed from the truth has remained very important and influential

throughout the history of art theory. Sometimes, more implicitly than explicitly, the goal among

artists has been drawing their art as closely as possible to the classical notion of eternal truth.

The easiest and most common way of translating the concept of truth into art was to make

exact pictorial representations of the world around us. This line of thought and practice existed

from ancient Greek art through Renaissance naturalism and 19th century realism until the

invention of photography. This constant desire of making a factual record of the world and life

around us was culminated by photography.1

Simultaneous with this line of thought, another position developed according to which art

can reach the truth but not through the means of accurate representation of the world around us.

The act of artistic creation is truthful by itself, regardless of the method of representation. The

emphasis here is placed on the artist, who is capable of achieving truth only because he is

capable of making something--something different from usable things and the things of nature--

with his reasoned mind. This attitude, started by Aristotle and expounded up to modern times,

gives an ethical attribute to the artist who has to find the right balance and be reasonable and just

in order to find the truth of beings, the Being.2

1
Robert Rosenblum and H.W. Janson, 19th-century art (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2005),
192-193.
2
Herman Rapaport, Is There Truth in Art? (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997), 3.

5
 However, both of these stands share the notion of “truth” existing somewhere else

separately from our daily reality. This dialectical separation of beings and Being, of form and

matter, of human and divine origin, of emotions and reason, existed as a paradigm in the entire

history of thinking until the appearance of Martin Heidegger’s works in the early 20th century.

Heidegger broke this tradition and set the challenges in the philosophical discourse that resulted

in the development of postmodern and critical thought. According to him, art reveals truth, but

the truth is not something separate from beings, rather just concealed; and the art is there to

unconceal it. According to Heidegger, “in the art work, the truth of what is has set itself to work.

Art is truth setting itself to work.”3

The “truth,” as a concept in architecture, appeared in the 16th century with the emergence

of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism. It was believed that truth resides in the harmony of nature,

which is of divine origin. Analogically, it was also believed that architectural origins lie in

divine or natural sources, and that they should be sought in a cosmological and anthropomorphic

geometry expressed through proportions. However, during the Enlightenment, divine order was

rejected; and instead, the rational process towards a reasonable solution in design emerged.

Therefore, it was accepted that rational architecture would become a truthful architecture, it

would represent the truth. Truth became merely an aesthetic criterion. With the rise of science

came also the rise of aesthetics. Truth, art, and science had been united throughout Antiquity,

the Middle Ages, and Renaissance, but truth-as-such became a very important aesthetic value in

late 18th and 19th century architecture, and then also the very foundation of Modern architectural

ideals in the first half of the 20th century. For many thinkers today (Toulmin, Eisenman, and

others), the Modern Movement in architecture of the late 19th and early 20th century has the same

3
Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Perennial Classics,
2001), 38.

6
core beliefs and ideals as Modernity, which is a broader term that signifies the period from the

rise of science in the 17th century to the late 20th century.4

Adrian Forty recognizes that during the Modern Movement, this broad ideal of “truth”

in architecture actually occurs in three senses as used by modernist architects and critics5:

1. Structural truth--the outward appearance of a work should correspond to its structural

system and to the properties of the materials of which it is made; architecture should

be the truthful expression of its structure,

2. Expressive truth--the sense of a work being true to its inner essence, or to the spirit of

its makers,

3. Historical truth--the requirement that a work should be of its time and be true to the

stage of historical development reached within the art.

Although “truth” was not exactly a central concept of 20th century architectural

modernism, it remained present as an embedded framework of thinking which undeniably

shaped the processes and forms of architectural creation. Only postmodern architectural theory

of the second half of the 20th century rejected it when finally the ideas of Heidegger and other

phenomenologists, as well as the ideas of critical theorists, entered architectural discourse.

The prevailing opinion about the inability of architecture to bear a transcendental truth is

that it is the result of the separation of artistic from scientific practices. After this separation, it

soon became obvious that the work of art could not achieve truth in the scientific sense, so its

only purpose was merely to please the senses. Dalibor Vesely claims that while art and science

were united, it was possible to embody an absolute, transcendental truth, but with the

4
Stephen Toulmin, “What is the Problem about Modernity?” in Cosmopolis, The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, 5-44
(New York: Free Press, 1990).
5
Adrian Forty, Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000),
289.

7
development of rational methods in the 17th century, such a possibility disappeared.6 Vesely

explained that in the post-Renaissance world, modern science had the wrong assumption that it

could give a comprehensive explanation of nature, and that art was concerned only with

producing beautiful forms.

For Peter Eisenman, truth is just one of three major “fictions” of Modernity and the other

two are representation and history.7 These three agendas continued to be active until the mid 20th

century and were very much the underlying theory of the Modern architecture of the 1920s and

1930s. These three values Eisenman calls “classical” because they were common and standard

in architecture since the 15th century, and it was thought they would lead to a “classic”

architecture, that is, perfect and everlasting. He was even criticizing some “postmodernists,” like

Robert Venturi, who were not able in a way to see and distance themselves from this framework.

Venturi’s preference for the decorated shed, for example, reflects the influence of the value of

representation.

Modernity as a whole is characterized by the unquestionable belief in reason.

Accordingly, if architecture is designed reasonably and looks rational, it actually represents truth.

Thus, truth, or rational expression, became the aesthetic as well as the moral criterion.

Therefore, in this thesis, the major goals are to identify and discover how much the concept of

“truth” in architecture was important to one of the major figures of the Modern Movement, Le

Corbusier, how much it defined his theoretical beliefs, and ultimately, how that resulted in the

definition of his architectural language.

6
Dalibor Vesely, “Architecture and the Conflict of Representation,” AA Files, no.8, (1985), 21-38.
7
Peter Eisenman, “The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End” in Architecture Theory
Since 1968, ed. Michael K. Hays, 524-538 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2000), 524.

8
 1. Introduction

Le Corbusier was one of the most influential architects of the 20th century. He remains a

very challenging and elusive subject in architectural scholarship today due to the complexity and

depth of his work. A vast quantity of scholarship treats various aspects of his work, offering

many interpretations, though generally stressing one particular design theme or interpretive

concept. Yet still Le Corbusier’s works elude our grasp; the critical analyses never fully explain

the depth of his art.

My premise is that a much richer understanding of Le Corbusier’s work can be achieved

if we attend carefully to his theoretical beliefs and the intellectual investigations that exceedingly

occupied him, rather than just subscribe to one of many formal concepts. For instance, scholars

most often view the work, as is elaborated below, through such individual concepts as the

classical tradition, universalization, machine aesthetics, synthesis of the arts, or mysticism and

ambiguity. Nevertheless, what underlies all these concepts is Le Corbusier’s open quest for “the

truth”--something that grounds the making of architectural art as well as the world in general. In

his formative years, Le Corbusier was certain that he should be searching for it, because only

truth would enable him to create.8 Undeniably, this search for truth was his major, inner concern

at the beginning of his career. However, the truth remained an important central concept for him

throughout his whole life, a basic and primordial abstract notion from which he derived all other

concepts that defined his art works visually and structurally.

Moreover, the search for truth as an autonomous ideal was a major paradigm of

Modernity as a whole, but also, more specifically, for the Modern architecture of the first half of

the 20th century. Peter Eisenman points out that regardless of whether the origins of architecture

belong to a divine, natural order (proportions and mathematics) or to a rational order (expressed
8
Paul V. Turner, The Education of Le Corbusier (New York: Garland Publication, 1977), 53-54.

9
through type and function), it is ultimately the same thing--the origins belong to something else

or to something outside of architecture itself.9 Therefore, for him the “fiction of truth” marked

architecture since the Renaissance to the mid-20th century. Thus, the Modern architecture is the

product of the same developing line. Therefore, Le Corbusier’s embrace of the necessity of

knowing “the truth” makes him even more interesting to explore.

This research focuses on his theoretical beliefs from the Purist or “heroic” period of his

career (1918 to 1928), with an emphasis specifically on the notion of truth in architecture. My

research is focused on this early period since the most powerful of theoretical articles and his

numerous books all date from this time. His search for truth did not end after 1928 and the

construction of his last Purist masterpiece, the Villa Savoye.10 In fact, he persisted his entire life

in trying to incorporate the findings of his intellectual investigations into visual objects

(buildings, paintings, and city plans). Ultimately, it was during the Purist phase of his career,

where this quest was the most explicit. My aim is to understand more fully his design works,

which were so much influenced by the system of values of Modernity and yet, at the same time,

so inventive and compelling.

Le Corbusier was eager to discover and penetrate into the very core of the world around

him, and then to incorporate his findings into his buildings and paintings. To undertake such a

search with the goal of discovering fundamental “truths” about the nature of things around us is

very much the paradigm of Modernity itself. Therefore, this thesis raises the following

questions:

9
Eisenman, 527.
10
Daniel Naegele, “The Image of the Body in the Oeuvre of Le Corbusier,” in Le Corbusier and the Architecture of
Reinvention, Tim Benton et al., 16-39 (London: AA Publications, 2003).

10
 1. What is Le Corbusier’s meaning of truthful architecture based on his writings? Is it

possible that he had several different “truths” about the “truth of architecture” both

expressed and implied?

2. How did he translate these abstract concepts into the visual language of his art works?

Does this interpretive background help us to better understand them and the powerful

influence they still have today?

3. What are the influences he embraced from the socio-cultural context of the first half of

the 20th century, concerning specifically the origins and the power of concepts of “truth”?

Having in mind very different possibilities of interpreting the notion of truthful

architecture, we are able to make more nuanced and organized clarifications of Le Corbusier’s

thoughts, detecting those particular, different influences he embraced from the outside and how

they find their way into his often-polemical texts. Finally, this thesis examines how Le

Corbusier thought “the truth” could be expressed in buildings. Therefore, the specific emphasis

of this thesis is on the translation of these abstract ideas into the visual language or formal

principles of his buildings, paintings, and city plans. In this way, we find a deeper ground of

understanding about why he used, for example, the cubic shapes, cylindrical columns, horizontal

strip windows, white plaster walls, enclosed balconies and the other recognizable elements that

distinguish his architecture.

In conclusion, the goals of this research are: (1) to analyze and define more thoroughly

different interpretations of truthful architecture, and (2) how they are translated into visual

language. The text analysis phase of this research is based on two major sources: first, on Le

Corbusier’s own works from the Purist period (After Cubism 1918, Towards a New Architecture

1923, The City of Tomorrow 1924, and The Decorative Art of Today 1925), and second, on a

11
close reading of the extant interpretations from the major scholars in the field. His published

writings of the period are augmented by his personal notes and letters that provide crucial

insights, as well as by his later autobiographical writings about this period. For the visual

analysis part of this research, we will examine Le Corbusier’s general design concepts of his

buildings, paintings, and urban projects from the Purist period.

12
 2. Literature review

There is a large number of published works about Le Corbusier. Mainly, they stress one

or another formal concept, while only in a general manner address his theoretical beliefs. For

example, Colin Rowe in his essay The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa (1947) makes the case that

Le Corbusier follows the same Platonic-Aristotelian tradition as Palladio,11 according to which

mathematics, musical concords and architectural proportions are all reflections of the harmony of

the universe. According to this prevailing idealistic standpoint in the Renaissance, which also

influenced Le Corbusier, nature is organized and ordered by the rules set by God. These rules

are universal and since they underlie everything, they have to be represented in architecture as

well.

Rudolph Wittkower meticulously explains how the Renaissance believed in the divine

origins of all things and their harmonic unity.12 With the renewed interest in Vitruvius’ theory

and Plato and Pythagoras’s philosophy, people in the 16th century believed that what unites all

things in the world around us and makes an overall harmony is mathematics, or numbers.

However, Wittkower further argues that this belief in the pervading harmony of the universe

comes from the mixture of Christian doctrines and Neo-Platonic thought.13 The common for

ground both was a belief in a higher order and in the mysterious numbers and ratios (for

example, the Holy Trinity in Christianity). Nevertheless, the Renaissance thinkers were

convinced that proportions were universal to everybody, not just to architects alone; also,

painters used them and all other artists, because it was believed that there was a complete unity

among all arts and sciences. This means that everybody needed to comply with the law of

11
Colin Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and other Essays (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press,
1976), 1-27.
12
Rudolph Wittkower, “The Problem of Harmonic Proportion in Architecture,” in Architectural Principles in the
Age of Humanism, 101-154 (New York: Norton&[Link]., 1971, 1962).
13
Wittkower, 102-103.

13
nature, which was understood as the proportions which are visual expression of mathematical

equations. In architecture, each part of a building should be put into one and the same system of

mathematical ratios, and the architect is not free in doing that since the ratios need to comply

with a higher order. More precisely, a building should mirror the proportions of the human

body. God created man (according to his own image), so the proportions of a body reveal divine

will, and therefore proportions in architecture have to embrace and express the cosmic order.

The only way to come to the knowledge of the harmonic proportions is by the way of music,

because here it is so obvious. The Renaissance thinkers claimed that the human body itself was

also built according to musical harmonies. This microcosm is created by God, therefore

everything must reveal the harmonies, even paintings and buildings.

Palladio’s concept of architecture is based on commensurability of ratios; parts should

correspond together and to the whole. He used a module for the entire building and

systematically linked one room to the other by harmonic proportions; this was the fundamental

novelty of Palladio.14 Colin Rowe argues that Le Corbusier had a similar conviction, since he

was often saying that mathematics brought “des vérités réconfortantes.”15 Le Corbusier thus

imposed a formal-compositional system of mathematical patterns upon his buildings identical to

Palladio’s in order to obtain the harmony of nature, the truth itself. Although not so visible in the

outward appearance as in Palladio’s Villa Malcontenta (c. 1550-60), Le Corbusier’s

mathematical pattern is integrated in the horizontal plan of the Villa Stein at Garches (1927).

This can be considered as physical evidence for the hypothesis that Le Corbusier believed in the

higher, divine order hidden beneath the surfaces and woven into the core of things.

14
Wittkower, 107-109.
15
Rowe, 8.

14
 However, beyond such form-based analysis as we find in Rowe’s discussion of Le

Corbusier’s proportional system, only Paul V. Turner in his book The Education of Le Corbusier

(1977) more deeply explores Le Corbusier’s theoretical beliefs and argues that his approach

toward architecture is “fundamentally intellectual and ‘idealistic’ rather than the rationalistic

views prevailing at the time.”16 By “idealistic” Turner is referring to those philosophical

currents that followed Plato, teaching that a world of eternal ideas constituted reality, of which

the everyday world of experience is just a mirror. Translating all this into aesthetics, this

tradition asserts that universal principles and ideal reality must also be visibly expressed, for

example, in architecture. By “rationalistic” Turner is referring to the attitude that architectural

form should be shaped by structural, constructional, and functional needs. Turner further

explains a link between Le Corbusier and such theories and philosophies by exploring his

personal library and discussing the way in which he educated himself. Thus taking a more

pedagogical standpoint, Turner stresses that the early period of Le Corbusier’s life is very

important because he was self-educated and that his aims and beliefs were shaped during that

time.

Le Corbusier became familiar with the concept of absolute principles or ideal models

existing separately from matter and the visible world, through Henry Provensal and Edouard

Schuré’s books, whose ideas were based on the 19th century German idealism of Schelling and

Hegel.17 Also a very significant factor, if not entirely decisive, was the powerful influence of Le

Corbusier’s schoolteacher, L’Eplattenier. Inspired by the 19th century English architectural critic

John Ruskin and the writer Owen Jones, L’Eplattenier was more of a romantic with idealistic

16
Turner, 2.
17
Turner, 11-29.

15
beliefs, such as that greater truths can be found beneath nature’s surface.18 Le Corbusier himself,

as a young man, was reading Ruskin and was delighted by his book The Seven Lamps of

Architecture (1849).19 In “The Lamp of Truth” Ruskin writes about three major “deceits”--

representing the structure and materials of a building differently than what their true nature is

and the use of machine-made ornaments. However, Ruskin further explains that deception in

architecture is acceptable only if it leads our mind to the true nature of things and that it “is no

dishonesty, but, on the contrary, a legitimate appeal to the imagination.”20 He supported

structural deception only when it created an aesthetic response in the observer’s mind. Owen

Jones’ thesis from his book Grammar of Ornament (1856), also a favorite book of Le Corbusier

from his early years, explains that little children and “savages” produce more “healthy” and

“true” artworks because they draw inspiration from nature and do not rely on institutional or

built-in knowledge.21 This appeal for honesty, i.e. truthful architecture, was extremely important

for the formation of young Le Corbusier’s attitudes toward architecture and the development of

the visual language of his architecture. He accepted this proposition that truthful architecture

does not have to be architecture formally structured with the highest precision and exactness

from the outside but, in fact, can have values hidden beneath the surface that will radiate and

ultimately reveal its powers to the observers. Accepting these powerful thoughts of Ruskin and

L’Eplattenier that “shook his mind profoundly,”22 Le Corbusier did not follow Palladio’s

18
Sarah Menin and Flora Samuel, Nature and Space: Aalto and Le Corbusier (London and New York: Routledge,
2003), 25.
19
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, translated by James I. Dunnett, in combined edition Essential Le
Corbusier: L'Esprit Nouveau Articles (Oxford, Boston: Architectural Press, 1998), 132.
20
John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent: George Allen, 1883), 36.
21
Menin and Samuel, 25.
22
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 132.

16
mathematical pattern literally but used it as a framework hidden in the horizontal plan of the villa

at Garches, or as Colin Rowe says, as “a type of planned obscurity.”23

Turner believes that Henry Provensal’s book L’Art de Demain and Edouard Schuré’s

book Les Grands Initiés were of a profound importance for Le Corbusier because they helped

him to give a firm ideological foundation to the ideas already existing in his mind.24 Both

Provensal and Schuré drew on 19th century German idealism and the philosophies of Hegel and

Schelling. Provensal believed that art gives us a harmonious unity of material and spiritual

forces and that architecture is also a spiritual activity along with the other arts. Provensal also

puts great emphasis on the artist who makes the Ideal happen. This Messianic role for the artist

is repeated in Schuré’s book where he deals with the eight greatest prophets and spiritual leaders

(Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and Jesus) and their search for the

universal knowledge and higher spiritual “truths.” Undoubtedly, Le Corbusier inherited all those

ideas and put upon himself a task to search for these truths and bring about a harmony and thus a

better world through his architecture.

Turner further stresses that Pythagoras and his mystical numerology were the first

significant discovery on this search.25 It was Pythagoras who first discovered tones could be

measured in space; he found that musical consonances were determined by ratios of small whole

numbers (1, 2, 3, and 4).26 This Pythagorean discovery made people believe that they had seized

the mysterious harmony that pervades the universe. This had an immeasurable impact on human

thought over the next 2000 years. Plato also believed that cosmic order and harmony were

contained in certain numbers. Le Corbusier concluded after reading these theories that

23
Rowe, 8.
24
Turner, 11-29.
25
Turner, 27-28.
26
Wittkower, 103-104.

17
mathematics could be a means of establishing the divine harmony and order in the world around

us. Le Corbusier held on to this conclusion for the remainder of his life. Mathematical patterns

and geometrical forms remained abstract, spiritual powers or ultimate truths of nature, which he

investigated and applied throughout his entire working career.

Further, Stanislaus von Moos in his Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis (1979),

emphasizes “synthesis” as a key concept of Le Corbusier’s theory more from a historical

perspective.27 Synthesis here represents the unity of all the arts but also together with all the

products of the current machine age. Through this unity the environment will achieve the

harmony of the eternal and universal laws of nature. The synthesis of arts would come through

the equal treatment of buildings, paintings, sculptures, and industrial objects. In addition, Le

Corbusier would even treat the walls of his buildings as canvases and whole buildings as

sculptures. Von Moos also mentions that Le Corbusier, in order to display all those rules and

beliefs, was always showing the tension and contradiction between these elements which he was

uniting.28 The most common method, which he was using in his early years, was the opposition

of nature and geometry. For example, the Villa Savoye (1928-29), a perfectly designed cubic

form, was placed outside Paris in the rural environment. This opposition is most visible in his

drawings of his urban projects--wild and unarranged bushes and woods are juxtaposed against a

rectilinear matrix of streets and highways.

Charles Jencks’ in Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture (2000)

introduces the newly discovered interests that Le Corbusier had in theology, cosmology,

sexuality, and the occult, also arguing that the philosophy of dualism, in a way similar to Von

Moos’ concept of synthesis, was his driving force: “a life-long attempt to reconcile opposites--

27
Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis (Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England:
The MIT Press, 1979), 279-313.
28
Stanislaus von Moos, 303-305.

18
thinking and feeling, industry and art, science and religion.”29 Jencks also stresses the influences

of Pythagoras and Nietzsche throughout his entire life. Nietzsche’s philosophy is actually

opposite from the philosophy of German idealism, which Le Corbusier already wholeheartedly

accepted. Nietzsche claims that there is no such thing as unattained ideal and ultimate truth. In

fact, truth for Nietzsche is a cultural paradigm.30 Truth is a moral value invented by humans

themselves due to their inborn weakness and unreliability that can be very dangerous and

destabilizing for the society. In this sense, art cannot reveal the ultimate truth; art is just one of

the means to establish the notion of good and induce the moral responsibility for human actions.

According to Turner, it seems that Le Corbusier read Nietzsche selectively. He picked up from

Nietzsche only those ideas that would reinforce his own.31 What suited him very well was the

character of Nietzsche’s Zaratustra: a noble super hero full of a hatred of human nature and the

past, willing to sacrifice himself for the good of humankind. Inspired by Pythagoras’ and

Nietzsche’s beliefs and deeds, Le Corbusier saw himself as a lonely prophet, a “superman” who

would through the joyful and painful struggle, bring harmony and reconciliation to the world by

means of architecture. This is the reason why Le Corbusier was convinced that only through the

destruction of the past we could create a new and brighter future. Translated into architectural

concepts, Le Corbusier propagated the rejection of all historical styles and decorations in

architecture, which were therefore lies to him, and instead embraced the contemporary

production technologies given to us by means of science.

From a psychological standpoint, Sarah Menin and Flora Samuel in their book Nature

and Space: Aalto and Le Corbusier (2003) argue that nature held the central role in Le

Corbusier’s design. The way he designed his architecture is “inextricably linked to how he

29
Charles Jencks, Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture (New York: Monacelli, 2000), 11.
30
Rapaport, 11-15.
31
Turner, 61-62.

19
constructs ‘nature’ in his own mind and heart.”32 Drawing from the theory of the psychiatrist

Donald Winnicott, Menin and Samuel give the psychological explanation for this by arguing that

nature is an environment-replacement for “gaps” or psychological deprivations in the primary

environment, which would be like the relationship between a child and its mother as a primary

guardian.33 The reaching out from the inner to the outer world in filling the “gap” generates a

child’s creativity and is usually reflected by having a “transitional object” such as a favorite toy.

Menin and Samuel thus conclude that this transitional object for Le Corbusier was nature, by

which he tried to satisfy his inner need for harmony and balance, which he lacked in his closest

environment or, more precisely, in the relationship with his mother. They further explain that Le

Corbusier was very proud of his mother and her background and greatly attached to her while

she felt more affection to her younger son Albert, which must have created a defect in his

emotional life. Consciously as well as unconsciously, Le Corbusier thus projected this into a

desire to fill the gaps of imbalance among men, nature, and machines in contemporary society

with his architecture.

It is clear from this analysis of the key texts that there are many interpretations of Le

Corbusier’s principles and beliefs. Yet, as William J. R. Curtis has recently noted, in an article

from 2002, no one has yet managed to determine the artist’s position in the long-term perspective

of the history of ideas and forms, so we only get the endless reinforcing of the authors’ own

obsessions and prejudiced interpretations.34 Although less pessimistically than Curtis, I also

believe that these interpretations generally emphasize only one guiding principle of Le

32
Menin and Samuel, 3.
33
Menin and Samuel, 3-9.
34
William J.R. Curtis, “The ever-elusive Le Corbusier--even today writers can’t quite figure him out”, Architectural
Record, vol. 190, iss. 2 (New York: February, 2002.), 57.

20
Corbusier, but more to the point, they fail to excavate the deeper ground of his ultimate

obsession with truth.

My hypothesis is that although the interpretive vantage points of these critics all derive

from the basic and primary intention of Le Corbusier to find the truth of architecture, this quest

in and of itself, and a detailed assessment of what he understood to be that truth, have not yet

been brought adequately to light as something that underlies all of his building practice. My first

aim in this thesis is to re-examine Le Corbusier’s theoretical beliefs through an analysis of the

meaning of truth in architecture, as reflected in his writings and the writings of his time. In this

way, we can gain a new perspective and a deeper foundation from which to assess Le

Corbusier’s work and these subsequent interpretations as well as the myriad of movements and

directions that stem from his enormous influence.

21
 3. Le Corbusier’s search for truthful architecture

A search in the early years

As already described, Le Corbusier’s teacher L’Eplattenier was the biggest authority in

the early years of his life. With lectures and the books he gave as homework readings,

L’Eplattenier had a crucial role in Le Corbusier’s professional formation. He encouraged young

Le Corbusier to switch to the practice of architecture, and through his help, the young architect

received his first commission, to design the Villa Fallet (1905-07) together with a local architect,

René Chapallaz. The design clearly reflected the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement as well

as the influence of the vernacular architecture of the region.35 After this project in 1907, Le

Corbusier left the school and set himself on his first trip outside his hometown of La Chaux-de-

Fonds, Switzerland, to visit northern Italy, Vienna, and Paris. Due to the influences of his

teacher, Le Corbusier was aware that in order to be an architect, he must become educated in a

variety of disciplines, and be interested in all things and not merely in building issues--that is, to

be an educated universalist. This is why he embarked on the trip around Europe in a search after

“truth,” which included gaining new experiences and new visual impressions. This trip and his

self-education gave him freedom from the stereotypes and conventions of the provincial

environment where he began.

Le Corbusier also very early became aware of the restraints and shortcomings of the art

and architecture academies of his time. To fight them, he left the art school in La-Chaux-de-

Fonds and went on a search after “real” knowledge gained through experience. He was aware

that in order to find true and pure knowledge he had to do something immediately. He wrote,

“Young people are too true: they cause disruption: they are excluded from the impervious

35
Menin and Samuel, 28.

22
enclosure within which a bourgeois society huddles.”36 Le Corbusier was disgusted with the

structure of contemporary society and rebelled against it. He was looking for something and did

not quite know yet what it was. He also admitted that this period was one of confusion and

despair, as it is for almost every teenager trying to understand the world of adults. Le Corbusier

fancied the emerging socialism, which was still an underground current that seemed very

progressive and enticing at the time, especially for young people. Nevertheless, he quickly

became disappointed with the socialists.37 This disappointment resulted in the constant search

for a system that would coincide with his ideas. He was hoping for a system that would be

radical enough to change the world. While waiting for the new system to emerge, he put the role

of a superhero on himself, and, like Nietzsche’s heroes, was convinced that he was destined to

change the world, with or without help from the politicians. That is why over the years he was

enthusiastically asking the American Taylorists, the Socialist Syndicalists, and later even the

Fascists for help.

Undoubtedly, Le Corbusier was a curious young man eager to learn more about

everything there was to learn but under his own conditions. He became a self-directed student.

He defined this anxious search for knowledge as a “search for the truth.” In his letter to

L’Eplattenier in 1907, Le Corbusier explains how he has to search for “la vérité elle-même”38

because he “will not be able to create until he knows.”39 In these young years, Le Corbusier

associated the concept of truth with knowledge, “pure” knowledge undistorted by the academic

establishment. He decided to gain knowledge through all possible means, refusing to limit

36
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 194.
37
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 194.
38
Le Corbusier to L’Eplattenier, The Education of Le Corbusier, Paul V. Turner (New York: Garland Publication,
1977), 53.
39
Le Corbusier’s inscription in his personal copy of Violle-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture
française du XIe au XVIe siècle, in The Education of Le Corbusier, Paul V. Turner (New York: Garland Publication,
1977), 54.

23
himself to the selective knowledge that formal education could offer. The path to discovery was

through books that were not required school literature, through travels around Europe, through

apprenticeships, museums, and archeological sites. Basically, he looked for the truth

everywhere. Later he remembered this youthful search as a painful and desperate struggle, as

such a search usually becomes: “A search for truth in libraries. Books. The books are endless –

where to begin? Suddenly one falls into a hole. It is dark and one can no longer make sense of

anything.”40 On the other hand, truth for Le Corbusier also meant knowing the secrets of nature,

the universal principles of nature that should be woven into all things around us, according to the

idealistic philosophy to which Le Corbusier was already leaning. This search for truth was not

for “truth” per se but for the principles that could help him define art and create true architecture.

In the end, he did believe in the universal principles of nature that underwrite everything and

should be applied in human creations as well.

However, Turner believes that the “search after truth” for Le Corbusier meant retreating

into thought, into one’s inner self and that this mystical self emphasis was a reflection of the

Nietzschean theory that a superhero must undergo sacrifice and self punishment in order to be

able to bring reconciliation to the chaotic world.41 Simon Richards similarly discusses how Le

Corbusier believed that “reliable knowledge” could only be found within the self. 42 Because of

this, Le Corbusier, from his young age throughout his entire life, dedicated half of the day to

painting intending to discover the visual abstract language buried deep inside his inner self.

Indeed, Le Corbusier believed that savages and little children make the most sincere and

beautiful drawings because they are unburdened with rules and regulations.

40
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 197.
41
Turner, 53-62.
42
Simon Richards, Le Corbusier and the Concept of Self (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 3.

24
 Although the authors above claim that Le Corbusier retreated into his inner self in order

to find the answers unconstrained with the academic knowledge, he did, after all, take classes in

architectural history, mathematics, statics, and the strength of materials from L’Ecole des Beaux

Arts while practicing for August Perret in Paris in 1908-1909.43 Le Corbusier also admired and

learned much from Perret who nevertheless had the Beaux Arts education. It turned out that the

formal education was necessary for Le Corbusier, although he was so strongly and passionately

against it. Perhaps the true knowledge he was so desperately trying to find was not just hidden in

the “real,” practical world or in one’s inner self but also in the academia. Accumulated

knowledge over the centuries surely meant something for Le Corbusier, and science and history

in particular, as taught in schools, were nevertheless the most powerful authorities for him.

Although against those of the established academy, formal rules and regulations were something

which Le Corbusier was also prescribing from the beginning of his career, for example the

Domino System, the Five Points of Architecture, and the Modulor.

While working in Perret’s office, Le Corbusier became acquainted with the traditions of

rationalism that were important in the Parisian architectural circles at the time. Auguste Perret

was the leading advocate for architectural rationalism, which meant that the architectural forms

should be shaped by the functional and constructional needs using contemporary materials and

construction technology.44 Perret’s architectural rationalism, which he executed in the new

medium of reinforced concrete, has roots in Viollet-le-Duc’s ideas, as well as in French

Classicism. Through Perret, rationalism influenced most of the modernist architects of the 1920s

in France and Italy, and one of them was, of course, Le Corbusier.

43
Francesco Passanti, “Architecture: Proportion, Classicism and Other Issues” in Le Corbusier before Le Corbusier:
Applied Arts, Architecture, Painting, and Photography, 1907-1922, Stanislaus von Moos and Arthur Ruegg, eds.,
69-98 (New York: The Bard Graduate Center, 2002), 78.
44
Turner, 47.

25
 Viollet-le-Duc’s theory of the so-called “structural truth” in architecture was very

appealing at the time due to the developing technologies of iron and reinforced concrete. For

him, truth in architecture meant the truthful expression of the requirements, materials, and

construction techniques:

There are in architecture…two indispensable modes in which truth must be adhered to.
We must be true in respect of the program, and true in respect of the constructive
processes. To be true in respect of the program is to fulfill exactly, scrupulously, the
conditions imposed by the requirements of the case. To be true in respect of the
constructive processes is to employ the materials according to their qualities and
properties. What are regarded as questions purely belonging to art, symmetry and
external form, are only secondary conditions as compared with those dominant
principles.45

He believed that the failure of 19th century architecture was due to neglect of this

principle of truth. He also said, “Laws based on geometry and calculation, and resulting from a

nice observation of the principles of statics, gradually give rise to true expression--sincerity.”46

Here we again come to mathematics as the underlying truth of architecture and all things, as in

the Renaissance but with different contexts. Before it was a religion of divine nature, and now, it

was a religion of science.

Auguste Perret also used the term “truth” to indicate the alliance of form with the means

of construction. In 1948 he was still carrying the same conviction: “It is only by the splendor of

truth that a building attains beauty. That which is true is everything that has the honor and the

burden to carry or to protect.”47 Thus, we see that Le Corbusier acquired in Perret’s office

nothing but the reinforcement of the idea of “truth” underlying architecture. Perret gave him the

satisfaction of confirming the ideas already existing in his mind. Nevertheless, Turner believes

45
Eugène-Emmanuel Violle-le-Duc, The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary,
selections, M.F. Hearn, ed., (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1990), 187.
46
Eugène-Emmanuel Violle-le-Duc, Entretiens sur l’Architecture , vol. 1, 1863, quoted in Words and Buildings: A
Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, Adrian Forty (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 299.
47
Auguste Perret, “M. Auguste Perret Visits the AA,” Architectural Association Journal, vol. 63, May 1948, 217-
225, quoted in Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, Adrian Forty (New York: Thames &
Hudson, 2000), 299.

26
that Perret’s rationalism, although it definitely made a huge impact on Le Corbusier, did not

erase the idealism already existing in him.48 Le Corbusier inherited from Perret, and indirectly

from Viollet le Duc, the system of architectural proportions taught at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

Although acquainted with geometrical proportions from his school at La-Chaux-de-Fonds,

proportions from this point onward became the most important principle in his art and

architectural works. In 1921 he called them the traces régulateurs--regulating lines; and later in

his life, in 1950, he published the book Le Modulor about the proportioning system he invented.

Le Corbusier also learned from Perret about classicism, its simplicity and beauty.

Perret’s attitude against decoration was very compelling to him, and yet Le Corbusier remained

ambivalent about classical concepts for a while. Francesco Passanti argues that Le Corbusier

finally solidified his thoughts on this in 1910 when he went to Germany.49 Classicism was

dominating in the contemporary German architectural circles. While working in Peter Behrens’s

office for several months in 1910, Le Corbusier saw how classicism could be incorporated with

modern technologies, new building materials, and industrial production. For Behrens the

essential principles of classicism, such as the existence of formal rules and types, should also be

the principles of modern building. In that way we would get universality and regularity,

attributes more linked with progressive societal values, as opposed to the individuality and

particularity advocated by the Art Nouveau Movement from the turn of the 20th century. Thus,

for Behrens, using proportions was just a tool that would help the buildings express ideals of

universality, a tool in a real modernist sense. This definitely made a huge impact on Le

Corbusier who nevertheless also retained his belief in the metaphysical value of proportions.

48
Turner, 52.
49
Passanti, 82.

27
 Le Corbusier also became acquainted with the ideas of Hermann Muthesius and the

Deutsche Werkbund. In 1914 he participated in the Deutsche Werkbund congress in Cologne

when the famous debate between Muthesius and Van de Velde took place. He particularly liked

Muthesius’s idea that architecture should express typical and universal forms, rather than the

individual and the particular, and that simple geometrical forms should satisfy this need. Also,

the idea about standardization and strong types in the building industry settled in Le Corbusier’s

mind because it was very suitable for the ideas he was already developing. Industrial

standardization of building elements for Le Corbusier seemed like a revelation, another piece of

the puzzle of representing truth in architecture.

These discoveries about the emerging ideas and trends in the contemporary architectural

world were like a revelation for Le Corbusier. His notes and letters to L’Eplattenier spoke about

his admiration and happiness for discovering the contemporary developments in the artistic,

architectural, and scientific world. Moreover, he blamed his teacher for not knowing anything

about the contemporary art revolution from the second half of the 19th century.50 Le Corbusier

was very euphoric about all the knowledge he was gaining and obviously felt that, gradually, he

had been finding the answers for his “search for truth.” Passanti also argues that after his sojourn

in Germany in 1910, Le Corbusier definitely rejected the Ruskinian aesthetic and two of its

major principles--“the emphasis on the individual invention and making” and “the importance of

truth.”51 While the former argument is valid, seen in his embrace of the universal and the

standardized, the latter is questionable. Le Corbusier’s reaction after visiting the 1910 exhibition

of the industrially produced building materials organized by the Deutsche Werkbund was,

50
Stanislaus von Moos, “Voyages en Zigzag” in Le Corbusier before Le Corbusier: Applied Arts, Architecture,
Painting, and Photography, 1907-1922, Stanislaus Moos von and Arthur Ruegg, eds., 23-43 (New York: The Bard
Graduate Center, 2002), 35.
51
Passanti, 82.

28
“There is enough there to seriously shake our principles about true and false. Anyhow, those

materials are very beautiful.”52 This statement does not prove that he abandoned the quest for

truth. Le Corbusier simply questioned the existing principles of what is considered to be true,

rather than the existence of the concept of truth itself. Moreover, we can conclude that from this

point onward, Le Corbusier was even more destined to find the right answers for the question of

what the truth was, or what true knowledge was. The inevitable industrial age born out of

science was definitely emitting a “truth” he had recently discovered, one piece of this big puzzle.

Le Corbusier’s determination in searching for the true principles of architecture resulted

in a second tour around Europe in 1911, when he visited the Balkans, Turkey, Greece, and Italy.

He admitted that those travels were “in quest of the lesson that will clarify my mind, and in an

attempt to capture the source of art, the reason for art, the role of art.”53 It is probable that the

most important part of this journey, except for his visit to Parthenon, was the visit to the

undeveloped countries of the Balkans and Turkey. He recalled, “I embarked on a great journey,

which was to be decisive, through the countryside and cities of countries still considered

unspoilt.”54 He definitely rejected the ideas of Ruskin and Morris about the picturesqueness of

these places, and instead reduced architecture to the “play of forms under light.” This is how he

enthusiastically describes his discovery:

The Turkey of Adrianople, Byzantium, of Santa Sophia or Salonica, the Persia of Bursa,
the Parthenon, Pompeii, then the Coliseum. Architecture was revealed to me.
Architecture is the magnificent play of forms under light. Architecture is a coherent
construct of the mind. Architecture has nothing to do with decoration. Architecture is in
the great buildings, the difficult and high-flown works bequeathed by time, but it is also

52
Le Corbusier quoted in Francesco Passanti, “Architecture: Proportion, Classicism and Other Issues” in Le
Corbusier before Le Corbusier: Applied Arts, Architecture, Painting, and Photography, 1907-1922, Stanislaus von
Moos and Arthur Ruegg, eds., 69-98 (New York: The Bard Graduate Center, 2002), 82.
53
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 206.
54
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 206.

29
 in the smallest hovel, in an enclosure-wall, in everything, sublime or modest, which
contains sufficient geometry to establish a mathematical relationship.55

It is usually considered that it was during his visit to the Parthenon that Le Corbusier

experienced the climax of his trip because he was so delighted by the Acropolis and the

Parthenon, and spent days in studying them, “caressing the stones.” In fact, as he mentioned in

the above citation and elsewhere, the visit to every site was equally important in forming his

attitude towards architecture and, consequently, the visual language of his art in general.

Unquestionable is the impact of the Monastery of Ema near Florence, which he visited in 1907,

on his later architectural and urban designs. Serbian folk architecture, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul,

and Mount Athos have the same level of importance for the formation of his architectural

language. In the vernacular architecture of the Balkans Le Corbusier saw the simplicity, unity,

and universality he was seeking. In Hagia Sophia he saw a composition made out of basic

geometrical shapes penetrating each other. On Mount Athos he realized the importance of

symbol and meaning. At the Parthenon he saw order. And, if there is such a thing as a climax of

his Voyage d’Orient, it might be his visit to Italy, to Pompeii and Rome, where among those

ancient ruins, he finally clearly saw the “truth:” the realization that geometric forms were

common to everything he saw. Everything could be characterized as a reduction to the abstract

forms and the play of horizontals, verticals, and volumes (Fig. 1). In the letter to his friend

William Ritter he wrote about this discovery:

I experiment clumsily with elementary geometry eager to understand it and eventually

master it. In their mad race, the blue and yellow have become white. I’m crazy about the
color white, the cube, the sphere, the cylinder, and the pyramid, and the undecorated disk,

55
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 207.

30
 and the wide open space. Prisms stand up, balance themselves, gain rhythm, and start
moving.56

Le Corbusier finally concluded that abstract forms and their relationships make the

meaning of architecture and the emotional response in the observer. This was the essence of

architecture he finally realized. In the 1920s the abstract forms he used were the basic

geometrical shapes, but latter in his life, the organic shapes and ambiguity as a relationship

between them became the essence of architecture, the “truth.” In 1956, he wrote in Le Poème de

l’Angle Droit, “God / incarnate / in / the illusion / the perception / of truth / perhaps / indeed.”57

Le Corbusier never in his life gave up on this postulate from 1912.

Figure 1. Illustration from the article “Sur la plastique” in L’Esprit Nouveau, no 1, 1920

Upon his return to La Chaux-de-Fonds, he tried to apply his ideas practically. They are

visible in the Dom-Ino construction system of 1914 and in the project for the Villa Schwob

(1916). The Dom-Ino system was Le Corbusier’s first attempt to unite symbolically all his

findings in architecture: standardization, industrial production of the construction elements,

56
Le Corbusier to William Ritter, in Françoise Ducros, “From Art Nouveau to Purism: Le Corbusier and Painting”
in Le Corbusier before Le Corbusier: Applied Arts, Architecture, Painting, and Photography, 1907-1922, Stanislaus
von Moos and Arthur Ruegg, eds., 133-141 (New York: The Bard Graduate Center, 2002), 134.
57
Le Corbusier, Le Poème de l’Angle Droit, translated by Kenneth Hylton, in Le Corbusier and the Architecture of
Reinvention, Tim Benton et al., 58-97 (London: AA Publications, 2003), 80.

31
simplicity, and basic, pure geometrical shapes. As Turner points out, the Domi-Ino system was

“in effect, philosophical idealism applied to architectural structure.”58 Le Corbusier wanted to

bring the building elements down to their essentials, to the basic and pure geometrical forms in

simple relationships to one another, despite the fact that the construction of this or that type

would not be so simple in execution and not very rational in terms of cost.

The Villa Schwob also reflects some of his theoretical ideas, such as classicism, volume,

proportions, balance, type, and use of the modern reinforced concrete frame. However, his ideas

about abstraction, relationships between forms, symbolism, and meaning, attained their full

ideological power and full visual expression only after his arrival in Paris in 1917, and his

encounter with Cubism and Ozenfant. He was finally able to define his search for truth with the

help of Purist theory.59

Purist or “golden” years

After the First World War, the artistic circles in Paris were divided into two factions: one

was for the return to the historic values and past visual languages, while the other was

progressive, demanding the embracing of products of the contemporary industrial age.60

Nevertheless, they concurred that there was an urgent need for establishing order in society.

During the reconstruction years of France, artists definitely felt a need to contribute with their

works to bring back the order and harmony in society. While some artists believed that a return

to the decorative arts was what society needed, others unquestionably believed in the power of

science and modern technologies. The situation in France brought back the 19th century

58
Turner, 126.
59
Françoise Ducros, “From Art Nouveau to Purism: Le Corbusier and Painting” in Le Corbusier before Le
Corbusier: Applied Arts, Architecture, Painting, and Photography, 1907-1922, Stanislaus von Moos and Arthur
Ruegg, eds., 133-141 (New York: The Bard Graduate Center, 2002), 136.
60
Alan Colquhoun, “Return to order: Le Corbusier and Modern Architecture in France 1920-35” in Modern
Architecture, 137-157 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 137.

32
idealistic belief that art could change the world. As normally is the case, things became

complicated, and, as Alan Colquhoun has put it, there appeared “technological Utopians like Le

Corbusier [who] invoked the spirit of classicism and geometry.”61

According to Carol S. Eliel, Purism emerged in 1918 after the First World War as a

response to the social and the aesthetic conditions of that time.62 The founders of the Purist

movement, Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, recognized that there was a need for physical

and visual clarification and purification of the world around them that had been devastated by the

war. Therefore, they started a movement in painting called Purism, which employed the spirit of

traditional classicism, pure and clear geometrical shapes, and machine aesthetics. However,

when the French economy improved and the conditions that triggered the movement receded, the

Purist movement ended, and the magazine that was expressing its ideas, L’Esprit Nouveau,

ceased publication in 1925.

Le Corbusier arrived in Paris in 1917 to settle there permanently, and very quickly

entered Parisian avant-garde circles. The most important acquaintance he made was with the

artist Amédée Ozenfant. Ozenfant was already a well-known figure in those circles, having

established the theory about Purism. He started in 1916 with the magazine L’Elan of which he

was the editor and where he published many articles about Cubism and Purism. He also

published in L’Elan the part from Plato’s Philebus where he talked about the beauty of pure

geometric forms.

Ozenfant based his art theory on the critique of Cubism and was in fact saying that

cubism is “a movement of purism” diminishing, thus, its importance and stressing its

61
Colquhoun, “Return to order,” 137.
62
Carol S. Eliel, L’Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 11-69.

33
shallowness in conception.63 He praised Cubism for its plastic qualities and for the

decomposition down to the basic geometric elements, but criticized its decorativeness. Cubism

for Ozenfant was “superficial” art as was, for example, Impressionism, because it appeals only to

the senses and not to the intellect or emotions. Consequently, Purist art is exactly that--art that

appeals to intellect and emotions. Ozenfant believed that being based on such attributes is what

makes art modern, contemporary. Alfred H. Barr made an interesting equation that explained the

relation of Purism to Cubism viewed in the eyes of Ozenfant and the Purists (Table 1).64

Impressionism : Neo-Impressionism = Cubism : Purism

Monet, Pissarro Seurat, Signac Picasso, Braque Ozenfant, Le Corbusier
Intuitive Rationalization Intuitive Rationalization
development development
Table 1. Relation of Purism to Cubism viewed in the eyes of the Purists

In addition to Cubism and Neo-Platonism, Ozenfant was also influenced to a certain

extent by Russian Constructivism, Dutch De Stijl, Italian Futurism, and as well by Dadaism. All

these movements from the 1910s are characterized by their fascination with modern

technologies, machines, and the new lifestyle they induce. But, while De Stijl and other

movements mentioned above were aware of the diminishing role of an artist in the emerging new

conditions of society, Purism maintained the elitist position for the artist arguing that the artist is

capable of solving modern problems by uniting opposing concepts--science and art, modern

technologies and classicism. Purism embraced scientific achievements along with idealistic

attitudes toward life, at the same time placing the sole artist into prominence. This contradictory

63
Françoise Ducros, “From Art Nouveau to Purism: Le Corbusier and Painting” in Le Corbusier before Le
Corbusier: Applied Arts, Architecture, Painting, and Photography, 1907-1922, Stanislaus von Moos and Arthur
Ruegg, eds., 133-141 (New York: The Bard Graduate Center, 2002), 136.
64
Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Cubism and Abstract Art (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 166.

34
unity of materialism and idealism marked the entire Modern Movement of the 1920s, and was, of

course, the target for all later attacks and critiques.

In 1920, Le Corbusier and Ozenfant formed the L’Esprit Nouveau monthly magazine in

which they expressed their ideas. The magazine was not just about a “new spirit” in the visual

arts but also about the “new spirit” in the lifestyle of the contemporary industrial society. All

articles are woven with an exhilarating enthusiasm for the new era and accompanied with ample

illustrations. The 28th and last issue was published in 1923. In the same year Le Corbusier

published the book Towards a New Architecture (Vers une Architecture) that contained a

compilation of his articles from L’Esprit Nouveau. Thanks to Le Corbusier’s writing style,

Towards a New Architecture became the most influential architectural book of the 20th century.

Also based on his articles from the L’Esprit Nouveau, there are other books: The City of

Tomorrow (Urbanisme, 1924), The Decorative Art of Today (L’Art Décoratif d’Aujourd’hui,

1925) and The Modern Painting (La Peinture Moderne, 1925). Le Corbusier expressed in these

books his theoretical ideas about architecture, urban planning, painting, and design. All of them

give a very important insight into his way of thinking and philosophy about art in general.

From all these texts, it is possible to conclude that Le Corbusier looked at the concept of

truth in architecture in several different ways. These led him, separately and holistically, to his

well-known concepts such as Neo-Platonic idealism, the synthesis of arts and industry, machine

aesthetics, ambiguity, and the other broad themes described above, which in turn further led him

to assign the formal rules by which he designed his buildings. These different types of “truths”

are:

1. The truth of nature--the idea that the ultimate truth resides in nature and is reflected in

the harmony revealed to us through mathematics and logic. Thus, scientific and

35
 rational methods need to be infused everywhere, even in art and architecture. This

interesting mixture of Neo-Platonic idealism and Rationalism led him to incorporate

basic geometrical shapes and mathematically derived proportioning systems in

architecture and painting.

2. The lyrical truth--in the romantic sense, truthful architecture must in fact “touch the

heart”65 and induce emotions. Le Corbusier wanted to raise architecture “to the level

of poetry.” True architecture thus speaks about relationships between shapes not with

words or sounds but with their revelation in light.

3. The ethical truth--stating that styles and decoration are lies, Le Corbusier asks for

pure geometrical shapes in architecture, which he calls noble and honest, devoid of

the trappings of surface application. He demands clarity, order, purity, and hygiene

in architecture, which could eventually lead to order in society.

4. The historical truth--the only true architecture that is eternal and constant is

architecture that is true to the spirit of its time (Zeitgeist). Therefore, true architecture

must accept industrialization and mechanization and their many derivations for its

functional, constructional, social, and aesthetic principles.

These four types of “truth” will be thoroughly analyzed and defined from a deeper

analysis of Le Corbusier’s writings. Thereafter, the key process of this research is to connect

them specifically with concepts that he derived from them and most importantly how he

translated them into the visual language of his works.

65
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, translated by Frederick Etchells, in combined edition Essential Le
Corbusier: L'Esprit Nouveau Articles (Oxford, Boston: Architectural Press, 1998), 153.

36
 1. The truth of nature

Le Corbusier believed that the ultimate truth resides in nature and is reflected in the

harmony revealed to us through mathematics and logic. The visual expression of mathematics is

geometry, which was Le Corbusier’s ultimate authority: “Geometry and gods sit side by side,” he

wrote.66 As discussed in the pervious chapter, this attitude is the result of the Neo-Platonism that

was instilled in Le Corbusier in his youth, and then reconfirmed after he met Ozenfant in Paris.

According to Renaissance Neo-Platonism of the 16th century, nature hides the eternal

truth. Art should therefore be a faithful representation of natural laws. For the Renaissance

painters and sculptors to represent nature truthfully was not such a difficult task, but architects

had difficulties in trying to achieve the eternal “truth.” Thus, the architectural thinkers from the

16th to the 18th century were mostly troubled with the truthful representation of nature in

architecture and were dedicated to the search for expressing universal laws.

Europeans of the 16th century believed in the divine origins of things. The notion of

divine origin was of such importance for them that they believed that one should look “behind

the surface in order to rediscover the truth [hidden] in things.”67 What they found “behind the

surface” were numbers and geometry. The key that gave insight into divinity was mathematics.

Mathematics became the underlying principle of everything. Although aware that architecture

creates an artificial reality, Renaissance architects saw no contradiction in architecture revealing

the truth of nature through harmonic proportions. Therefore, it can be said that in the 16th

century building proportion was not purely an aesthetic phenomenon. It contained a much

deeper meaning for them than being simply a handy prescription for designing aesthetically

66
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 112.
67
Wittkower, 101-154.

37
pleasing buildings. The visual form, and the pleasure it might evoke, were at the time not

separate from science, as will have happened later in the 18th century.

With the scientific revolution of the 17th century, the belief in the all-pervading divine

order and harmony that existed from Pythagoras to the late 16th century began to disintegrate.

The major reason lies in the development of natural sciences based on direct observation and the

application of reason. The idea of applying the rational methods of intellectual inquiry spread

into the all spheres of life and culture. This period in the history was termed the Enlightenment.

Rationality banished tradition and superstition. In philosophy, it produced the new concept of

clear-headed, reflective, and self-critical thinkers that are more concerned with timeless,

universal matters of philosophical theory arrived at by reason. Stephen Toulmin recognizes

these happenings as the reversal of Renaissance values and accepts the term “counter-

Renaissance” for these 17th century intellectual changes.68

In the 17th century, emphasis was placed on general abstract theory and universal

principles divorced from concrete problems of practice. It was believed that abstract and general

ideas by which particulars can be connected together would lead to the understanding of nature.

For Descartes, the aim was to unveil timeless structures that lay beneath all the changing

phenomena of Nature. The idea of deriving universal solutions to particular problems relied very

much on Plato’s philosophy. However, only with Descartes came the separation of senses and

intellect, of body and mind, which significantly influenced the entire course of thinking since the

17th century and became the basic paradigm of modern philosophy.

The architectural thinker Carlo Lodoli was the first to develop a new notion of

architectural truth in a sense that architecture should rest on principles arrived at by reason rather

than on the ancient traditions based on belief in the divine. According to Lodoli’s rational

68 Toulmin, 24.

38
principle, architecture consists of two parts: function and representation. Function is the

structural and static property of the building and its materials. Representation is the visual

component, the outward appearance. Therefore, “truth” would be the unity of function with

representation. Lodoli stressed the importance of materials and the notion that, for architecture

to be truthful, its ornaments must be consistent with the materials in which they are made. In the

18th century, Abbe Laugier, like Lodoli, wanted to clear architecture of the stylistic conventions

and symbolic themes of the time and establish general principles arrived at by reason which are

“natural.” Architecture should accord with the structural logic of the “primitive hut.” He did not

in fact call this the “truth,” but the “natural” principle, which, however, was not very different

from Lodoli’s concept of architectural truth.

Le Corbusier was aware of both idealistic and rationalistic ideologies. As a result, he

created the contradicting but interesting synthesis of idealistic Neo-Platonism and scientific

Rationalism. Le Corbusier’s theory of architecture was established on the belief in eternal

principles and natural laws. On the other hand, these eternal principles and natural laws rest on

logic as does human reason. This is how he arrived at his enormous confidence in the power of

human reason and therefore at his great admiration for engineers.

Although engineers’ primary motivation is not to find out the hidden truth of nature since

their primary intention is to construct a bridge or a liner, they nevertheless unknowingly and

unintentionally use and therefore reflect the underlying mathematical order of the universe. In

doing this, they further unknowingly and unintentionally impose mathematical order onto the

people who use their products and who unknowingly also receive it and accept it in everyday

life. Thus, Le Corbusier saw engineers as initiators or at least major contributors to the process

of establishing the rational organization of society. As a logical conclusion, Le Corbusier

39
insisted that architects as well have to rely on mathematical and logical principles in order to

uncover the truth in architecture, which would then also be capable of contributing to the

establishment of a more ordered and rationally organized society. Le Corbusier convincingly

and theatrically expressed this belief in his book Towards a New Architecture: “We shall not

rediscover the truths of architecture until new bases have established a logical ground for every

architectural manifestation.”69 In this period, Le Corbusier strongly believed that the engineers

were the only ones that had the right to call themselves the experts of nature and the

connoisseurs of truth. For some reason architecture was dragging behind and, therefore, needed

to “rediscover” the truth, which was already present in her as it was in all the things around us.

Engineering and architecture thus should have the same roles and be equally capable of

expressing the ultimate truth of nature.

In Towards a New Architecture Le Corbusier says, “The scientist’s truth and the artist’s

beauty are expressions of the fatal order that sounds within us a perfect chord.”70 His distinction

between the “scientist’s truth” and the “artist’s beauty” reflects the classical distinction between

an objective world and a subjective artist. For Le Corbusier though they are the expressions of

the same idea from different perspectives. The artists knowingly seek and passionately long for

the images of the ideal, the beauty, which for Le Corbusier is a notion very closely related to the

notion of truth. However, unlike scientists, artists lack the right tool for this search--the rational

methods of inquiry. Only artists who use this tool will find the true beauty hidden in nature.

Even later in his life when he considerably changed his attitudes towards architecture and

its visual language, Le Corbusier still held on to some old beliefs from his young years. He

69
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 63.
70
Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, After Cubism, translated by John Goodman, in L’Esprit
Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925, Carol S. Eliel, 129-167 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 153.

40
might have abandoned the internationalist Rationalism imbued with Platonic idealism already in

1930 when he returned to regionalist ideas, but his yearning for the truth of architecture, for the

secrets that underlie architecture and the visible world stayed with him until his death. For

example, in the interview from 1959 he still talked about the ultimate laws of nature and its

harmony:

I have had a weakness for seashells ever since I was a boy. There is nothing as beautiful
as a seashell. It is based on the law of harmony, and the idea behind it is very simple. It
develops in a spiral or it rays out, both in the interior and exterior. You can find these
objects everywhere. The point is to see them, to observe them. They contain the laws of
nature and that is the best instruction.71

As we can see here, his belief in the ultimate truth that resides in nature did not change over the

years, rather only the visual language of his art. Somehow the “truth” he saw in nature did not

consist any longer of straight lines and right angles, but rather of curves, which interestingly

enough were also part of geometry and also complied with mathematical laws.

Another strong proof for this argument is his development of the proportioning system

called the Modulor, published in 1948 and then revised in 1955. He still believed in this period

that there had to be an underlying, unifying principle for designing architecture that would make

it harmonious and, therefore, truthful to the higher authority of nature that surrounds us.

Moreover, scientists were still “gods,” he believed. He still admired them greatly because they

were the ones who knew the truth of nature; otherwise, he would not have gone to visit Albert

Einstein in 1946 to ask him for an affirmation of the Modulor.

As we see, Le Corbusier’s inspiration throughout his entire career was the search for truth

and for the underlying universal principles of architecture. This motive was later the clearest

target for the critiques of his architectural theory and buildings. For example, Alan Colquhoun

71
Le Corbusier quoted in The Oral History of Modern Architecture: Interviews with the Greatest Architects of the
Twentieth Century, John Peter (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994), 149.

41
writes in his article “The Significance of Le Corbusier” that, “If in so many ways Le Corbusier

was deluded, his delusion was that of the philosopher-architect for whom architecture, precisely

because of the connection which it implies between the ideal and the real, was the expression of

the profoundest truths.”72

2. The lyrical truth

Aside from statements about architecture complying with the natural laws in order to

radiate the ultimate truth, Le Corbusier often said that architecture, as any other type of art, must

draw from the emotional side of human nature as well. After all the statements where he

passionately says that architecture must be reasonable and logical because reason and logic are

reflections of the ultimate truth, Le Corbusier is now passionately saying that precisely passion

and emotion must govern architecture. Furthermore, true architecture must “touch the heart” and

induce emotions. Statements like, “Art is inseparable from being. It is intimately linked to the

movements of our heart,”73 sound almost phenomenological. However, soon afterward he would

keep elaborating on scientific and reasonable approaches to art and architecture.

In the book The Decorative Art of Today (1925), a chapter entitled “The Sense of Truth”

discusses the way he sees the relationship between feelings and reason. Surprisingly, or perhaps

unsurprisingly, feelings and reason are to him inseparable. Discussing the confronting views of

Diogenes and the Sophists about what is essential and what is superfluous and what serves a

purpose and what moves us, Le Corbusier concludes that only things made with both feelings

and reason are the true objects that can be called art.74 Nothing else is art. If we use just feeling

in creation we have decorative art, and if we use only reason we have the object that only serves

72
Alan Colquhoun, “The Significance of Le Corbusier,” in Le Corbusier, H. Allen Brooks, ed., 17-26 (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1987), 25.
73
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 118.
74
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 166.

42
a purpose. Therefore, the truth is somewhere in between. This is how he explains it: “Feeling is

never extinguished by reason. Reason gives feeling the purified means it needs to express itself

in its essentials.”75 In real artwork a “sense of truth” must be felt, that is, a sense of emotion and

of logic. Even though he says that the truth lies somewhere between the opposing forms and that

it is in fact both of them in tandem, Le Corbusier is still far from any phenomenological

interpretation. Clearly, he was very well influenced by the paradigms of Modernity because

there remains the evident distinction between emotion and reason. They work together; they are

inseparable as a pair, but they are not one.

Le Corbusier’s concept of the lyrical truth comes from the 19th century concept of

expressive truth. It actually appeared during the Romantic Movement in the late 18th century.

The English writer and critic John Ruskin was the greatest promoter of expressive truth in the

field of architecture. In “The Lamp of Life,” he wrote that architecture had to demonstrate the

spirit and character of its makers, and its quality lay in “the vivid expression of the intellectual

life which has been concerned in their production.”76 The notion that architecture is the outward

expression of the individual and of society is also a theme of many architectural theories from

the first half of the 20th century.

To elaborate further on Le Corbusier’s influence from the classical distinction between

reason and emotion, between object and subject, we will pay attention more closely to his

theoretical statements about this matter. Reason and emotion were not distinct and opposite

notions for him, even though they were two separate entities. For Le Corbusier, reason leads to

creation, creation induces emotion, and emotion and passion definitely trigger the process of

thinking, which makes a circular interaction between these two entities. For example, while

75
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 168.
76
Ruskin, 149.

43
talking about the great historical pieces of art, Le Corbusier says, “Intelligence and passion; there

is no art without emotion, no emotion without passion.”77 Great artists of humankind were

people of great intelligence and great passion. By using their intellect, they produced great

pieces of art which move us and induce emotion. Further Le Corbusier explains how great

pieces of architecture, which for him is art, such as Parthenon or Michelangelo’s St. Peter’s

Church, are careful and thoughtful creations governed by reason, for they are all results of

carefully thought-out proportions, rhythms, relationships of masses, and other principles deduced

from reasoned thinking. Speaking about architecture of the 1920s, Le Corbusier is optimistic

that this “lyrical truth” that was lost in the 19th century will return:

At the present time when the arts are feeling their way and when painting, for
instance, is finding little by little the formulas of a healthy mode of expression and so jars
violently on the spectator, the Parthenon gives us sure truths and emotion of a superior
mathematical order. Art is poetry: the emotion of the senses, the joy of the mind as it
measures and appreciates, the recognition of an axial principle which touches the depth of
our being.78

Therefore, simply knowing the profoundest truth of mathematical order in nature induces great

emotions in us, let alone using it for creating art. It can at least be argued that Le Corbusier

definitely had the passion for mathematical order which he believed was the ultimate truth and

which excited him so much. Such excitement can be felt while reading his L’Esprit Nouveau

articles and was undoubtedly much more meaningful and powerful for artists of the 1920s.

André Wogenscky claims that Le Corbusier’s true architecture was guided by the

principles of beauty and poetry, the opposite of the usual apprehension of Le Corbusier’s

viewpoint that architecture ought to be utterly functional.79 More precisely, architecture is

beautiful only if it is permeated with sentiments. Indeed, if we look at Le Corbusier’s definitions

77
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 164.
78
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 221.
79
André Wogenscky, “Unité d’Habitation at Marseille,” translated by Stephen Sartarelli, in Le Corbusier, H. Allen
Brooks, ed., 116-125 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987), 123.

44
of architecture from his L’Esprit Nouveau articles, we can see that true architecture has to do

with the poetical side of human nature. Definitions of architecture such as “Architecture is a

thing of art, a phenomenon of the emotions, lying outside questions of constructions and beyond

them”80 or “Architecture goes beyond utilitarian needs”81 are repeated throughout the book

Towards a New Architecture. However, for Le Corbusier the utilitarian side of architecture,

which evolves from the concept of the Zeitgeist, or the concept of historical truth explained later

in the text, was undoubtedly extremely important. Truthful architecture must be perfectly

functional and standardized so it can be industrially produced which was an unquestionable

demand of the contemporary industrial age. However, in order to become an art, architecture

must comply with poetic principles, it must be expressive and induce emotions.

Wogenscky further explains in his article that Le Corbusier found the poetry in

architecture in the play of volumes and proportions.82 That is why he invented a proportioning

system called the Modulor. Beauty for him became the matter of plastic attributes of architecture

and he was in a constant search for them. Le Corbusier’s essential interest in philosophical ideas

over the years always resulted in a constant effort to translate them into the concrete objects of

art.

However, aside from the play of volumes and proportions, there is one more feature of

architecture that became essential in achieving poetic beauty: light. Light is what makes

architecture poetic: architecture is “a thought which reveals itself without word or sound, but

solely by means of shapes which stand in a certain relationship to one another. These shapes are

such that they are clearly revealed in light.”83 The concept of light in Le Corbusier’s theory of

80
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 19.
81
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 4.
82
Wogenscky, 123.
83
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 153.

45
architecture has deeper meaning than just being a visual design category. Like others of his

fundamental theories, it is closely connected with Platonist idealism. As in Plato’s allegory of

the cave, light for Le Corbusier had a special association with the idea of truth.

3. The ethical truth

The concept of true architecture in the structural and functional sense appeared in the 17th

century with the rise of Rationalism. Carlo Lodoli was the first to demand that architecture

showed be based on reason and thus stripped of all trivialities. He demanded honest architecture

true to its structural necessities and functional needs. Lodoli’s theory of architecture became

very influential in the 19th century, although it had developed into many variations. One line was

developed through Viollet-le-Duc and Auguste Perret, and reflected the quest for structural and

functional truth in architecture in a utilitarian and ethical sense. This search became the major

highlight of Modern Architecture of the first half of the 20th century. For Example, Walter

Gropius followed this same line of thought:

A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigor and
consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically
transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities, as befits a direct affirmation of our
contemporary world of mechanization and rapid transit.84

The other line of development appeared in England with A.W.N. Pugin’s book The True

Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture published in 1841. Pugin demanded the

structural truth of architecture but was inspired by religious doctrines. The Gothic architecture

of the Middle Ages fulfilled Pugin in his quest for religious truthfulness. Unlike Gothic

architecture, picturesque Neo-Gothic buildings of his time, as well as other styles, were

unacceptable because of their religious and structural untruths. They were also “immoral”

because Pugin linked admiration of this picturesque, untruthful architecture with the decay of

84
Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, translated by P. Morton Shand (Cambridge,
Massachussetts: The MIT Press, 1965), 82.

46
society. His great successors in linking art with morals and were politics John Ruskin and

William Morris.

Le Corbusier accepted both currents in a way, although neither fully in their original

ideologies. He was asking for the structural truth only when he was speaking about the 19th

century styles and their borrowed or concealed structural and functional schemes. For Le

Corbusier, honesty to the programmatic and utilitarian needs was more important. Concerning

utilitarian functionalism, efficiency in construction came to light. Furthermore, Le Corbusier

was also very influenced by Ruskin’s notion of morality in architecture. While Ruskin was

demanding honest and true expression of artists for the moral benefit of their society, Le

Corbusier demanded efficiency and order in construction for the benefit of the structural

recovery of the society. Although it seems that Le Corbusier had opposite attitudes toward

architecture from John Ruskin, he nevertheless had many similar basic beliefs and approaches.

Aside from finding the authority in nature, Le Corbusier used a Ruskian form of rhetoric in his

books, such as: “A question of morality; lack of truth is intolerable, we perish in untruth.”85

Le Corbusier, like many artists of the Modern Movement, believed that design could

change the world. He believed that if architecture were permeated with truth, honesty, and order,

it would influence the people. This is how we would have a better society: “Where order reigns,

well being begins … such is the result of a plan.”86 He also demanded clarity, purity, and

hygiene in architecture, which were in fact all attributes that he desired for the future society.

The tools for achieving these attributes are scientific methods of analysis, organization, and

85
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 13.
86
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 54.

47
classification. Regarding building construction, “the best utilization of forces and materials with

the least waste”87 would contribute to the realization of these goals.

Symbolically, purity and hygiene in architecture are achieved through the white color. It

gives us the sense of truth because against the color of white everything else appears “as it is.”

The white color is “the eye of truth”88 and implies cleanliness and morality. It is so powerful

that if used everywhere it will automatically affect people’s lives and improve society. This is

how Le Corbusier sees it: “Then comes inner cleanness, for the course adopted leads to refusal to

allow anything at all which is not correct, authorized, intended, desired, thought-out: no action

before thought. … Once you have put ripolin on your walls you will be master of yourself.”89

Furthermore, the white color implies no lies or dishonesty. In many different ways Le Corbusier

saw the color white as the perfect symbol of truth, an answer to his search for a way to translate

the concept of ethical truth into the visual principle of his architecture.

4. The historical truth

Viollet-le-Duc in his Entretiens sur l’Architecture (1858-72) posed a very significant

question that provoked many debates in the architectural circles of the 19th and early 20th

centuries: “Is the 19th century destined to close without possessing an architecture of its own?”90

This question produced increasing attentiveness to the concept of the Zeitgeist, and the belief that

architecture should be true to the spirit of its own age. This concept became crucial for many of

the early Modernist architects. In fact, it became the leitmotif of the Modern Movement in the

early 20th century. For example, Mies van der Rohe wrote in his article “Building Art and the

Will of the Epoch” in 1924:

87
Ozenfant and Jeanneret, After Cubism, 147.
88
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 190.
89
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 188.
90
Eugène-Emmanuel Violle-le-Duc, Entretiens sur l’Architecture , vol. 1, 1863, quoted in Words and Buildings: A
Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, Adrian Forty (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 303.

48
 Greek temples, Roman basilicas and mediaeval cathedrals are significant to us as creation
of a whole epoch rather than as works of individual architects. … They are pure
expressions of their time. Their true meaning is that they are symbols of their epoch. …
Our utilitarian buildings can become worthy of the name of architecture only if they truly
interpret their time by their perfect functional expression.91

Historical truth was particularly important for Modernist historians, such as Sigfried

Giedion and Nikolaus Pevsner, whose aims were to prove that modern architecture was indeed

historically destined and should take precedence over the many historically derived styles that

were still actively in use at the time.

Le Corbusier was one of the followers of this typical Modernist concept of architecture

being true to the spirit of its time, and even became its loudest promoter in the early 1920s. In

his book Vers une Architecture he frequently states that the 19th century “styles are a lie” and

demands a new “style” which would be of our own epoch, reflecting a new “spirit of

construction and of synthesis guided by a clear conception.” 92 By the “clear conception” Le

Corbusier of course means a conception based on logic and mathematics that is ultimately

capable of producing order, as explained alone in the section “The truth of nature.” For him,

persons who are guided by these clear conceptions, although not aware of it, are businessmen,

engineers, and other specialized individuals. They unknowingly create the contemporary

aesthetics or the style of their own time. The fact that they are making “the real works of art”

makes them perhaps the only true artists of the time, for the most of actual artists were very

preoccupied with the reproduction of old styles which are, allegedly, untruthful.

The idea that architecture should be true to its own time originates from Hegel’s theory

that history as a whole is not a random series of events, but follows a plan, a pattern, that can be

uncovered by reason. The entire history of art follows the same pattern of development

91
Mies van der Rohe, “Baukunst und Zeitwille,” Der Querschnitt, 4, 1924, 31-32, quoted in Mies van der Rohe,
Philip C. Johnson (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1978), 191-192.
92
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 89.

49
(beginning, progress, perfection, growth, blossoming, and decay). In this way, Hegel attributes a

special capacity to art by saying that art can reveal the truth that underlies the entire process of

history. Any work not conforming to the characteristics of the historical stage to which it

belonged might be considered not only as untruthful but also as valueless in the historical sense.

Le Corbusier was clearly aware of Hegel’s philosophy and other German idealistic

thoughts of the 19th century. Numerous statements in the book After Cubism are direct

reflections of such an influence on his theory of architecture. For example, the claim that

“History proves that the only art to survive its era is the art truly rooted in its time”93 is evidence

that Le Corbusier was highly influenced by 19th century German idealist historicism. Alan

Colquhoun in his article “The Significance of Le Corbusier” explains how he combined two

contradictory theories, German idealist historicism and the earlier 17th century classical idealism,

and made of them a new system in which the two theories perfectly coincided with one with

another, at least in his own mind.94 Conflict between these two idealist traditions did not exist

for Le Corbusier. He strongly believed that by uniting them he had reached the universal truth

which seemed so logical. In accordance with the 17th century classical idealism, Le Corbusier

believed that the true architectural value rested on the universal laws of nature. In accordance

with 19th century idealist historicism, he also believed that at the same time it had to emerge

through the prism of historical reality, thus giving the architectural object a proper visual

manifestation that is true to its time and to the level of historical development on the

evolutionary ladder. Colquhoun criticizes Le Corbusier for trying to unite such conflicting ideas,

93
Ozenfant and Jeanneret, After Cubism, 132.
94
Colquhoun, “The Significance of Le Corbusier,” 17-26.

50
or that is to say, for trying to be an amateur philosopher who aspired to proclaim some

fundamental truths.95

Le Corbusier believed that each historical period had its norms, that the current period in

history has to have an appropriate expression in the visual objects that surround us. In his

opinion, this is how folk culture is established. He was fascinated on his travels by the folk

cultures of Eastern Europe and disappointed by the non-existence of authentic folk culture: “Folk

culture no longer exists, only ornament on mass-produced junk. Everywhere!”96 In his opinion,

modern folk culture had to be shaped by industrial production and economic validation.

However, Le Corbusier stressed that not all industrial products were beautiful. He considered

beautiful only those industrially produced things that were not decorated. Unsurprisingly, during

the time of the aesthetic agitation that emerged after the First World War, the only hope he saw

was in the youth: “The young generations are born to the new light and turn naturally and with

enthusiasm to the simple truths.” 97

Throughout his L’Esprit Nouveau articles, Le Corbusier was raging against the

contemporary lifestyle that was not in accord with the possibilities of industrial society. He

extensively wrote about unnecessary decorations that congest exteriors as well as interiors of our

buildings, or small and nonfunctional windows that bring in little light and almost no fresh air

while the contemporary systems of building construction allow the entire wall to be made of

glass. He also talks about other products of the contemporary industrial era such as automobiles,

modern highways, airplanes, and other machines that were undoubtedly improving the quality of

life. These products were very slowly entering people’s lives in the 1920s and, more

importantly, people’s minds. Le Corbusier took the opportunity at the 1925 Exhibition of

95
Colquhoun, “The Significance of Le Corbusier,” 25.
96
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 57.
97
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 95.

51
Decorative Arts to directly criticize society of the time and show how people could live by

modern standards: his decisively modern Pavilion L’Esprit Nouveau induced numerous

controversies immediately upon opening, and continued to do so until the end of the 20th century

when critics started reexamining the role and significance of the Modern Movement in

Architecture of the first half of the 20th century.

52
 4. Le Corbusier’s Purist artworks

After meeting Ozenfant and joining the Purists upon his arrival in Paris in 1919, Le

Corbusier finally started defining the language of truthful architecture. Many of his beliefs,

aspirations, and questions coincided with Ozenfant’s, as described above in Chapter 3. Le

Corbusier enjoyed very much being a part of the intellectual circle of Paris and put all his energy

into it. This period is characterized by extensive thinking and writing and scarcely any building.

As discussed earlier, Le Corbusier’s search for truth in architecture consisted of two

parts. The first part was to find general principles of architecture that make it true architecture.

While contemplating what truthful architecture is, Le Corbusier was actually differentiating

unconsciously among four types of truth as explained in Chapter 3. The second part of his quest

was actually to find a way to translate these abstract principles into the visual language of his art.

This chapter deals with the second, more practical side of Le Corbusier’s primordial inquiry.

While addressing the general ideas of Purism, I analyze how Le Corbusier’s quest for

fundamental truth found its way into Purist ideas and how he translated these ideas further into

Purist design applicable to his painting, architecture, and urbanism of the 1920s. Instead of

separately analyzing particular artworks, I deal with all of them together because they are all

based on the same general principles. Emphasis is placed on formal language, such as the choice

of themes and objects, methods, rules of composition, and other elements.

General Purist ideas and design concepts

In 1918 Le Corbusier and Ozenfant published the joint work After Cubism where they

criticized Cubism and at the same time set down the foundations for a “new art.” 98 Although

they expressed respect for Cubism because it had introduced the tendency toward simplicity and

purity, they accused Cubism of the total misapprehension of the essence of art. For the Purists,
98
Ozenfant and Jeanneret, After Cubism, 129-167.

53
Cubism turned out to be in fact just ornamental art; the Cubist paintings were “like carpets.”

Real art must seek and show the invariability of nature. This is the first type of “truth” from Le

Corbusier’s search which coincided with the Purist main principle of the “new art.” In order to

achieve truthful art that expresses the constants of nature, the methods must be scientific--

reasonable and analytical. Le Corbusier and Ozenfant saw no contradiction between art and

science because both expressed the laws of nature although in different forms. Therefore, Purist

art should aim toward rationalization and purification of its plastic language.

Another major assault on Cubism was for attempting to express the fourth dimension

when “it is absurd to claim to express [in painting] dimensions other than those perceived by our

senses.”99 Euclidian space became the great obsession of the Purists. Paintings were the means

for exploring space, for playing with axonometry. In this way, the Purist paintings had an

explicit and implicit connection with architecture.

Since they were influenced by science, the Purists favored the intellectualized creation of

painting, i.e. rationalized and well thought-out, instead of spontaneous and instinctive as had

been deemed usual in painting. They believed that “a work should be completely set in the

mind”100 and be a result of conscious and precise choices, as in the case of ancient Greek art.

Art, together with science and industry, was understood to be ruled by reason. Therefore, they

favored the machine and engineering aesthetics. Art and science have the same goal--the

expression of natural laws through the search for constants or invariables. Naturally then, the

major concepts of Purism became the concepts of clarity, expressiveness, and universality.

The theoretical background of Purist concepts can be found in Plato’s philosophy. The

way to transform and translate these into the visual language of art was found in the use of

99
Ozenfant and Jeanneret, After Cubism, 136.
100
Ozenfant and Jeanneret, After Cubism, 151.

54
geometry and mathematics. The Purists relied on the part of Plato’s Philebus where he talked

about the beauty of pure and simple geometric forms. The Purists’ favorite object was the cube,

as the association of the values of virtue, truth, and science. In this way, Le Corbusier and

Ozenfant added one more trait to Purism--symbolism. The objects and elements they used for

the composition of their art works had metaphorical roles.

Translation into the formal elements of painting and architecture

Le Corbusier built up the universal visual language for all types of art. After all, he did

believe in the synthesis of all arts simply because he believed they were all dependent on the

same universal principles that underlay nature. This is

the reason for many connections and parallels between

all the different types of art with which he dealt.

Although Purism was primarily a movement in

painting, it undoubtedly influenced Le Corbusier’s

architecture, urbanism, and furniture design of the

1920s. However, the question arises as to whether or

not it was actually the other way around since, in the

Purist manifesto After Cubism, Le Corbusier and

Ozenfant used architectural concepts in discussing

Figure 2. Still Life with Red Violin, 1920
paintings. Nevertheless, the process of developing the

language of Purist painting was happening simultaneously with that of architecture, as well as of

design and urban planning. If we add to this the fact that Le Corbusier precisely divided his day

into two parts (mornings were dedicated to painting, afternoons were dedicated to architecture),

55
it becomes obvious that painting, architecture, and all other art forms need to be looked at

together as the means of exploring and expressing ideas.

There are many examples of how the formal language of painting directly resembles that

of architecture. For example, in Le Corbusier’s Still Life with Red Violin from 1920, the fluted

glass resembles the Doric column, the open book recalls the architectural molding, the stack of

plates is reminiscent of a column, or pipes (Fig. 2). Even in 1936, Alfred H. Barr made an

interesting comparison between Le Corbusier’s architecture and painting--the contours of a

guitar from the paintings can be seen in the outline of the terrace from the Villa Savoye as well

as in the armchair (Fig. 3).101 This induces the question of whether or not painting influenced

architecture or vice versa. Goeffrey H. Baker believes that painting was the prime source for the

development of Le Corbusier’s aesthetic language. Painting gave him the freedom for

exploration and imagination, whereas architecture was limited by the economy, practical

problems of construction, and numerous regulations.102 Nevertheless, it is most likely that this

Figure 3. Illustrations from Alfred H. Barr’s Cubism and Abstract Art, pages 164-165

101
Barr, Jr., 163-166.
102
Geoffrey H. Baker, Le Corbusier, the Creative Search: the formative years of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold; London: E & FN Spon, 1996), 243-246.

56
explanation and imagination were, for Le Corbusier, just the means of searching for the plastic

values and “invariable laws,” so that this mutual language developed simultaneously in the

process of making various types of art works.

1. Themes and objects

Le Corbusier accepted the idea from the Purists that only basic geometric shapes (the

sphere, the cube, the cylinder, the tetrahedron, the parallelepiped) were beautiful. In fact, he had

come to this conclusion much earlier while on his travels around Europe, although Purism

allowed him to more clearly formulate and articulate this claim. The reason why basic geometric

shapes were the only beautiful shapes was that they radiated the “truth of nature.” They

contained in themselves everything Le Corbusier saw as the underlying laws of nature: numbers,

harmonic proportions, abstraction, simplicity, and much more.

As expected, his paintings, buildings, and urban projects were composed out of these

basic geometric elements. Objects depicted on his still life paintings were reduced to basic

forms, and in a parallel manner, the structural elements of his buildings represented the same:

columns were pure cylinders, the entire house was usually “the cube,” the system of construction

followed a rectangular grid. Furthermore, Le Corbusier completely removed the ornamentation

from buildings reducing them to pure and clean surfaces and volumes. In the paintings, although

reduced to abstract geometric forms, the objects can still be recognized for what they are

actually, and that was his deliberate intention.

The objects Le Corbusier depicted on his paintings were simple, everyday objects. His

plea for purification, clarification, and invariability led him to represent the general characters of

everyday objects, not their uniqueness and individual characteristics. The aim was

generalization and universalization, so he wanted to show “what is invariable in form, what is

57
permanent, what endures.”103 For showing this “truth,” Le Corbusier used only a certain number

of objects for his paintings, and they were mainly containers (vases, glasses, bottles, plates,

pipes, and guitars and violins). He named them object-types, because through their long

evolution they evolved to provide the maximum capacity and strength. Therefore, being

produced in the factories with all the laws dictated by the economic market, they were the most

efficient and utilitarian objects. Le Corbusier translated this concept of object-types from

painting into architecture as the concept of standardization and mass-production of construction

elements. Standardized construction elements became a necessity in the contemporary industrial

age not just because of the financial benefits they would bring to people and society in general,

but since, according to Le Corbusier, it was a possibility that could not have been rejected. The

stubborn usage of past construction techniques and methods would simply not be true to the

contemporary evolutionary development or the Zeitgeist and hence conflict in society would

arise. These concepts represent another type of truth--the “historical truth” that is based on the

truthfulness to the contemporary industrial age, as well as the “ethical truth.”

Le Corbusier more literally presented these object-types in the actual buildings as

washbasins and bidets, which according to him achieved the maximum utilization and reduction

to only necessary and, of course, pure geometric shapes by means of industrial production.

Washbasins and bidets also symbolically represented the necessity of cleanness and purification,

and were placed usually in the entrance hall of Le Corbusier’s Purist houses (Fig. 4). These

concepts of cleanness and purification represent the third type of truth--the “ethical truth.” As

true architecture had to affect people in a positive sense by bringing more order and hygiene into

their lives and eventually in to society, placing a washbasin at the entrance of a house would

bring it one step closer to the goal of being ethical.

103
Ozenfant and Jeanneret, After Cubism, 161.

58
 The Purists aimed for non-representational art, so they favored plastic art over narrative

paintings. They believed that this concept existed for a long time in the history of art, and that

the Cubists went “the farthest down that path,” but they did not understand it completely. Only

Purists understood this entirely, because they searched for the invariable laws of art, the same

that existed in nature. They also stated that,

This return to the elements of art, to simple sensation--in the guise of pure form, pure
color--was necessary. There was too much literature in painting; but let’s not mistake the
means for the end. The tool is ready: using raw elements, we must construct works that
make the intellect respond; it is this response that matters.104

Therefore, with raw elements, they would achieve

simple sensation, but that is precisely why they thought

this art was superior to ornamental and narrative art.

Basic forms and relationships between them produce a

certain emotional response, and that was what

ultimately mattered for Le Corbusier and the Purists.

To induce a certain feeling in the viewers, to give them

knowledge of order and harmony, would make

painting, or architecture, truthful. Here is how le

Figure 4. Wash basin in the entrance hall, Corbusier explained the importance and significance of
Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1929-1931
pure, and thus perfect, forms: “The perfect object is a

living organism; it is animated by the spirit of truth … the true object shines with power;

between one true object and another interesting relationships develop.”105 This is the second

type of truth--the “lyrical truth,” in Le Corbusier’s search. This lyrical truth demands that a work

of art induces certain feelings in the observer. The only truthful art is the art that in a poetic

104
Ozenfant and Jeanneret, After Cubism, 138.
105
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 192.

59
manner speaks about the ultimate secrets of nature using the simplest and purest forms and

creating interesting relationships among them.

Even later in his career, Le Corbusier still believed in the power of pure geometric

shapes. In the lecture he gave in Buenos Aries in 1929, Le Corbusier explained how the

composition of an elongated prism and a cube in a certain relationship between them would not

change its character no matter how much decoration was placed on them.106 The prism and the

cube are such powerful forms that the sensation they induce cannot be altered by anything. It is

because they are mathematically based, and thus, they hold the truth of nature. Likewise, the

openings placed on the surface of a building will not appeal to us if they are not placed in a

certain thought-out relationship. “If we have placed our windows and doors so badly that

nothing true--nothing mathematically true--can any longer exist between these holes and the

x
y

Figure 5. Representation of objects as in descriptive geometry in Still Life, 1920

106
Le Corbusier, Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning, translated by Edith Schreiber
Aujame (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1991, 1930), p. 70.

60
different surfaces of the walls determined by these holes,”107 the building will not mean anything

to us, and thus, it will fail architecturally.

2. Concept of space

For Le Corbusier, science was the greatest authority in the 1920s. Engineers were even

“gods” because they were the only holders of the universal truth of nature. Such absolute belief

and admiration for scientific methods resulted in his attempts to represent them literally in his

paintings. Canvases were very well thought-out using the Golden Section so that every object

had its precisely calculated location. It also affected

the way Le Corbusier perceived space. He, as well as

other Purists, accepted the Euclidian concept of space,

and they believed space had only three dimensions.

For them the canvas should also represent three-

dimensional space. In the article “Le Purisme,” in

L’Esprit Nouveau (1921), Le Corbusier and Ozenfant

wrote, “we think of the painting not as a surface but as

a space.”108 In it, they criticized Cubism for not

employing the third dimension, but only the fourth,

Figure 6. Villa Stein-De Monzie,
Garches, 1927
which was, according to Purists, unacceptable. Purists

were against the fourth or temporal dimension, since the human senses can perceive only the

three spatial dimensions.109 However, the denial of the fourth dimension did not stop him from

using it in designing his buildings. The best-known concept of the entire Modern architecture of

107
Le Corbusier, Precisions, 72.
108
Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, “Le Purisme,” L’Esprit Nouveau (1921), quoted in L’Esprit
Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925, Carol S. Eliel (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art in
association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 55.
109
Ozenfant and Jeanneret, After Cubism, 136.

61
the 20th century was precisely his architectural promenade based on the existence of the fourth

dimension: movement through the building in time.

To achieve mathematical precision, Purists avoided perspectival representation. They

used axonometric constructions of objects because that was the only way to present objects

without the distortion that occurs in perspective. Axonometry gives the view of an object from

all sides, just as architectural drawings show precisely the floor plans, the exterior elevations, the

section, and the bird’s eye view. Bruno Reichlin calls this concept of space in painting the

“antiperspectival denaturalization,” because it opposes the naturalistic conventions of perspective

Figure 7. Still life exhibited in Pavillion de L’Esprit Nouveau, 1924

but certainly suggests depth, volume, and space.110 Le Corbusier divided his paintings into two

planes as in descriptive geometry, to present the horizontal and the vertical projection of objects.

The lower half of the picture presents the xy projection plane, and the upper part presents the xz

projection plane (Fig. 5). As a result, he got the juxtaposition of differently colored planes and

110
Bruno Reichlin, “Jeanneret-Le Corbusier, Painter-Architect” in Architecture and Cubism, Eve Blau and Nancy J.
Troy, eds., 195-218 (Montréal: Centre canadien d'architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture; Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1997), 197.

62
objects compressed in a shallow space, as if they are floating, although there is still a strong

sense of space. This interpretation of space, with changing planes and views, causes the observer

to shift his view from the foreground to the background within the frame, which resembles

rhythm in an architectural space. Le Corbusier also always used axonometry to present his

building designs and almost never perspectival rendering (Fig. 6). Later, in Le Corbusier’s

paintings from around 1925, the axonometric construction of objects was less evident, and the

emphasis was placed instead on the linear contours of the objects. The paintings became more

abstract, with much more reduced and simplified shapes, although with more complex

relationships among the objects (Fig. 7).

3. Rules of composition

Le Corbusier used the regulating lines, or proportions, for conceiving his paintings as

well as his architecture (Fig. 8). Proportions and pure geometries were a crucial means to

express the invariants of nature or the “truth” of nature. Everything must be organized according

to these geometrical rules and the components must correspond to one another as well as to the

whole to achieve order and therefore harmony. Paintings and architecture must be well thought

out, completely rationalized, and clear.

Figure 8. Use of regulating lines in paintings as illustrated in L’Esprit Nouveau, no 17, 1922

63
 Aside from using geometric proportions, Le Corbusier used several other compositional

techniques to convey the “truth(s)” in architecture. Mostly, they were a means to express

meaningful, and thus powerful, relationships among the objects, i.e. the “lyrical truth.”

Nevertheless, they also played an ethical role since the objects would show how ordered and

organized they were.

The next important principle in the composition of his paintings is alignment, or the

coincidence of the axis and edges of different objects, parallelism, and overlapping (Fig. 9). Le

Corbusier and Ozenfant called this rule the “marriage of objects in sharing an outline.”111 Bruno

Reichlin also believes that Le Corbusier actually brought this principle from architecture into

painting, in the sense that a wall is at the same time the wall of one room and the wall of another

room so that two completely different entities share a common line or element.

Figure 9. Still Life with Egg, 1919 Figure 10. Pale Still Life with Lantern, 1922

111
Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, “Idées Personnelles,” L’Esprit Nouveau, no. 27 (1924), quoted
in Bruno Reichlin, “Jeanneret-Le Corbusier, Painter-Architect” in Architecture and Cubism, Eve Blau and Nancy J.
Troy, eds., 195-218 (Montréal: Centre canadien d'architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture; Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1997), 209.

64
 Le Corbusier’s paintings have multiple centers of attention (Fig. 10). There is no

hierarchy among them although the whole picture is central--Le Corbusier usually painted a sort

of picture frame and set the pile of objects in the center of the actual canvas limits. In

architecture he did the same--his buildings did not have one central space that was the most

important but, rather, multiple spaces that were very interconnected and placed into the compact

volume of the building (Fig. 11). In addition, the strip windows, Le Corbusier’s favorite

element, directed the view not only to one point like the traditional window but toward multiple

points of attention (Fig. 12 and 13).

One of the most compelling and influential principles of Le Corbusier’s artworks is its

temporal dimension. Although he denied the importance of this fourth dimension,

decomposition of the objects in his paintings to three perpendicular planes contributed such that

the entirety of the object cannot be grasped all at once. Time is needed to recompose the objects

from their fragments. Carefully planned

juxtapositions of elements and colors and their new

relationships acquired even more attention. In

architecture he also used this device to create the

architectural promenade concept, which for many

architectural historians was one of Le Corbusier’s

most important contributions to the Modern

architecture of the 20th century.

However, for Colin Rowe, the concept of

“phenomenal transparency” or the simultaneous

Figure 11. Villa La Roche-Jeanneret, 1923-25
perception of different spaces was the most important

65
value of Le Corbusier’s architecture.112 In his buildings, there are no clear borders between

rooms and different spaces overlap, which all resembles his principles for the composition of

paintings (Fig. 11). The garden terraces were usually rooms without ceilings or rooms without

the fourth wall, so that one can simultaneously perceive the interior and exterior of a building

(Fig. 14 and 15). This overflow of one space into another Le Corbusier called the “constant

enjambment.”113 He saw in these “stylistic devices” the power to create sensations and

excitement in the observer that certainly helped him make poetry out of architecture.

Undeniably, these composition techniques added to the significance and attractiveness of Le

Corbusier’s Purist villas of the 1920s.

4. Color

For Le Corbusier, as a Purist, form was more important than color. He believed that

there were primary sensations (shapes and colors) and secondary sensations (symbols). He was

interested mainly in these primary sensations of a work of art, but since color was a very strong

sensation and, therefore, always symbolic, he placed the accent on the primary physical elements

Figure 12. Villa Savoye, 1929-31 Figure 13. Villa La Roche-Jeanneret, 1924

112
Colin Rowe and Robert Slutsky, “Transparency: literal and phenomenal” in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa,
and other Essays, Colin Rowe, 159-183 (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1976), 167-169.
113
Reichlin, 205-207.

66
(the sphere, the cube, the prism). 114 He strongly believed that these were the most basic and

therefore the most beautiful shapes. He recognized them in ancient Roman, Greek, and Egyptian

architecture, and therefore these were the only true architectures for him.

Since color is so powerful and can distort the painting, Purists divided colors into three

scales: major, dynamic, and transitional scale. To the major scale belong ochre yellow, red,

white, black, earths, and ultramarine blue. Le Corbusier used only major scale in his paintings

because he believed that only these colors had potential to organize and highlight spatial

relations, and not to repress and annul them.

Le Corbusier used colors in painting but not in architecture. To be more precise, he used

colors in the interiors of the buildings and they were closely related to the palette of his canvases,

but the exteriors of his buildings from this period were always simply white. Le Corbusier was

inconsistent and contradictory with his attitudes toward colors, and this was a period of

experimentation. Certainly, amongst other reasons, Le Corbusier felt that exterior polychromy

Figure 14. Villa Savoye, 1928-31 Figure 15. Pavillion de L’Esprit Nouveau, 1925

114
Charles A. Riley II, Color Codes: Modern Theories of Color in Philosophy, Painting and Architecture,
Literature, Music and Psychology (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1995), 208-212.

67
would distort the steadiness of the basic geometric shapes and therefore did not use colors for the

building exteriors. However, for the interior he said: “Architectural polychromy doesn’t kill the

walls, but it can move them back and classify them in order of importance … color, dispenser of

space and classifier of essential things and accessory things.”115 For example, if one uses the

yellow wall, it will recede, and the red wall will advance, and that is why entirely colored walls

can contribute to the growth of spaces within a building.

This belief in a very close relationship, or integration, of major colors and volumes has

roots in the De Stijl movement, which Le Corbusier respected very much. He was influenced by

the 1923 De Stijl Exhibition, which showed plans and axonometric projections for architectural

projects in which color was an integral element rather than just decoration. Therefore, Le

Corbusier started to incorporate color into his designs after that year, mainly into the interiors

(Fig. 16).

However, the use of white for the building

exteriors had a very important symbolic value that he

could not surpass, even though the symbols were of

lesser importance to the Purists. White was the

prefect representation of the concept of truth that

moved and inspired him throughout his entire life.

To be more precise, it was the symbol of the “ethical

truth,” representing morality, cleanness, and purity.

Le Corbusier discovered whitewash on his trip

Figure 16. Maison Cook, color axonometry
of interior, 1926
around Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean coast

115
Le Corbusier quoted in L’Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925, Carol S. Eliel (Los Angeles: Los Angeles
County Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 58.

68
in his early years. He found that “whitewash exists wherever peoples have preserved intact the

balanced structure of a harmonious culture.”116 The degradation of one culture leads to the

disappearance of whitewash and the introduction of decorative arts. Hence Le Corbusier found

his proof that white is the symbol of ultimate truth and harmony.

Urbanism

Just as Le Corbusier used all the concepts derived from his search after truth in painting

and architecture, he applied them in urbanism as well. Moreover, these concepts came into their

fullest expression in his town-planning schemes. Town planning gave him the opportunity to use

his design concepts in the strictest manner, which paradoxically produced maybe his greatest

mistake. He never tried to lessen the rigidity of his concepts in town planning as he did to a

certain extent in his paintings and architecture. This rigidity induced a negative reaction among

urban and architectural critics, as well as among the general public, although only after the initial

euphoric realization of urban plans based on his concepts.

Design concepts of simple and pure geometry derived from the concept of the truth of

nature was his major tool for designing cities. As Le Corbusier explained in The City of

Tomorrow (1924), geometry is “the material basis” for all human creations, including a city, and

it is the representation of “perfection and the divine.”117 Thus, a work of art directly

conceptualized on a geometric pattern is a real and true artwork because although “no longer

bearing any of the evident aspects of nature, [it] yet submits to the same laws.”118 So in order to

bring the city back to nature, Le Corbusier proposed town plans based on strict geometric

patterns. The fact that most actual cities were generally based on the organic patterns of slow

116
Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 189.
117
Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow, translated by Frederick Etchells, in combined edition Essential Le
Corbusier: L'Esprit Nouveau Articles (Oxford, Boston: Architectural Press, 1998, 1924), xxi.
118
Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow, 23.

69
growth and topographic constraint did not trouble him at all, because he had a very “simple”

solution for the chaos, non-hygiene, and over-crowdedness of such organic cities--their

destruction. Building new cities on a clean slate seemed to him like a perfect solution.

Flawlessly conceptualized on strict geometric patterns and mathematically calculated to follow

population growth and the corresponding need for infrastructure, Le Corbusier’s prototype for

the ideal city is perfectly ordered and harmonious. He believed that this city would be, at last, in

accordance with nature.

Le Corbusier also saw the poetry in designing cities. The city is a human creation just as

is poetry, and it was this analogy from which he drew the question: “Why should not the town

be, even to-day, a source of poetry?”119 Urban design should also be a true art, which means that

it needs to employ the emotional side of human being as well as the rational, to attain the “lyrical

truth.” Le Corbusier explains this in The City of Tomorrow: “It is a question of soul, of

something which we have at heart; something which is no longer international nor multiple, but

individual and cannot be added to by others; something which is in a man and the power of

which dies with him. It is a question of Art.”120

Although he calls for an artistic creation in town planning, on the other hand he speaks of

how this artistic creation comes with the usage of geometry as well. To be more precise, Le

Corbusier’s poetic side of town planning falls under the definition of intuition, and intuition is

not something that has to do with irrationality or feeling. Intuition, for Le Corbusier, is the

summation of acquired knowledge over the ages.121 Even though man believes that he creates

according to his feelings and emotions, he in fact acts according to the laws of nature that he has

been learning since the genesis of human consciousness. The knowledge he has acquired and

119
Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow, xxi.
120
Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow, 150.
121
Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow, 34.

70
upon which he acts “does not put him in opposition to the universe; it puts him in harmony with

it.”122 Although everything that man produces clearly stands out from natural things, it in fact

submits to the same laws of nature. Here, we come again to mathematics and geometry as the

hidden laws of nature which unite all things. Thus, the usage of geometric patterns in the design

of cities Le Corbusier saw as a poetic act that excited him deeply.

The summation of acquired knowledge over the ages brings us to the contemporary

industrial age. Le Corbusier saw nothing unnatural in machines and their products. He was

fascinated by the built-up knowledge and was certain that only deviation from the natural

evolutionary process would be unnatural. By no means should our cities be designed by looking

at examples from the past but by conforming to the needs, possibilities, and values in the present.

He was determined that this “historical truth” must be obeyed in designing cities in order for

them to be harmonious such that people can be in accord with both them and nature. Thus, in

urban planning, Le Corbusier advocated the necessity of standardization and mass-production, as

the products of the contemporary industrial age.

Le Corbusier’s ideal city would also radiate the fourth fundamental “truth”--it would

radiate pure ethical values. The layout of cities must be perfectly ordered in order to spread

some of its values to the society itself. Aside from producing design proposals for the ideal city,

Le Corbusier was making proposals for the organization of the ideal society. That is why many

of his contemporaries and followers accused him of wanting to become too involved in politics,

which Le Corbusier constantly denied, “I am an architect; no one is going to make a politician of

me.”123 Le Corbusier probably never really wanted to become a politician for that matter, but he

did want to become a hero, a superman who will bring reconciliation to the world. At this period

122
Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow, 17-18.
123
Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow, 301.

71
of his life, Le Corbusier took on a God-like role, a purveyor of omniscient knowledge, believing

that he knew the “truth.” He spent his entire life in a search for truth, so at this point, when he

was assured that he had finally come to know it, he was able to create. Le Corbusier was

delighted by the power that the knowledge of “truth” allegedly gave him. He was sure that he

was destined to change the world and to, first, change it with his house and city designs and,

second, by implementing the political system that is based on the “true” principles.

Regarding the visual language of city design, Le Corbusier used the following devices,

which were also derived from the four fundamental truths that he had found: the geometric

Figure 17. Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants, 1922

layout, repetition, standardized mass-production, functional segregation, and interconnectedness

with nature. He strongly believed that these principles were right and would directly help in

changing contemporary societies:

72
 For a long time I had been anxious to formulate certain fundamental truths regarding the
cell, involving a reform of the flat and its construction. Little by little, and basing each
point on cause and effect, I built up an ordered system of the grouping of such cells as
would replace with advantage the present chaos to which we are subject.124

Each of Le Corbusier’s proposals for future, ideal cities was accompanied by the proposal

for the organization of society. In The Contemporary City for Three Million People, a proposal

made in 1922 for the Parisian Salon d’Automne (Fig. 17), he described an ideal society based

neither on capitalism or communism, but on a peculiar mixture of both systems. The society is

clearly classified with a very strict hierarchy but with the governing elite composed of industrial

magnates and intellectuals. Robert Fishman

describes how these ideas came from the actual

intellectual movement in France in 1920s that

was based both on the socialistic ideas of Henri

de Saint-Simon and on the interests of

contemporary industrial corporations.125

In 1925 while designing the Plan Voisin,

the ideal city plan applied to Paris, Le Corbusier

concluded that the urban planner must in fact be

in power and possess absolute control in order to

implement unhindered ideas of a perfectly

ordered and harmonious society and its cities.

In The Radiant City (1930), Le Corbusier

Figure 18. The Radiant City, 1930
refined his ideas about the ideal society

124
Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow, 212.
125
Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le
Corbusier (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1977), 194-196.

73
influenced by the French syndicalist movement. People and the housing came into prominence,

which resulted in relocating the administrative and business area to the periphery (Fig. 18). Even

in this supposedly classless society, which is structured only by the “natural” industrial

hierarchy, a group of experts holds absolute power. They are in charge of making the plan for

the organization and development of the society. Undoubtedly, in this group of experts the urban

planner holds a prominent role. The mixture of diametrically opposite highlights from all

different political systems made all his plans for society unattainable. Yet, as in his designs, he

was trying to unite opposites.

Over the years, Le Corbusier was attracted to various regimes, from capitalist to socialist

to fascist, with the hope that one of them would implement his plan for the ideal society.

However, he always claimed that he was not sympathizing with any of them. He would argue

that he was only interested in human well being. Le Corbusier’s overconfidence was a direct

result of his belief in the exclusive possession of the knowledge of truth. He saw himself as the

one whose ideas would solve all existing problems and, thus, help to avoid political revolutions.

Le Corbusier was convinced that he would make a peaceful revolution in society with his

revolutionary designs of housing and cities. With its implementation, people would become

happy and political revolution would be unnecessary. He would stress this to each of those

regimes mentioned above in order to please them so they would realize his plans, with or without

the “surgery.” His persuasion attempts mostly remained unsuccessful until the end of the Second

World War.

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 5. Conclusions

Le Corbusier was one of the most influential and controversial architects of the 20th

century Modern Movement. The power of his designs and written words has not faded. There is

still heated discussion in the architectural world about his works. Le Corbusier’s ideas and

designs undeniably changed the outward appearance of our surroundings. They brought a

revolution to the housing industry and urban planning, although not the positive one that he had

hoped for. Only a couple of decades after they were so enthusiastically erected, a large number

of apartment blocks all over the world designed according to Le Corbusier’s ideas were torn

down. Architectural critics all agree that Le Corbusier’s urban ideas and high-rise apartment

blocks presented the greatest mistake in the history of the world architecture. The major

question, still not fully answered, is this: “What went wrong?” In light of this thesis the question

can be reformulated: “How could he be so wrong despite his struggles to find the true

architecture that is in accord with nature, with moral standards, with historical development, and

at the same time with artistic expression?” Why during the mid-20th century were his

architectural and urban ideas so praised by the general public and architectural critics, and only a

couple of decades later so condemned? Why did everybody trust him to such an extent? This

thesis by emphasizing his view of “truth(s),” suggests new approaches to answering these

questions.

Some postmodern architectural critics proposed that the reason for Le Corbusier’s

mistakes was his endeavor to become a philosopher and literally translate metaphysical concepts

into design methods. Without any thorough knowledge of philosophy, he made some superficial

arguments about the idealistic side of architecture typical of amateurs. His self-confidence was

75
amplified by believing himself to be “a philosopher.” It gave him the necessary boldness in

propagating the new architecture.

Since the purely practical side of architecture was bothering him, Le Corbusier used

philosophical concepts as a mediator to link it with art. More than any other Modern architect,

Le Corbusier was desperately trying to unite the artistic and the practical side of architecture, the

idealistic with the rationalistic ideas. By doing this, he was actually creating between them a

greater division. All his ideas rose from the paradigmatic separation of reason and emotions

characteristic of Modernity. Precisely this was the major target later for the postmodern critiques

of Modernity itself as well as of Le Corbusier’s ideas.

The reason why everybody, including the general public and architectural circles, trusted

Le Corbusier’s architectural and urban vision lies in the fact that he proclaimed that he “knew the

truth.” He made an image of himself as a superman who knew what true architecture was. This

exclusive knowledge, tied to an entirely new vision, would save the world. During the Purist

years, Le Corbusier persisted in propagating his ideas about architecture, urban planning, and art

in general. His articles and books became an instant success due to the highly rhetorical

language and rich illustrations handled with photomontage. His Purist villas became icons and

models of Modern architecture, and the urban plans intrigued everybody. Through the power of

his vision, the clarity of his “truth(s),” and the skill of his propaganda, then, Le Corbusier

definitely became one of the most important architects of the 20th century.

The Purist movement was very important for the development of Le Corbusier’s “new

architecture” because it had helped him to articulate and define both the idealistic and

rationalistic ideas that he had already been exposed to as a result of various influences during his

early years. Purism allowed him to articulate his search for the hidden laws of nature, or the

76
“truth” beneath the surface, and link it with rational, scientific methods. Le Corbusier concluded

that reason and order dominate art just as they dominate science. However, art had something

else--the meaning, which induced the subconscious sensibility in each individual.

Le Corbusier believed that art should express only invariable laws of nature. The best

way to express them visually, he found, was in the use of basic geometric shapes. Although for

that reason he was against presenting the accidental and the individual in his art works, he was

not able to avoid all the devices and principles of composition, which “distort” art, or the true

nature of things. Often he used color, light effects, perspective, and other devices that showed

accidental properties and the uniqueness in objects. Although he sometimes claimed not to be

interested in the allusive secondary sensations, his art works were laden with symbolism. His

most favored elements both in painting and in architecture were exactly that--the symbols. Le

Corbusier used the cube and the sphere as symbols of morality, truth, and divinity.

Furthermore, the only possible tool for the representation of “truth(s)” in architecture or

painting was symbolism. Translation of such abstract concepts into the concrete design concepts

had to be made through the associative elements that would generate meanings in ordinary

observers. For example, as already explained above, visual and spatial symbols for the “truth of

nature” were basic geometric shapes and proportions. The contrast of light and shadow was the

representation of the “lyrical truth.” Repetition and simplicity of the construction elements

(columns, windows) represented industrial production and thus the “historical truth.” The white

color represented cleanliness and hygiene and thus had an insinuation of the “ethical truth.”

Symbolism and allusion were the major tools of Modernity for generating meaning in art in

general. Later, the postmodern thinkers and artists disputed them.

77
 Although it seems that there is a hierarchy of different concepts of truth, since Le

Corbusier found four types of truth, in fact there is none. He was speaking of only one truth, the

ultimate truth that is hidden in art and architecture as well as in all things that surround us.

However, unconsciously he was speaking of the four different types of truth researched in this

thesis. Therefore, not knowing that he was talking about four different concepts under the name

of one--the concept of truth in architecture--Le Corbusier considered no hierarchy among them.

All four concepts were equally important and they all represented the truth of architecture. As

much as architecture had to embrace mathematical principles, so much it had to be expressive,

functional, and honest. The ambiguity of Le Corbusier’s concept of the truth of architecture

became the actual concept itself. In the 1930s, he revised his theory of architecture such that the

concept of ambiguity became the central theme of his architecture and painting; it became the

“truth.” The major tool for representing it became the curved line and allusiveness of several

different things at once.

In conclusion, the concept of truth in architecture was the primordial concept that led Le

Corbusier to derive all other concepts about architecture and art in general. It was his inner drive

that “enabled him to create.” His paintings, architecture, and urban designs were all based on an

attempt to make the truth visible in them and, thus, to make them true. Le Corbusier used the

same concepts in each art category, as they were all a means to address the same issues. The

findings from one art category helped him define the language of another art category, and vice

versa. Because of these translations across arts and the rich complexity of his many works, Le

Corbusier is still respected today among the postmodern critics even though he is disputed due to

his naïve and often arrogant claims about truth. Regardless of whether this search for truth was a

legitimate quest or not (in light of postmodern theories or of damage done to the discipline of

78
architecture or to our cities), it was indeed his goal, and the inspiration from which he drew the

vocabulary of his architecture. And that vocabulary has remained recognizable and inspirational

in the architectural world for generations.

79
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