LeCorbusier and the Radiant City Contra
True Urbanity and the Earth

Introducton:

The city of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century was in a process of transformation. Industrialization, which had destroyed the traditional craft works and made small-scale farming unprofitable, brought workers into urban areas at explosive rates. At the same time, the automobile assailed historic street patterns, causing the equivalent of gridlock and a dangerous situation for pedestrians. In sum, industrial capitalism was destroying the historic city as well. Urban theorist have been grappling, since that time, with how to reinvent the city in ways that will benefit humankind and nature. Le Corbusier, born Charles Edoard Jeanneret, was such a theorist. He pursued a vision of the good society for over forty years. In this essay, I will illuminate Corbusier’s thought using the model of the Radiant City (1930-1935). I will show how his utopian perspective is egregiously flawed and how this vision has been harmful for the practice of city planning in our life-world. I will also comment on the alternative vision offered by the sustainable city of Yanarella and Levine.

His Life:

Le Corbusier was born in 1887 in the Swiss watchmaking town of La Chaux de Fonds. His father was a highly skilled watch enameler; his mother was a pianist and music teacher. The family was Protestant; some scholars believe they were Calvinists (Sereyni 1975: 23). At the age of fifteen, Corbusier enrolled at the local trade school, L’Ecole d’Art, in order to learn the craft of watch case engraving. Corbusier’s mentor at the school was Charles L’Eplattenier. L’Eplattenier’s personal mission at L’Ecole was to find the most promising students alternate careers in the fine arts. He knew that eventually the craft works at La Chaux de Fonds would be replicated by machine at a cheaper price, thus destroying the local economy.

L’Eplattenier saw promise in the young Corbusier. In fact, he decreed that the young man should become an architect. Corbusier was at first ambivalent, preferring a career as a painter, but later he came to embrace the architecture profession. Under L’Eplattenier’s tutelage, Corbusier was exposed to William Morris, John Ruskin, Plato and Pythagorus. Other early influences were Edward Schure’s Les Grand Inities and Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament. Plato, Schure, and Jones, appear to be the most influential on Corbusier’s developing worldview. From Plato, Corbusier extracted the seemingly universal ideas of Beauty, Truth, and Harmony. The forms were out there, i.e. not of this world; one only had to get beneath everyday and one’s own body. Intrinsic to neo-Platonist philosophy was the notion that only a few worthy "inities," as Schure called them, could ever know their universal forms. Artistically, neo-Platonism meant a rejection of realist representations and a concentration on getting at the true nature of an object. It also implied an antagonism toward ornament of any kind. The true forms were geometric, stylized shapes and figures.

Corbusier came to reject much of his teacher’s theories on the revival of traditional arts and crafts. Instead, he developed ideas about the inevitability of capitalist rationality and the aesthetic of the machine. In fact, he began to hold the spirit of capitalism, in the form of technocratic calculations and bureaucratic order, in the highest esteem. This change appears to have been inculcated in tandem with the Bauhaus School in Vienna and his association with Auguste Perret, a Parisian Engineer. Under Perret’s guidance, Corbusier learned the aesthetics of functionalism (the beauty of a carefully calculated structure sans ornament) and the positivism of the modern age. Perret was so optimistic about the new age of progress, he proclaimed, "Wars are over! There are no more frontiers!" (Fishman 1982: 170) after a successful airplane flight across the English Channel.

Corbusier and Modernity:

Corbusier shared Perret’s confidence and enthusiasm for the modern age. He envisaged a new and unique role for the artist/architect and the city planner that closely adhered to the capitalist spirit. Put simply, Corbusier’s initial encounter with the large complex city of Paris convinced him of the need for modern housing and a modern city. Partly, this was a response to what he called the chaos around him - the enormous amount of traffic and the squalor of the industrial workers’ housing. He compared this disorder to the discipline and authority of the factory and found the city lacking. Corbusier believed that the only way to impede a worker revolution was to formulate a machine for living, a dwelling that would bring the worker’s home life in line with the discipline of the factory. To this end, he created the Dom-ino housing concept, which was a rectangular structure with only four load bearing reinforced concrete members. The walls, then, could be opened up to sunlight via wrap around glass windows. The housing was purported, by Corbusier, to be a cheap, efficient way to house workers that would provide a modern ethos.

It was not just that Corbusier believed in the uplift theory of architecture, i.e., the assumption that "improved" housing would lift workers out of their culture of poverty. He also subscribed to the theory of architecture as control and discipline. Stuart Ewen, in his book All Consuming Images, notes that many modern thinkers presumed a correlation between the masses’ behavior and architectural structures. He quotes Charlotte Bronte, famous novelist, on the Crystal Palace, "Yesterday I went for the second time to the Crystal Palace ... the multitude filling the great aisles seems ruled and subdued by some invisible influence ..." (Ewen 1988, 164). Corbusier was very interested in exploiting the "invisible influence" of architecture in the modern age: "The problem of the house is a problem of the epoch. The equilibrium of society to-day depends upon it. Architecture has for its first duty, in this period of renewal, that of bringing about a revision of values, a revision of the constituent elements of the house. We must create the mass production spirit" (Le Corbusier 1986: 227). Later, he tersely states. "Architecture or Revolution. Revolution can be avoided" (Le Corbusier 1986: 289). To this end, Corbusier rationalized the house.

The historic city, then, was seen as fomenting revolution. The old "decrepit" structures from the past had to be cleared away, according to Corbusier, if the modern age was to fulfill its true duty - unlimited production of human needs and wants (progress as promised). Corbusier’s first attempt at city planning came in the form of the Contemporary City Plan for Three Million People, followed by the Voisin Plan, which was application of the Contemporary City to Paris. In these early theories, he attempted to illuminate how his plan would be beneficial to business sector of the city. This was before his disillusionment with capitalism. Without going into great detail, the Contemporary City was based upon clearance of most of the Parisian landscape (a few historic monuments were to be kept), and the erection of twenty four steel and glass skyscrapers that would house the business and artistic elite. The workers were placed at the edges of the city in modern apartment structures, based on the Domino, close to their workplace--the factory. Most of the land, around eighty-five percent, was left to natural landscapes and playgrounds.

Corbusier assumed that the plan would garner support from capitalists interested in arresting the workers’ movements and instituting a factory-like discipline onto the whole of society. No one took him up on it. With the depressions of the late 1920s and a tepid reception from the industrials, Corbusier lost his faith in capitalism as the ultimate bearer of progress, at least in this stage of its evolution: the plans were sound, the capitalists were too immature to realize their validity.

In 1930, Corbusier joined the syndicalist movement. Syndicalism had come to embrace, in France, an intense abhorrence of parliamentary democracy an appreciation of workers’ rights - elements of the extreme left and the extreme right. Democracy was seen as a chaotic, inefficient way of regulating capitalist production. A more harmonious and more disciplined authority was created, in theory, based upon syndicats. Syndicats were groups of workers in a particular trade that elected their "natural" leader to a regional trade council. From the regional council, the most able individual was chosen to represent the regionals at the national council. The pyramid like conception reached an apex with the "natural" elites making dispassionate, scientific plans on how and what the factories should produce. For Corbusier, this meant that capitalism would have a plan and thus, would be ordered and harmonious. No longer would factories be able to overproduce and create depression; it would all be regulated from above by les grand inities.

Corbusier’s Radiant City:

The Radiant City grew out of this new conception of capitalist authority and a pseudo-appreciation for workers’ individual freedoms. The plan had much in common with the Contemporary City - clearance of the historic cityscape and rebuilding utilizing modern methods of production. In the Radiant City, however, the pre-fabricated apartment houses, les unites, were at the center of "urban" life. Les unites were available to everyone (not just the elite) based upon the size and needs of each particular family. Sunlight and recirculating air were provided as part of the design. The scale of the apartment houses was fifty meters high, which would accommodate, according to Corbusier, 2,700 inhabitants with fourteen square meters of space per person. The building would be placed upon pilotus, five meters off the ground, so that more land could be given over to nature. Setback from other unites would be achieved by les redents, patterns that Corbusier created to lessen the effect of uniformity.

Inside les unites were the vertical streets, i.e. the elevators, and the pedestrian interior streets that connected one building to another. As in the Contemporary City, corridor streets were destroyed. Automobile traffic was to circulate on pilotus supported roadways five meters above the earth. The entire ground was given as a "gift" to pedestrians, with pathways running in orthogonal and diagonal projections. Other transportation modes, like subways and trucks, had their own roadways separate from automobiles. The business center, which had engendered much elaboration in the Contemporary City, was positioned to the north of les unites and consisted of Cartesian (glass & steel) skyscrapers every 400 meters. The skyscrapers were to provide office space for 3,200 workers per building.

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Corbusier spends a great deal of the Radiant City manifesto elaborating on services available to the residents. Each apartment block was equipped with a catering section in the basement, which would prepare daily meals (if wanted) for every family and would complete each families’ laundry chores. The time saved would enable the individual to think, write, or utilize the play and sports grounds which covered much of the city’s land. Directly on top of the apartment houses were the roof top gardens and beaches, where residents sun themselves in Anatural" surroundings - fifty meters in the air. Children were to be dropped off at les unites’ day care center and raised by scientifically trained professionals. The workday, so as to avoid the crisis of overproduction, was lowered to five hours a day. Women were enjoined to stay at home and perform household chores, if necessary, for five hours daily. Transportation systems were also formulated to save the individual time. Corbusier bitterly reproaches advocates of the horizontal garden city (suburbs) for the time wasted commuting to the city. Because of its compact and separated nature, transportation in the Radiant City was to move quickly and efficiently. Corbusier called it the vertical garden city.

Many scholars have adopted the notion that the Corbusier of the Radiant City was a kinder, gentler Corbusier. However, they have failed to consider that the so-called individual freedoms that Corbusier promoted were not freedoms at all. Certainly, Corbusier provided lesiure time activities that he enjoyed, such as sunbathing on the roof or playing basketball. But, are these pastimes necessarily freedom? Corbusier’s individuals were not allowed to have a voice in the governance of their lives; they are able to behave, but not to act. Additionally, there is no room in the Radiant City for individuals to act non-rationally. The lesiure time advocated by Corbusier is one filled with healthy "day minded" pursuits. There can be no extravagance or chaotic excess. The town lunatic would have to go the way of ninety-nine percent of the historic city. Indeed, it is improbable that ninety-nine percent of humanity will ever behave in so-called rational ways. Thus, Corbusier’s vision suffers from an naive conception of human nature.

But, this is not the main problem with his thesis for the Radiant City. Quite simply, his notion of authority is both patriarchal and bureaucratic, what Richard Sennett refers to as the authority of false love and the authority of no love (Sennett 1980). Corbusier maintained, following Plato and Schure, that universal truth, beauty, and goodness could be ascertained by those who had divorced themselves from matter (human bodies). Les grand inities could then prescribe a plan grounded in objective calculations and scientific facts. There could be no debate, i.e. no politics regarding the precepts of the plan. Humanity was to accept this discipline as a necessary, objective ordering of reality by a doting, paternalistic authority. Corbusier put it like this, "Authority must step in, patriarchal authority, the authority of a father concerned for his children," (Le Corbusier 1967: 152).

LeCorbusier—A Critique:

Of course, Corbusier saw himself as the fatherly redeemer of humankind. He was le grand inities who could step outside of history and uncover the good society. He was the good Calvinist who would make the world over for the glory of rationalism. Obviously, the flux of history, the uncertainty of being was too much for him. Thus, he prescribed a plan that eschewed embodiment, cleared away history, and established orthogonal order. This is the essence of utopian thought, the reliance on scientific fact and removal of memory. The other, be it female or a worker, is disorder and must be brought into line. Implicitly, it is a fear of this world, a Cartesian desire to escape this mortal coil.

Corbusier’s designs for the city are grounded in the desire to escape the earth. The vertical street, the skyscraper, the death of the street, the destruction of the sensuality of city life are all proof positive that he was terrified of the earth and others. In the Contemporary City, Corbusier describes the view from the skyscraper as not of this earth; it is placid, serene, and harmonious.

The Sustainable City, as put forth by Ernest Yanarella and Dick Levine, is specifically non-utopian. The authority of this city is one of embodiment in a place and space. Knowledge does not exist outside time and space; it is instead, grounded in both. It is an authority of political education, where the knower and the known become one. Diversity is respected, since the known becomes, as Kathleen Jones puts it, "at home in this world," (Jones 1993, 243). The Sustainable City Program does not fetishize nature as redeemer and object of gratification. Le Corbusier sees nature as fulfilling unlimited human needs and wants. Nature becomes "other" in his plans. A sustainable city would take humankind out of the center of being and replace him/her with the notion of inter-connectedness: the deep ties that weave our lives together with the natural world. Nature is respected for its balance seeking process and its limits.

To conclude, it is hard to say whether Corbusier’s urban thought has had a direct effect on city planners. It appears, however, that some of his notions have made their way into urban renewal logic: clearance, the destruction of memory, the plan as scientific fact, sub-standard housing, etc. Certainly, his aseptic view of the city has destroyed the street theater that Jane Jacobs so lovingly describes. The landscape of Corbusier, regardless of its evocation of nature, is unsensual, ahistorical--not of this world. Sustainable cities offer a better worldview, one that connects humans, nature, history, and place with a viable vision for the future.

Bibliography:

Curtis, William J.R. 1986. Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms. New York: Rizzoli International Publications.

Ewen, Stuart. 1988. All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture. New York: Basic Books.

Fishman, Robert. 1977. Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.

Jones, Kathleen B. 1993. Compassionate Authority: Democracy and the Representation of Women. New York: Routledge Press.

Le Corbusier. 1971. The City of Tomorow And Its Planning. Trans. by Frederick Etchells. Cambridge Mass: The MIT Press.

Le Corbusier. 1967. The Radiant City. Trans. by Pamela Knight, Eleanor Levieux, and Derek Coltman. New York: The Orion Press.

Sennett, Richard. 1980. Authority. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Serenyi, Peter, ed. 1975. Le Corbusier in Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Publishers.