Review

Reviewed Work(s): Le Corbusier: The Garland Essays by H. Allen Brooks and Le Corbusier;
Le Corbusier, 1887-1965: une encyclopédie by Jacques Lucan; Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms
by William J. R. Curtis; Le Corbusier: Early Works by Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris by
Frank Russell and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris; Journey to the East by Le Corbusier,
Ivan Zaknic and Nicole Pertuiset; The Decorative Art of Today by Le Corbusier and James
I. Dunnett; L'Esprit Nouveau: Le Corbusier et l'industrie, 1920-1925 by Stanislaus von Moos;
The Villas of Le Corbusier, 1920-1930 by Timothy Benton; Le Corbusier à Genève by
Patrick Devanthéry and Inès Lamunière; Le Corbusier: The City of Refuge, Paris, 1929-33
by Brian Brace Taylor; Le Corbusier et la mystique de l'URSS: théories et projets pour
Moscou, 1928-1936 by Jean-Louis Cohen; Raumplan versus Plan Libre: Adolph Loos and Le
Corbusier, 1919-1930 by Max Risselada
Review by: Alan Colquhoun
Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Mar., 1990), pp.
96-105
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural
Historians
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/990501
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 BOOKS

THE LE CORBUSIER CENTENARY

H. ALLEN BROOKS, editor, Le Corbusier: The Garland

Anniversaries Essays,
have become a standard part of modern artistic
New York: Garland Publishing Co., and Princeton: Princeton
discourse. They are the occasion for exhibitions, for increasingly
University Press, 1987, x + 257 pp., 150 elaborate
illus.catalogues
$60.00 raisonnes and for the publication of mono-
(cloth),
$19.95 (paper). graphs and biographies. The centenary of the birth of Le Cor-
busier was no exception. Exhibitions of his work, or of special
JACQUES LUCAN, editor, Le Corbusier,aspects 1887-1965: une
of it, took place en-
in Paris, London, New York, Zurich,
Strasbourg,
cyclopedie, Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, Berlin, Geneva,
1987,497 and Madrid, to mention only the
pp., illus.
FF 420. most important venues. These were mostly accompanied by
catalogues containing scholarly articles. In addition, most of the
WILLIAM J. R. CURTIS, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, New
major architectural journals in Europe ran special Le Corbusier
York: Rizzoli, 1986, 240 pp., 242 illus. $35.00. issues, and a number of books on the architect (and two by him)
were published or appeared for the first time in translation. The
FRANK RUSSELL, editor, Le Corbusier: Early Works by Charles-present review covers a selection of such books published in
EdouardJeanneret-Gris (Architectural Monographs, 12), London:
French or English during 1987.
Academy Editions, and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987, Over the last 60 years the work of Le Corbusier has been the
133 pp., illus. $35.95 (cloth), $24.95 (paper). subject of two very different types of commentary. These might
be called, respectively, myth-reinforcing or myth-destroying.
LE CORBUSIER,Journey to the East, translated and edited Although
by Le Corbusier became famous with the publication of
Ivan Zaknic in collaboration with Nicole Pertuiset, Cambridge,
Vers une architecture in 1923, the true inauguration of his myth
Mass.: MIT Press, 1987, xv + 270 pp., illus. $24.95 (cloth),dates from the publication in 1929 of the first volume of the
$12.95 (paper). Oeuvre complete. This and subsequent volumes canonized Le Cor-
busier as the most brilliant protagonist and publicist of the epic
LE CORBUSIER, The Decorative Art of Today, translated by
of the modern movement. Though published by Willi Boesin-
James I. Dunnett, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987, xxvi +
ger, the Oeuvre complete was carefully supervised by Le Corbusier
214 pp., illus. $25.00 (cloth), $12.50 (paper).
himself and owed its style in large measure to the techniques
STANISLAUS VON MOOS, editor, L'Esprit Nouveau: Leof representation developed by Ozenfant and Le Corbusier in
their journal L'Esprit Nouveau, in which abruptly juxtaposed
Corbusier et l'industrie, 1920-1925, Mus6es de Strasbourg, 1987,
295 pp., illus. $50.00 (paper). image and text contributed to an immediate visual effect. Every-
thing in the Oeuvre complete was sensuous and concrete: no con-
TIMOTHY BENTON, The Villas of Le Corbusier, 1920-1930, scious mental effort was needed to translate idea into image.
The rhetorical skill that made this possible was one of the chief
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, 224 pp., 188 figs.,
25 color pls. $50.00. qualities that distinguished Le Corbusier from other modern
architects of his generation-both in his buildings and in his
PATRICK DEVANTHERY and INES LAMUNIERE, ed- publications-and it was one of the most important factors con-
itors, Le Corbusier a Geneve, Lausanne: Payot, 1987, 167tributing
pp., to Le Corbusier's place in the mythology of the mod-
illus. $30.00 (paper). ern movement. Whether the commentators on his work were
sympathetic or antagonistic, they tended to measure themselves
BRIAN BRACE TAYLOR, Le Corbusier: The City of Refuge, against the myth that he himself had created in the Oeuvre
Paris, 1929-33, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, complete.
1987,
xiii + 185 pp., 183 illus. $32.50. Around the time of his death in 1965 another sort of com-
mentary started to develop-one that did not seek to diminish
JEAN-LOUIS COHEN, Le Corbusier et la mystique de l'URSS: Le Corbusier as a historical figure, but which nonetheless tried
to place him in an overall cultural context and to look at his
theories et projets pour Moscou, 1928-1936, Liege: Pierre Mardaga,
1987, 323 pp., 306 illus. FB 1650; FF 294. work and ideas more dispassionately, seeing him as a figure who
not only made history but was also made by it. If the critical
MAX RISSELADA, editor, Raumplan versus Plan Libre: Adolph
biography by Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier: Elemente einer
Loos and Le Corbusier, 1919-1930, New York, Rizzoli, Synthese,
1988, published in 1968, marked the first step of this more
136 pp., illus. $25.00 (paper). objective approach, its subsequent development was largely due

96
JSAH XLIX:96-122. MARCH 1990

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 BOOK REVIEWS 97

to the opening of the Le Corbusier archives in ParisDespite

and Lathese shortcomings, the Encyclopedie is a major achieve-
Chaux-de-Fonds after the architect's death, sources not ment.
available
to von Moos when he was researching his book. One of the
Ideas and Forms
virtues of the centenary was that it marked a symbolic pause in
the flow of scholarly publications on Le Corbusier that In the
Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms William Curtis has produced
a fluent and readable critical biography. As he already demon-
opening of the archives had unloosed, enabling one to measure
stratedthe
the extent to which Le Corbusier studies had evolved from in his book Modern Architecture since 1900 (Oxford, 1982),
mythologies and demonologies of the 1950s. Curtis has a formidable skill in giving shape to complex and
heterogeneous material. A great deal of new matter relating to
Among the books reviewed here, two are recent translations
Le Corbusier's life and work is included, and the smooth nar-
of books by Le Corbusier: Le voyage d'Orient and L'art decoratif
rative structure of the book seems to echo the purposeful and
d'aujourd'hui. There is also one full-dress critical biography:
heroic life of its subject.
William Curtis's Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms. The remainder
consist either of monographs on particular aspects of theTheworkbook is divided into three parts. In the first Curtis deals
or collections of essays. Most of the latter occur in catalogues Corbusier's formation and early work. In the second
with Le
covering particular themes, but two of them cover Le he covers the crucial period between the wars when the architect
Corbu-
sier's entire oeuvre. The heterogeneity of this material,found
and thehis life's purpose and designed his canonic buildings. In
the final section Curtis covers the period after World War II
fact that several of the essays occur in more than one publication,
when Le Corbusier's concept of the "machine age" was mod-
has presented a methodological problem. This review attempts
ified by cultural nostalgia and by a kind of cosmic symbolism.
to solve this by grouping books and individual essays together
under a certain number of thematic headings, rather than As by
in his earlier book, Curtis dispenses with footnotes and
dealing with each book separately. replaces them with a bibliography and notes related to page
Some preliminary remarks seem to be necessary on the numbers,
two a procedure that makes it virtually impossible to check
his sources. In a book that necessarily depends almost entirely
anthologies-Le Corbusier: The Garland Essays and Le Corbusier,
1887-1965: une encyclopedie. The Garland essays, editedon by
secondary
H. sources this is a serious disadvantage.
In his
Allen Brooks, consist of essays originally included in the 32-preface Curtis stresses the need for a new synthesis in
Le Corbusier studies: "Many fine fragments of scholarship are
volume Le CorbusierArchive, published by Garland Press between
1982 and 1985. This consists of photo reproductions of lying about, waiting to be integrated into a new general struc-
some
ture
32,000 architectural drawings from Le Corbusier's office, ...." But he goes on, "Many different books could be
which
written
are now in the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris. The essays are around someone as complex and wide-ranging as Le
Corbusier.
only loosely connected to the material in The Le Corbusier Ar- This one ... is concerned above all with the ways
in which
chive, and since the circulation of the Archive is necessarily lim- the architect compressed many levels of meaning into
his individual buildings, treating them as symbolic em-
ited because of its bulk and cost, their publication in a separate
book was both a logical and a welcome step. The essays blems
range... of a larger world-view" (p. 7). Indeed, much of the
widely between the scholarly study, the broad survey,book and isthetaken up with analysis of the forms of Le Corbusier's
biographical reminiscence. Some of the essays are written buildings
from in terms of their iconography and symbolism. In his
a critical standpoint, others attempt to recreate con amore attributions
the of iconographic sources Curtis is not always sound.
personality of Le Corbusier or to describe his methods of Forwork.
example, the "classical ruin" shown in a sketch that Le
Corbusier sent to Madame Meyer is not a "Mediterranean rev-
One of the most interesting essays belonging to the last category
erie" or "a Roman memory of the trip of 1911," but simply a
is that by Jannis Xenakis on the design process of the monastery
of La Tourette. view of Belanger's Folie Saint-James as it would have appeared
Le Corbusier, 1887-1965: une encyclopedie, edited by Jacques from the new house (p. 76). Nevertheless, it is probably at this
Lucan, was the catalogue of the centenary exhibition at the symbolic level that the book is most suggestive. Curtis is skept-
Centre Pompidou in Paris, and it followed in the now well- ical about many of the claims that Le Corbusier made for his
established tradition of such catalogues in presenting the stateown work. But he gives the impression that once the absurd
of the art in Le Corbusier scholarship. The encyclopedic format millennialist pretensions have been disposed of in the name of
was an ingenious way of covering a wide variety of material, good old English common sense, we are left with the pure gold
though, unlike the case of a genuine encyclopedia, the reader of a timeless architecture. Curtis thus upholds one aspect of the
mythology of the modern movement propagated by men like
still has to have recourse to a separate index. One or two of the
entries are eccentric, but on the whole the book provides a richGiedion and Le Corbusier himself-the belief that the essence
matrix within which to place the historical figure of Le Cor- of a timeless architecture had been discovered. That this idea
busier. A disappointing number of entries are reprinted from has a historical origin does not seem to occur to Curtis, and he
earlier publications. To mention only a few, those by Manfredo
fails to mention its close connection with the Rappel a l'ordre
Tafuri ("Ville et memoire"), Timothy Benton ("Loi Lon- and Valori Plastici movements of the 1920s, or the way it differs
cheur") and Gilles Ragot ("Exposition Internationale de Paris from that of the more iconoclastic avant-garde of the immediate
1937") have all appeared elsewhere. Mary McLeod has re- prewar years. Reconstruction and the reaffirmation of tradition
worked an article on Algiers that appeared in Oppositions 18, were twin aspects of the post-World War I avant-garde.
while new material from her as yet unpublished dissertation, Acceptance of this view, combined with simultaneous rejec-
such as that on La Ferme Radieuse, which does not receive an tion of arguments based on the Zeitgeist, leads Curtis to separate
entry, has been overlooked ("Urbanism and Utopia: Le Cor- two aspects that were always present at the same time in Le
busier from Regional Syndicalism to Vichy," Princeton, 1985). Corbusier: the programmatic, moral, existential side, embedded

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98 JSAH, XLIX:1, MARCH 1990

in a moment of history, and the formal-symbolic side, layingof the artist as a young man is presented as having happened
claim to transcendental value. In discussing the Unite d'habi- once upon a time, outside the historical frame defining the
tation at Marseilles, which was posited on a very doubtful re-persona of Le Corbusier, created in 1920. It describes the stum-
lation between social and aesthetic realms, Curtis retreats intoblings of a perceptive and passionate autodidact; but it is also
purely formal treatment. Important sociohistorical facts-suchthe story of a double renunciation-that of European culture
as that the present occupants of the Unite are mostly middle up until the First World War, and that of his own youth.
class and childless-are ignored. Instead we are treated to a The reconstruction and interpretation of this lost period of
poetic and solipsistic description of the building: "A ship pullsLe Corbusier's earlier incarnation is one of the major achieve-
away from the port . . . as in Le Corbusier's Algiers sketches. Thements of post-archival Corbusian scholarship and it owes a great
textured oblong broods like an Antique viaduct... its bold massdeal to the work of H. Allen Brooks. In "Le Corbusier's for-
and mighty legs evoking the great wall behind the Roman mative years at La Chaux-de-Fonds" in Le Corbusier: The Garland
theatre at Orange" (p. 174, reviewer's italics). Essays Brooks outlines Jeanneret's life until he left for Paris
Curtis's treatment of Chandigarh is equally one sided. Al- definitively in 1917 at the age of 30, tracing his development
though he is critical of the commercial center ("a bleak no-from his school training in the Symbolist tradition of the Dec-
orative Arts movement to his visits to Paris and Germany and
man's land flanked by deadpan rows of pilotis and brutally pro-
portioned balconies" [p. 200]) and of the attempt to apply thehis change of allegiance to the rationalism of Auguste Perret
and the neoclassicism of Peter Behrens.
precepts of the Athens Charter to Indian society, he is chiefly
concerned with the capitol complex, its symbolic form and its The houses designed by Jeanneret in and around La Chaux-
historical resonances. "The Chandigarh monuments idealize de-Fonds during this period fall into three distinct categories:
cherished notions of law and government with deep roots: they the National Romantic houses of 1905-1907, designed in col-
span the centuries by fusing modern and ancient myths in sym- laboration with Rene Chapallaz; the two Behrens-like neoclassi-
cal houses of 1912; and the Villa Schwob of 1916, a transitional
bolic forms of prodigious authenticity. Although recent in fab-
rication they possess a timelessness that will insure them a majorwork of great originality which nonetheless shows the influence
place in the stock of cultural memories" (p. 201). There is no of both Perret and Behrens. These houses are the subject of the
doubt an element of truth behind these orotund phrases, but it Academy Edition monograph, Le Corbusier: Early Works of Charles-
is surely the historian's task to reveal the contradictions betweenEdouardJeanneret-Gris. The main contributor to this monograph
myth and reality when he finds them, rather than provide usis Geoffrey Baker, who has provided a thorough documentation
with happy endings. A comparison with von Moos's Le Cor-of each house (plus the Scala cinema of 1916) including formal
busier: Elements of a Synthesis is inevitable. In that book von Moos analyses, descriptive drawings (site plans, floor plans, sections,
managed in far fewer words to raise the question of Chandi- elevations and axonometrics) and exterior and interior color
garh's reception, its connection with Le Corbusier's earlier ur-photographs of very high quality. All this information is new
ban utopias, and its complicity with colonialist attitudes, as well and provides an invaluable resource. Baker has paid much at-
as the cosmic symbolism introduced in the capitol buildings.tention to the siting of the houses, showing in telling bird's-
The result was a more balanced if more profoundly skeptical eye views how the first three houses, together with the house
account of Chandigarh than that provided by Curtis. of Jeanneret's teacher L'Eplattenier, were grouped to form one
Curtis's book often gives the impression that the author hasof those cultural colonies in a rural setting so dear to the Art
miraculous access to Le Corbusier's mind. "By the time of VersNouveau movement. When discussing the neoclassical houses,
une architecture . .," he tells us, "the architect was ready to spellBaker notes the "acropolis-like" approach to the Jeanneret villa.
out the forms he felt appropriate to the machine age" (p. 224).But one wonders if this analogy would have occurred to the
And again, "Beyond individual buildings it was Le Corbusier's author had it not been for the passages in L'Esprit Nouveau which
intention to create the generic elements of an authentic modern are based on Choisy's analysis of the acropolis in his Histoire de
architecture ..." (p. 225). The way Curtis continually slidesl'architecture-a book that Jeanneret did not read until 1913 (see
from this kind of teleology to a more critical mode makes it Jacques Lucan, "Acropole," Le Corbusier: une encyclopidie, p. 21).
often difficult to judge his true critical position. On the whole,
Baker also fails to do justice to the influence on Jeanneret of
however, Curtis's criticisms of Le Corbusier are delivered sottothe German neoclassical revival, or of Alexandre Cingria-Va-
neyre's vision of a Mediterraneanized Suisse Romande.
voce, so as not to disturb his subject's heroic stature, and at the
end of the book it is the myth of a modern architecture purged The book suffers from organizational problems. Not only is
of its modernity that wins the day. "As he slips further into there a good deal of repetition, each house being described two
history, his modernity matters less and less: it is the timelessor three times, but the whole structure of the book is ambiguous,
levels in his art which have most to give to the future" (p. 228).Baker's major contribution being sandwiched between an anon-
ymous foreword and two essays by Jacques Gubler, originally
Formation and Early Work
published in 1981. These essays, although relegated to the back
At the end of L'art decoratif d'aujourd'hui, and excluded from
of the book and in spite of their age, provide essential back-
the synoptic argument at the beginning of the book, there is aground information about the town of La Chaux-de-Fonds,
postscript entitled "Confession." This, together with a brief which had been rebuilt in the 1790s according to the principles
autobiographical excursus in Volume I of the Oeuvre complete,of "a broadly Ponts et chaussies style urbanism" (p. 113) and had
was the only time (until he was quite old) that Le Corbusierbecome the watchmaking center of the world, and about the
referred to his pre-1914 career, almost all traces of which heclients for the houses (local magnates with progressive tastes,
systematically excluded from the Oeuvre complete. This portrait
analogous to the entrepreneurs of Art Nouveau Barcelona).

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 BOOK REVIEWS 99

Gubler should surely have been invited to write an updated "the eternal return of architecture, in moments of crisis, towards
introduction which could then have been followed bya Baker's place where all uncertainty is abolished" (p. 44).
essentially formal analyses. Jeanneret's 1911 tour was also preceded by a stay of several
months in Germany for the purpose of researching his book
Shortly before he built his two neoclassical houses, Jeanneret's
views about modern artistic culture had been profoundly Etude sur le mouvement d'art decoratif en Allemagne. This stay, in
shaken.
whichhis
This change is reflected in the journal he wrote recording Jeanneret's new-found classical leanings were reinforced,
travels in Eastern Europe, Turkey, and Greece in 1911. This
is the subject of another article in Le Corbusier: une encyclopedie,
has now been published in English translation by Ivan Werner
Zaknic Oechslin's "Influences, confluences et reniements."
Oechslin does not repeat the detailed information about Jen-
under the title Journey to the East. The journal has a checkered
publication history. Part of it was serialized in the Laneret's
Chaux-German visit given by Gresleri in his introduction to II
de-Fonds newspaper La feuille d'avis in 1911. After twoviaggio
unsuc- in oriente. Rather he is concerned with vindicating the
cessful attempts at publication in 1912 and 1914, Le Corbusier
German influences on Jeanneret that were later suppressed by
published excerpts in L'almanach d'architecture moderneLe inCorbusier.
1925 Whereas Gresleri emphasizes the influence on
Jeanneret
under the title "Carnet de route 1910" [sic]. Finally it was pub- of French writers such as Elie Faure and Pierre Gus-
man book
lished in full as Le voyage d'Orient (Paris, 1966). This is the (particularly in connection with his attitudes to Greek and
that Zaknic has now translated. Roman architecture), Oechslin stresses the influence of idealist
The tone of the journal alternates between optimism and a tendencies represented by Alois Riegl's theory of the Kunstwol-
Spenglerian pessimism. Beneath its eager and colorful descrip- len, which, he claims, forms the kernel of the aesthetic doctrine
tions of places and people, two main themes emerge. The first of Vers une architecture. It seems probable in fact that Jeanneret's
is that art is the reflection of a collective culture and is the work theories developed in response to common European tendencies,
of history. Jeanneret no longer looks for inspiration, as he had which took different forms according to whether they attached
in his journey to Italy in 1907, in the decorative work of the themselves to French positivist or German idealist traditions, to
medieval artist-craftsman; he seeks it in the anonymous and both of which Jeanneret was exposed.
typical forms of entire cultures. The second theme is the contrast Oechslin's main point is that the German visit of 1910-1911
between the "soft" folk culture of Turkey and the "hard" clas- was crucial to the formation of ideas that were later to be crys-
sical culture of Greece and the Acropolis. He is saddened by tallized in the L'Esprit Nouveau articles. Jeanneret was present
"the catastrophe that will inevitably ruin Stamboul: the advent at the Werkbund Congress in June 1910. Oechslin quotes a
of modern times" (p. 160). In contrast to this "feminine" Istan- remark made by Karl Ernst Osthaus at this congress, which
bul, "the Parthenon, a terrible machine, grinds [crushes] and clearly adumbrates the idea of the free plan: "Another possibility
dominates... a sovereign cube facing the sea" (p. 212). "It is created by concrete is the establishment, in buildings of several
a prophetic art from which one cannot escape. As insentient as storeys, of plans of upper floors being independent of plans of
an immense and unalterable truth" (p. 236). The whole of the lower floors. .... I see absolutely no reason why we should hold
future Le Corbusier seems to be contained in this sentence. on to the old rigidity of construction if the advantages for
Zaknic's book suffers from a comparison with Giuliano Gres- habitability of a house result in the displacement of partitions"
leri's I1 viaggio in oriente, which was published in 1984. Both (p. 36).
books contain Jeanneret's text and a selection of his sketches. Among the many other influences cited by Oechslin, one of
But while Zaknic's introduction is little more than a formality, the most important was Werner Hegemann's exhibition of ur-
Gresleri's provides a detailed cultural background that gives banism in Berlin in 1910. It was this that was largely responsible
depth and meaning to Jeanneret's text. Gresleri also includes for modifying the Sittesque views upon which Jeanneret had
Jeanneret's letters to his parents and to his intellectual mentor, based his unpublished essay La construction des villes, and which,
William Ritter, as well as a selection of the photographs he anomalously, continued to inform his urban designs right up to
took on the tour. Zaknic discounts these on the grounds of Le the war. Oechslin even hazards the guess that it was at this
exhibition that Jeanneret first encountered Pierre Patte's plan
Corbusier's later preference for sketching as a way of imprinting
visual experience on the memory, but the photographs have for Paris, and that this may have impelled him to study French
considerable interest as an essential part of the mixed-media 18th-century planning at the Bibliotheque Nationale in 1915.
documentation of the journey. Oechslin discusses the influence that Peter Behrens exerted on
In spite of their occasional infelicities of translation Zaknic the villas of 1912 and on the use of traces regulateurs. He might
and Nicole Pertuiset have performed a useful service in pro- also have mentioned the close parallels between Heinrich Tes-
ducing this book. It is a great pity, however, that MIT Press senow's ideas about asymmetry in house planning, put forward
did not commission a translation of Gresleri's book while they in his book Hausbau und Dergleichen, and those of Le Corbusier
were about it. on Pompeian houses expressed in L'Esprit Nouveau. However,
Gresleri is also represented in Le Corbusier: une encyclopedie in assessing the extent of German influence on Jeanneret, one
where, in his article "Antiquite," he traces the conversion to must bear in mind that, as Gresleri has shown, Jeanneret's turn
classicism that was to be the motivation of Jeanneret's journey to classicism was due to his contacts with intellectual literary
to the East. He shows how this conversion was the result of circles in Neuchatel, as well as to his connection with William
exposure to "ideological" tendencies then current in Europe, Ritter in Munich.
chiefly through his contact with William Ritter and the books The opinions that Jeanneret expressed on German applied art
of Cingria-Vaneyre in 1910. He characterizes Le Corbusier's in his Etude were by no means all favorable, and it is possible
subsequent lifelong obsession with the Parthenon as the idea of that Oechslin exaggerates the extent of his volteface on Germany

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100 JSAH, XLIX:1, MARCH 1990

whole. This is the task that Stanislaus von Moos has set himself
after the war. Nonetheless, it is clear that in his anti-German
in his catalogue for the centenary exhibition on L'Esprit Nouveau
articles in L'Esprit Nouveau Le Corbusier deliberately suppressed
mounted successively in Zurich, Berlin, Strasbourg, and Paris,
his debt to the German architects of the Deutsche Werkbund circle
with whom he had contact in 1910-1911. and published in its French version under the title L'Esprit Nou-
veau: Le Corbusier et l'industrie.
L'Esprit Nouveau The nucleus of the book is a selection of images from the
The journal L'Esprit Nouveau consisted of 28 numbers pub- pages of L'Esprit Nouveau accompanied by a catalogue raisonne.
lished in Paris between October 1920 and January 1925. It was No less than 17 researchers were recruited for this task, and the
founded by the Dada poet Paul Dermee in association with result is the most comprehensive and informative account of
Amedee Ozenfant and Le Corbusier. Dermee ceased to be an L'Esprit Nouveau to date. The selection is divided into four
editor in December 1920. Starting life as Revue d'esthetique in- sections: architecture and urbanism; art and art theory; music,
ternationale, it acquired in January 1921 the more ambitious title theater, and sport; and industrial products. In this way the full
of Revue internationale illustree de l'activite contemporaine and its range of subjects covered by the journal is presented in a coherent
articles covered every aspect of culture from the visual arts to form and looked at in detail from a variety of perspectives. What
sports. Among its most important (and famous) contributions comes out clearly is the connection between the cultural theory
was a series of articles by Le Corbusier on architecture, urbanism, of L'Esprit Nouveau and the Rappel d l'ordre movement that dom-
and the decorative arts, later published in book form. Two of inated French artistic circles in the years immediately after World
the books, Vers une architecture and Urbanisme, were translated War I (this was already stressed by Franqoise Levaillant in her
almost immediately into English; L'art decoratifd'aujourd'hui had article "Norme et forme a travers l'Esprit Nouveau" in Le Retour
to wait until 1987. Part of the reason for this delay may be that d l'ordre, Paris, 1975). But equally striking is the extent of Oz-
the term "decorative arts" has weaker connotations in English enfant and Le Corbusier's debt to Dada and Surrealist visual
than in French, where it is related to a system of classification techniques of estrangement, in spite of their classicizing and
belonging to the Beaux-Arts. In fact, the book forms an essential positivistic stance, and their explicit antagonism to Dada.
part of a trilogy dealing with the applied arts from the smallest The book also contains 11 essays on various aspects of Le
to the largest scale. As James Dunnett (who has provided a very Corbusier's work during the period of L'Esprit Nouveau.One of
adequate translation) points out in his brief introduction, the the most interesting of these is an article by von Moos himself,
book is primarily concerned with what today would be called entitled "Dans l'antichambre du 'machine age.' " In this he dis-
"design." cusses Le Corbusier's reaction to industrialization, advertising,
As is the case with all of Le Corbusier's writings, the book and the media. Von Moos takes as his point of departure Walter
is addressed to a wide audience and the style is dogmatic, en- Benjamin's 1934 essay, "The Author as Producer." Using a
ergetic, and vivid, with simple expressions serving as shorthand distinction made by Benjamin, von Moos claims that Le Cor-
for often quite complex philosophical ideas. Because it is a busier was trying to change the role of the architect within the
collection of separate articles, it does not contain a systematic relations of production of architecture, rather than being content
thread of ideas. It aims to persuade by the force of its verbal to reflect modernity on an aesthetic level. Both in his attempt
and visual imagery. Its main idea, following a long 19th-century to intervene in the production of urban housing and in his use
reformist tradition, is that the term "decorative" is an anach- of the media in L'Esprit Nouveau he was, according to von Moos,
ronism in the world of machine production. The artistic quality going outside the traditional role of the architect. Though Le
of objects of everyday life is not denied, but it is held to be Corbusier can hardly be said to have had the same ends in view
incompatible with ornament that has been "added" to a pre- as those promoted by Benjamin in "The Work of Art in the
existent object. Instead, the beauty of an object is an immanent Age of Mechanical Reproduction," it is certainly true that Le
property of its form, which is derived from either function or Corbusier's use of modern techniques of mass communication
geometry. At the same time Le Corbusier distinguishes between was fundamental to L'Esprit Nouveau. Not only did he use ad-
the object of use and the work of art. The object of use has only vertising material to finance the journal, but he also used it as
one purpose: to be useful. It releases energy for more spiritual copy, promoting the idea of anonymous design (Roneo metal
pursuits, including the contemplation of works of art. doors for example) and thus making the advertiser an accomplice
Le Corbusier never resolves the apparent contradiction be- in his own architectural strategy. Von Moos points out how
tween two concepts of art put forward in this book-one based foreign these tactics were to the Bauhaus with its belief in the
on the intentional work of "fine art," the other on the uncon- need to infuse the products of industry with spiritual value. He
scious adaptation of useful objects to function. From one point might have added that these two attitudes seem to relate, re-
of view, it seems that he wants to reserve for the work of art spectively, to a French positivist tradition going back to Saint-
the whole spiritual dimension of life; from another, humble Simon and to German 19th-century idealism.
objects seem also to be endowed with transcendent aesthetic In her article "L'Esprit Nouveau: architecture et publicite" in
qualities. When he comes to insert architecture into his system, Le Corbusier: une encyclopedie, Beatriz Colomina also discusses
we find that it occupies an ambiguous place between the useful "the blurring of the limits between publicity and content" in
object and the work of art. Architecture is a "spiritual expression L'Esprit Nouveau, making an even stronger claim than von Moos
in material form ... a construct of the mind [systeme de l'esprit] for the importance of Le Corbusier's role as manipulator of
giving material form to its consciousness of the age" (p. xxiv). advertising and the media. The emphasis both authors place on
The theory of architecture and applied arts put forward in this aspect of Le Corbusier's work raises questions as to his
The Decorative Art of Today formed part of a cultural program attitude toward what was later to be called consumerism, for,
that can only be grasped by looking at L'Esprit Nouveau as a as Mary McLeod and Joan Ockman have pointed out, Le Cor-

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 BOOK REVIEWS 101

a flat,
busier in another context expressed a profound antipathy forrather Miesian cube seen diagonally from below in the
advertising ("Some Comments on Reproduction withmanner Refer-of a Wagnerschule drawing (comparison with drawing
number
ence to Colomina and Hays," in Beatriz Colomina, editor, Ar-31-044 indicates that this is a drawing of the Villa
chitectureproduction, New York, 1988, 227). Savoye and not merely an idea that was later taken up for the
villa, as Benton seems to suggest). But the first extant set of
The Villas
drawings for the Villa Savoye shows the final idea fully worked
Tim Benton's The Villas of Le Corbusier, 1920-1930 consists out. After this, a series of weird alternatives followed in an
of monographs of 14 houses (including one apartment, the Beis- attempt to reduce costs, only to end in a return to a shrunken
tegui) designed or built by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret version of the original design.
in the 1920s (originally published as Le Corbusier: villas, Paris, Benton's exposition both here and elsewhere in the book is
1984). These are grouped in four chapters entitled "The Worldoften hard to follow. To grasp all the steps in the process of
of Purism," "The Architectural Promenade," "Complex Pro-transformation it is necessary to refer continually to the Garland
grams," and "Classic Houses." These titles should be taken with set or the Oeuvre complete because of the lack of adequate illus-
a grain of salt, since all the projects belong to the world of trations in the present book. In the case of the Villa Savoye,
Purism and most of them exhibit the architectural promenade these difficulties are compounded by the fact that the plans
in one form or another. specially drawn to illustrate the main stages of development are
In addition to an introduction, the book has an annex con-printed at different scales (presumably in the interest of a neat
taining summaries of the main facts for each house, synoptic page design); and in some cases the plans are wrongly oriented
tables of dates and craftsmen, and a catalogue of drawings asrelative to each other (pp. 198 and 199). On the evidence pre-
numbered by the Fondation. The book is not a complete study sented, it is difficult to understand why the famous "rogue"
of the houses of the period, since it excludes the Citrohen-solution of 26 November 1928, which incidentally bears a cer-
type houses, the Villa Baiseaux in Tunis, and the house that Letain resemblance to an early scheme for the Villa Stein, should
Corbusier built for his parents on Lac Leman. A few errors have have been cheaper than the original scheme. In fact its overall
crept into this English edition of the book, including "Sym-dimensions were considerably less, as can be seen in Max Ris-
bolic" as a translation of the French "Symbiose," and these mustselada, Raumplan versus Plan Libre, p. 61.
be added to the errors in the original French edition that have Among the various questions taken up by Benton in his in-
not been corrected. troduction is the role played by Le Corbusier in the office in
The text deals exhaustively with the history of each project,the 1920s. Benton's researches have led him to the conclusion
providing information on sites, costs, contractual arrangements, that it was often that of a "disturber of order," and that his
relations between client and architect, and design development.interventions often took the form of the addition of "symbolic
Ever since Garland published the drawings in the Fondation Leand resonant" forms to "dry" solutions. This is an intriguing
Corbusier, it has been apparent that most of the projects thatidea, if only because it ties in with Le Corbusier's early Ruskinian
came out of Le Corbusier and Jeanneret's office were the result training as designer-decorator, but it must be balanced by the
of a long and agonizing process of trial and error, in whichfact that Le Corbusier had an opposite tendency to schematicism.
many alternatives were tried out. To those nurtured on theWe should probably also see this "disturbing" role as being due
Oeuvre complete this was rather shocking, as if a number of to a desire to infuse the buildings with the signs of vital and
immaculate conceptions had turned out to be the result of mis-spontaneous energy. This Dionysian side is one of the revela-
cegenation. What Benton has been able to do is to relate these tions of the drawings in the Fondation, which show how awk-
transformations (in the case of the villas) to their contingent ward some of his first ideas were in their search for new solutions
circumstances and to suggest a chronological sequence. with functional-organic analogies.
As Benton makes clear, the process of development changed Benton also discusses the problem of the relation between
with different projects. Sometimes, as in the Villa Stein-de Mon- mass housing and the one-off villa. For the author there is a
zie, the early ideas are full of picturesque incidents which are continuous passage from one to the other since the villas grew
gradually tamed and subordinated to the grid and the cube. Atout of typologies developed for houses in series and in turn acted
the same time, an opposite process takes place in which con-as test beds for larger urbanistic ideas. Other critics (including
taminations occur between parts that had previously been sche-Richard Ingersoll in his review of this book in Design Book
matically discrete. Benton draws attention to the fact that Le Review 14, 1988, 19-33) take a sociological position similar to
Corbusier's solutions often contain traces of earlier stages of that of Le Corbusier's Neue Sachlichkeit critics of the period,
development. For example, in the Villa Stein-de Monzie the accusing him of bad sociology in using, for instance, the artist's
tripartite plan shows vestiges of the original program according studio as a model for mass housing. Both points of view are
to which the house was to be divided into two apartmentsvalid, but they should be seen against a broader background of
sharing certain common facilities. The effect of the transfor-cultural criticism. Le Corbusier saw mass production less as a
mations, in which cost considerations often work in alliance means to solving a social need than as the way the modern age
with classicizing tendencies, is an increase in spatial complexitywould achieve a wholly new collective culture-one that none-
and dramatic tension within an apparently simpler overall form. theless would be analogous to the great, unified cultures of the
The development of the Villa Savoye is quite different. Therepast.
are a few preliminary sketches, which Benton illustrates in a Benton's book is, of course, a major scholarly achievement,
separate essay ("The Villa Savoye and the Architect's Practice,"yet its main thrust is often swamped with factual detail and it
in Le Corbusier: The Garland Essays). One of these shows a caroften leaves unclear the conceptual basis of Le Corbusier's trans-
ramp penetrating the house at second floor level. Another shows formations of the bourgeois villa.

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102 JSAH, XLIX:1, MARCH 1990

gurat that Le Corbusier designed for the museum is analyzed

Discussion of these concepts has usually been at a formal level,
but this type of analysis is criticized by Monique Eleb-Vidalby in Giuliano Gresleri in his essay "Le Mundaneum, lecture du
her essay entitled "H6tel particulier" in Le Corbusier: une ency-
projet." It is also discussed by Dario Matteoni in the entry
clopedie. Eleb-Vidal shows that many of Le Corbusier's planning "Mundaneum" in Le Corbusier: une encyclopedie. Both authors
methods were based on a particularly French tradition of conve- draw attention to the fact that in legendary ziggurats the move-
ment is an ascent from earth to heaven while in the International
nance going back to the early 17th century and culminating with
Jacques-Francois Blondel in the 18th century. Starting fromMuseum
Le the visitor descends along an ever broadening spiral to
Corbusier's discussion of the bedroom and its dependenciesaninindeterminate present. The contradictions of this "secular"
his book Precisions, Eleb-Vidal shows that he used the freedomsymbolism were attacked by Karel Teige who, in the Czech
magazine Stavba, accused Le Corbusier of mystification in his
gained by the structural frame to reformulate a traditional con-
attempt to apply a transcendental symbolism to modern life.
cern for complex differentiation of functions within the apparte-
ment or cellule of the bedroom suite. In this way Eleb-Vidal has Two other sets of projects are discussed in Le Corbusier d
introduced into Corbusian studies a welcome concern for theGeneve. The first is Le Corbusier's various plans for housing in
relation of forms to their social functions, as well as a new Geneva, culminating in a study of the only project built, the
Immeuble Clarte, from the point of view of prefabrication and
interpretation of the free plan, which opposes the iconoclastic
innovations of construction to a conservatism of the plan. dry construction. The second project is the petite maison that Le
Corbusier built in 1924 for his parents near Vevey on Lac Le-
man. This is the subject of two essays, one by Adolph Stiller
Geneva
giving a constructional history of the building, the other by
Early in 1927 Le Corbusier and Jeanneret submitted their
Bruno Reichlin using the house as a vehicle for a discussion of
the famous controversy between August Perret and his erstwhile
designs for the League of Nations competition, their first project
for a major public building. A few months later the Belgianpupil, Le Corbusier, over the relative merits of the fenetre en
lawyer Paul Otlet published his brochure on the Mundaneum, longeur and the classical window. (This excellent article origi-
nally appeared in Daidelus, 13, 1984, in English and German.)
which included plans by Le Corbusier and Jeanneret. These two
abortive projects are the main subjects of Le Corbusier a Geneve,
the catalogue of an exhibition held in Geneva in the centenary
The City of Refuge
year.
The League of Nations building is the subject of two essays. As Kenneth Frampton points out in his introduction, Brian
The first, by Ines Lamuniere and Patrick Daventhary, provides Brace Taylor's book on The City of Refuge was the first study of
an acute analysis of the functional and formal organization of one of Le Corbusier's major public buildings from the perspec-
the building and reconstructs the design development from tive of a social and technical critique. We have since had Jean-
drawings in the archives. The second, by Richard Guincerot, Louis Cohen's somewhat less tendentious study of the Centro-
gives a detailed history of the competition, demolishing a few soyus, but Taylor's monograph remains a milestone in the his-
myths in the process. We learn that the jury premiated nine toriography of modern architecture and its publication in En-
designs (one for each member of the jury). A surprising number glish is long overdue.
of choices fell along national lines, Le Corbusier being chosen Taylor sets out his aims as follows: "A critical analysis of the
by the avant-garde Swiss architect Karl Moser, who was also Cit6 de Refuge is instructive for a number of reasons . . : first
responsible for awarding a second mention to Hannes Meyer. of all its socio-economic and political significance as an archi-
The final choice was made by a committee of five diplomats. tectural type; then its production as a physical object . . , finally,
Le Corbusier tried unsuccessfully to sue the winner for plagia- the role of Le Corbusier as architect, particularly his way of
rism-the ultimate gesture in a series of frantic moves aimed operating in concrete reality" (p. 127).
at obtaining the commission. Influenced by Michel Foucault's books on the institutional-
As Catherine Courtiau points out in her comprehensive essay, ization of the socially marginalized, Taylor defines the Cite de
"La Cite Internationale," Paul Otlet's project for the Munda- Refuge typologically as a "heterotopia"-that is, a self-con-
neum, the center of a proposed "world city" on the shores of tained place set apart from normal social space. The models for
Lac Leman close to the site of the League of Nations, had its such a type include monasteries, socialist utopias like Fourier's
origins in the spirit of internationalism that developed in the Phalanstere, and established institutions such as prisons and lu-
late 19th century and that was revived after the disaster of the natic asylums. Taylor connects the Cit6 de Refuge and its parent
First World War. Otlet had already prompted an earlier world organization, the Salvation Army, with negative rather than pos-
center in Belgium, designed on City Beautiful lines by Andersen itive aspects of seclusion and implies through this a whole cri-
and Hebrard in 1910. Otlet asked Le Corbusier and Jeanneret tique of modernism, especially that of Le Corbusier, with its
to prepare plans for the Mundaneum in 1927. Their design, in fixation on the objet type fulfilling a specialized and often insid-
which geometry and number play a symbolic role, correspondsiously authoritarian social function.
closely to the mixture of positivism and mysticism in Otlet's Like von Moos, Taylor aims at demystifying the legend of
thought, with its Fourieresque utopianism and its connectionLe Corbusier, but he comes to the opposite conclusions. Where-
with freemasonry. as for von Moos Le Corbusier's use of the media in his writings
The core of the project was an international museum, to be places him in the ranks of an avant-garde that sought to subvert
divided into three sections: historical (time), scientific or inter-the traditional concept of the architect, for Taylor Le Corbusier
national (objects), and geographic or national (place). The Zig-continued to operate as the artist-architect who was ignorant of

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 BOOK REVIEWS 103

the new technologies he was advocating. Though he discusses does not the articles on Constructivism in L'Esprit Nouveau, the
say as much, Taylor implies that Le Corbusier belonged relationship
to a between Le Corbusier's theory and the theories of
the Russian avant-garde, and Le Corbusier's involvement with
tradition of mimesis, according to which architecture primarily
the projects for the Ville Vert holiday town near Moscow and
fulfills an ideological and representational rather than a practical
function. Taylor's reconstruction of the building process with the "Disurbanist" controversy, out of which grew his
reveals
a gap between Le Corbusier's aspirations to modernity initial
and his formulation of the Ville Radieuse.
ability to translate these into reality. It could be argued Thethat
story of the relationship between the Russian avant-garde
such a gap between the ideal and the real is the inevitableafter the revolution and the Western European avant-gardes has
result
yet to be fully explored. The attitude of the Russians was ex-
of a utopian view that ascribes normative value to technology
and, as such, is built into the modern movement. Curtis, in Le
tremely ambivalent. On the one hand, the architects and artists
Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, tries to solve this dilemmaofby theem-
avant-garde must have felt a sense of continuity with
phasizing the ideal dimension of architecture, assimilatingtheirtech-
prerevolutionary past, which the revolution seemed to
nical and social aspiration to a transcendental aesthetics. Taylor
confirm and give additional meaning to. From this point of view
takes the opposite course. To him Le Corbusier's architecture,
it was natural that they would want to renew contacts with the
since it claims to be scientific, must be judged by the pragmatic
west as soon as the political situation allowed. At both a technical
and an artistic level, the Russian architects had a need for such
criteria of science. By that criteria, the Cit6 de Refuge obviously
failed in a number of ways, and Taylor shows the widening gap On the other hand, the revolution had given Russian
a renewal.
that developed during the design and building process architects
between a sense of social purpose and a distrust for the cultural
the client's and user's perception of the building and thatinstitutions
of the of the west.
architect, and the architect's increasing megalomania and As forde-the Western avant-garde, it saw Russia as the country
in which the principles of cultural modernism were most likely
creasing grasp of reality. Taylor's view has broader implications
than the merely pragmatic, suggesting that what a building is whether or not it associated the artistic avant-garde
to succeed,
withfrom
is not just what the architect intends, but its whole history social revolution. Le Corbusier's own relationship with
inception and use to final decay. the Russian avant-garde was not based on any fundamental sym-
Whatever truth there may be in this view, the fact pathy remains
with communism. In this he differed from many members
that the Cite de Refuge has become sufficiently important of the as a
German avant-garde. As Cohen points out, Le Corbusier
cultural icon for a historian like Taylor to devote a monograph
drew much of his authority in Russia from his connection with
to it. And just as there is an undertow of social and technical
the Parisian artistic and intellectual milieu, rather than from his
criticism in Curtis's book, so there is an undertow of aesthetic
social or political views.
praise in Taylor's. Taylor does not explore the relation between
It is against this confused background that Jean-Louis Cohen
depicts
the aesthetic qualities of the building and its technical and the love affair between Le Corbusier and the Russian
social
failures. avant-garde-a love affair based on almost total mutual mis-
Taylor may perhaps be blamed for not trying to resolve the
understanding. The attitude toward Le Corbusier on the part
contradictions of his own critique, but his book remains of athe
valu-
Russians differed considerably and reflected the different
able study, important precisely to the extent that it refuses degreesthe
of politicization within the Russian avant-garde itself.
totalizing view that modern architecture had of itself and that Vesnin and Moisei Ginzburg were staunch supporters
Alexander
its critics and historians frequently sought to perpetuate. of Le Corbusier. The latter's book Style and Epoch was closely
modeled on Vers une architecture and laid great stress on ahis-
torical classical values. On the other hand, El Lissitsky, in al-
Le Corbusier and the USSR
liance with the Neue Sachlichkeit movement, attacked Le Cor-
In October 1928 Le Corbusier visited Moscow to present hisbusier for his aestheticism and mystifications, as did Karel Teige
winning design for the Centrosoyus. Between then and 1932 (who is the subject of a separate article by Jean-Louis Cohen in
he made two more visits to Russia and completed his designsLe Corbusier: une encylopidie).
for the Palace of the Soviets. These four years of intense in- Cohen's account of the critical reception of Le Corbusier in
volvement with Russia and their subsequent repercussions arethe 1930s in Russia is of great interest. In the 1920s, despite
the subject of Jean-Louis Cohen's book, La mystique de l'URSS. certain critical voices, Le Corbusier was generally regarded as
In the opening chapter Cohen places his book in the context an unchallenged master. After the debacle of the Palace of the
of Corbusian studies: "Today the layers of documentation areSoviets competition, the tone becomes much more critical. What
beginning to reveal their potential, while a whole set of mental is perhaps surprising, given the increasingly ideological terms
reservations have arisen which allow us to deal with the most of the architectural debate, is the moderation and subtlety of
contradictory aspects of the life and work of Le Corbusier andmuch of the criticism. The intelligence of the critic David
to make out the contours of his personality" (p. 9). It is thisArkin's articles on Le Corbusier is particularly striking. Whereas
cautious critical approach that informs Cohen's valuable book.in the late 1920s Le Corbusier's critics accused him of being
Much of the material was published in Oppositions 23 under too artistic, those of the thirties found him too technological
the title "Le Corbusier and the Mystique of the USSR," but and functional. But there was a common factor: both criticized
the present book is far greater in scope, providing completehim for aestheticizing technology and for ignoring social issues.
accounts of the Centrosoyus and the Palace of the Soviets, to- To some extent these criticisms were also directed in the 1930s
gether with a thorough treatment of their cultural and politicalat the Constructivists within the USSR who were sometimes
context and their critical reception in Russia. In addition, Cohenreferred to as nihilists of the left in the growing atmosphere of

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104 JSAH, XLIX:1, MARCH 1990

Socialist Realism. But it was Le Curbusier, with his "a-political"occur is in the essay "Le Corbusier and Loos" by Stanislaus von
technocratic ideas, who was the chief object of socialist attack Moos. This is the product of von Moos's research into thejournal
in both Russia and France. L'Esprit Nouveau and the essay is also included in the book
Cohen's book, with its thorough documentation of the ideo- L'Esprit Nouveau: Le Corbusier et l'industrie. In this essay von
logical debates pivoting round Le Corbusier in the late twenties Moos explores the similarities and differences between the two
and thirties in Russia, gives a new dimension to Le Corbusier's architects' theoretical positions as opposed to their differences
international role. It also raises questions about the relation of practice. As he correctly states, both architects held to a
between architecture and politics that are still relevant today. Darwinist theory of design, involving the use of "ready-mades"
(von Moos here extends, perhaps rather dubiously, Marcel Du-
Le Corbusier and AdolfLoos
champ's concept) and rejecting the concept of the Gesamtkunst-
The relationship between the work of Le Corbusier and Adolf werk which had been taken over from Richard Wagner by the
Loos is the subject of Raumplan versus Plan Libre, edited by Max Art Nouveau movement and the Viennese Secession. Von Moos
Risselada. The book is, in fact, the catalogue of a sumptuous is careful to explain that Le Corbusier's condemnation of the
traveling exhibition of architectural models prepared in 1987 Secession (1908) predates his knowledge of Adolf Loos's writ-
by the School of Architecture at the Delft University of Tech- ings by five years. And, in fact, his rejection of the Secession
nology, Holland. takes a different form from that of Loos, leading to his accep-
In his introduction Risselada traces the history behind the tance (for a few years) of the neoclassical revival propagated by
exhibition: first, the revival of interest in Loos in the 1960s and,Paul Mebes and Peter Behrens. In spite of the classical tendencies
second, the formal analysis of Le Corbusier's purist period houses, he shared with Le Corbusier, Loos never embraced this move-
initiated by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutsky in the late 1950s. ment, though he came close to it during his brief "reorientation"
At the formal level, as Risselada points out, there is an obvious toward the classical vernacular in the early 1920s.
basis for comparison; both architects treat the house as a spatio- The more fundamental differences between the two architects
temporal "architectural promenade," and both tend to compress emerged in the 1920s when Le Corbusier abandoned the tra-
a complex sequence of spaces within a regular hexahedron. But ditional concept of a craft-based architecture in favor of an
whereas with Loos the vertical surfaces are continuous and the architecture based on machine production, a step that Loos never
horizontal surfaces discontinuous (providing rooms on different took, in spite of his insistence on the reality of a new "folk"
levels and of differing heights), with Le Corbusier the opposite culture of anonymous industrial design. Von Moos makes it
is the case, the floors remaining constant (though sometimes clear that Loos's persistent craft approach led him to retain
voided) and the walls on each floor adapting themselves freely traditional notions of bienseance and convenance. He held (with
to different functions (the free plan). Loos's Raumplan is prob- Karl Kraus) that there was a difference between the Urn and
ably derived from English freestyle houses, and examples can the Chamberpot, and that "only a small part of architecture
be found in Great Britain as early as the 1860s of houses where belongs to art: the tomb and the monument." For Le Corbusier,
each room is on a different level. on the contrary, all architecture belonged to art. The move from
Risselada links these diverse spatio-structural systems to a the craft tradition to abstract design associated with mechanical
much more fundamental difference, that between space-making production had the effect for him of moving architectural design
and mass-making architecture: "On the one hand spaces in even more firmly into the territory of the conceptualizing ar-
which the entire body can dwell-all the senses being involved; chitect. Acting as Hegel's observer-philosopher, and at the same
on the other hand spaces where there is perhaps only room for time reinventing Kantian aesthetics, the Corbusian architect
the roaming eye." This distinction, which in fact is based on becomes aware of the transcendental meaning of the anonymous
an idea put forward by Loos in his essay "The Principle of forms created by calculation. For Le Corbusier, architecture,
Cladding," seems to be the difference between an art that accepts once freed from the material shackles of craft by the machine,
the complexity of the lifeworld and an art that seeks to order becomes a pure creation of the mind and therefore an expression
this world according to a priori principles. It is easy to see how of the highest spiritual values. For Loos, this role was reserved
the houses of Loos and Le Corbusier might correspond to these for the great work of art, with its intensity of private experience,
two types. The floor plan of a house by Loos has no iconic value or the monument, with its dependence on social convention.
in itself, whereas a plan by Le Corbusier is a visual icon of the It is a striking, though perhaps not altogether surprising, fact
"idea" of the building. Both architects dissolve the traditional that the majority of the books reviewed here deal either with
house, but whereas with Loos the house can only be understood Le Corbusier's formative years before World War I or with the
sequentially and empirically, with Le Corbusier it is understood work of the "heroic" period of the 1920s and early 1930s. The
instantaneously as a mental image. extent of scholarly and critical interest in the early and middle
Unfortunately Risselada does not allow himself enough space period work suggests a decline in the critical fortunes of work
to develop this interesting comparison. The formal analyses that of the post World War II period. This seems to be consistent
follow are useful in themselves (especially van den Beek's study with a change in attitude to the Modern movement as a whole
of Loos's houses with its analytical diagrams showing the way that has occurred in the last two decades. A decreasing number
the spatial sequences might actually be experienced), but they of critics see the present as an unproblematic evolution from
do not succeed in bringing the houses of the two architects the early Modern movement-as its coming of age. The mod-
under a single set of critical criteria, and we are left with two ernism that is of interest now is that which looked (often with
systems of ideas, excellently described, but completely uncon- horror) at the break with history that the 20th century had
nected with each other. inaugurated, rather than the modernism that later sought to
Where a fruitful comparison between the two architects does reconcile the modern world with a timeless humanism.

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 BOOK REVIEWS 105

The decline in Le Corbusier as a role model for this kind

thatofappeared
appeared in
in his
his centenary
centenaryyear
yearfulfill
fulfilla aneed
needtotopenetrate
penetrat
reconciliation has not resulted in any decline of criticaldeeper
interest
deeper into
into the
the period
period in
in which
whichthese
thesechanges
changeswerewerefirst
firstper-
per
in the work of Le Corbusier the innovator. Quite the contrary.
ceived
ceived and
and interpreted,
interpreted, in
inorder
orderto
tounderstand
understandbetter
betterour
our own
ow
Le Corbusier's ideas and works have increasingly come to bepredicament.
cultural
cultural predicament.
seen as paradigmatic of the great cultural and artistic changes ALAN COLQUHOUN
that have taken place since the turn of the century. The books Princeton University

ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE, ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL

ACHIM ARBEITER, Alt-St. Peter in Geschichte und Wissen-

arch,
arch, since
sincehe heenvisages
envisages thethe
transept
transeptas anasemphatically
an emphatically
separat
s
space,
space, designed
designed
schaft, Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1988, 271 pp., 140 illus., 3 toto house
house Saint
SaintPeter's
Peter's
shrine,
shrine,
and screened
and scree b
fold-out drawings. DM 128. pairs
pairs ofofcolumns
columns atat
the
thewest
westendendof the
of the
side side
aislesaisles
and inand
th
openings
openingsof ofthe
theexedrae.
exedrae.
Old St. Peter's, built by the Emperor Constantine He c.
He 319-
gives
gives a abrief
briefaccount
account of of
thethe
atrium
atrium
and and
whatwhat
was possibly
was p
its
its original
329, was clearly the most important edifice in Early originallayout.
Christian layout.InIn
this
this
he heincludes
includes
the the
Pigna,
Pigna,
whichwhic
may
and medieval Rome, and one of the most significanthave
havechurches
been
beenplaced
placed there
thereonly
onlyin the
in the
late late
5th 5th
century.
century.
ever built. For this reason a work like the present one St.
St.
byPeter's
Peter's
Achim basilica
basilicais is
setset
historically
historically
in the
in tradition
the tradition
of Ancien
of A
Arbeiter is always welcome. Roman
Romanarchitecture.
architecture.Arbeiter
Arbeiterattempts
attempts
moreover
moreover
to explain
to expl
th
The author first surveys the evidence for the Apostle Peter's
significance
significance of
ofthe
the
Vatican
Vatican
church,
church,
its decoration,
its decoration,
its inscrip-
its in
sojourn, martyrdom, and veneration in Rome. Presbyter
tions, Gaius
tions, and
andthe
thegolden
golden
cross
cross
donated
donated
by Constantine
by Constantine
and Helen
and
c. 200 AD mentioned tropaia in honor of Saint Peter in at the
in terms
terms of
ofimperial
imperialpolitics
politics
of the
of the
earlyearly
4th century.
4th centuryIn m
Vatican and Saint Paul along the Via Ostia. The aedicula
opinion,
opinion,he built
herather
ratheroverstates
overstatesthethe
political
political
symbolism
symbolism
of theofcros
th
against the Red Wall in Field P, which was discovered and
and of
of the
thecrown
duringcrownininthe
theciborium.
ciborium.
the excavations under the Vatican Grottoes between 1940 andArbeiter
Finally,
Finally, Arbeiter discusses
discusses later
later
churches
churcheswhosewhose
designdesig
wa
clearly
clearly
1949, has been identified as the tropaion of Saint Peter. influenced
influenced
Arbeiter bybythatthat
of of
OldOld
St. Peter's:
St. Peter's:
S. Paolo
S. Paolo
fuori fl
clearly sets out and evaluates the evidence for thisMuraassumption,
Mura in
inRome
Rome(c.(c.
384-402/3);
384-402/3); thethe
Carolingian
Carolingian
abbey abbey
churchech
which he accepts. He also mentions the Memoria toof of
theSaint-Denis
Saint-Denis
Apostles (775)
(775)andandFulda
Fulda
(819);
(819);
and and
the Roman
the Romanchurchech
Peter and Paul at S. Sebastiano on the Via Appia. of of S.
S. Anastasia
Anastasia(795-816),
(795-816), S. Prassede
S. Prassede (817-825)
(817-825)
and S.
and
Stefan
S. S
By far the largest section of the book deals with degli
the evidence
degli Abessini
Abessini(c.(c.
850).
850).
In In
this
this
section
section
it might
it might
have have
been usefu
been
for and reconstructions made of the Early Christianif
if the
thebasilica.
author
authorhadhad extended
extended hishis
terms
terms
of reference
of reference
to include
to in
The author has carefully studied the available literary andof
some
some graph-
ofthe
the12th-century
12th-centurychurches
churches
in Rome,
in Rome,
such such
as theastransep
the t
basilicas
basilicasof
ic sources, as well as the archaeological remains pertaining of S.S.Crisogono
to Crisogono andand
S. Maria
S. Maria
in Trastevere,
in Trastevere,
or th
Old St. Peter's. After summarizing this evidence,atrium
he discusses
atrium at
atS.S.Clemente,
Clemente, all all
of of
which
which
clearly
clearly
reflect
reflect
the design
the deo
the reconstruction of the Early Christian church, Old St. Peter's.
critically as-
sessing work already done by such scholars as J. H. TheJongkees
book is well planned and keeps to its central focus: the
(Studies on Old St. Peter's, Gronigen, 1966), J. Christern and K.basilica of Saint Peter, the shrine that preceded
Early Christian
Thiersch (Christern, "Der Aufriss von Alt-St. Peter," Roemisches
it on the site, its significance architecturally and historically,
Quartalschrift, LXII, 1967, 133-183, and Christern and Thiersch,
and its influence in the later 4th century and middle ages. The
argumentLXIV,
"Der Aufriss von Alt-St. Peter," Roemisches Quartalschrift, is clear and thoroughly developed. Copious illustra-
1969, 1-34), and R. Krautheimer and A. Frazer (R.tions
Krautheim-
document the graphic sources, and modern drawings rep-
er, S. Corbett and A. Frazer, Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum
resent the various reconstructions of previous authors. Arbeiter
Romae, Vatican City, 1977, V, 165-286). The reconstruction
provides three new architectural fold-out drawings, but they do
is presented systematically: the plan of nave and aisles,
not the
seem tran-
to be based on a new survey of existing elements, nor
sept, exedrae, and apse; the elevation of the nave, on
itsa columns,
radically new interpretation of the evidence. Rather his
reconstruction
windows, and east facade; the elevation of the transept, its height,is based on a critical review of earlier work. He
columns, windows, and doors. Arbeiter is meticulous inseem
does not his to have any new photographic material of his
discussion of the dimensions of the Constantinianown.
basilica, but
occasionally he seems to be over precise, as when At the
(pp. end of his section on the pre-Constantinian shrines o
96-97)
he wants to revise the plan because the apse and transept are 12
Saints Peter and Paul, Arbeiter suggests (p. 50) that excavation
cm. out of axis with the nave, according to Krautheimer and at the basilica of S. Paolo fuori le Mura in order
could be made
Frazer's calculations. to clarify some aspects of the shrine of St. Peter. Although it
The shrine of the Apostle, the goal of pilgrims visiting
would bethe
a difficult and onerous task, it would be immensel
church, stood on the chord of the apse, under a canopy supported
useful in the light of present scholarship to undertake such a
by the famous vine-scroll columns brought to Rome dig.
from AtGreece
S. Paolo fuori le Mura, Vespignani in 1838 found th
in 324 by Constantine. The site of the original altar (movable
remains of a shrine, perhaps enclosing the tropaion of the Apos-
or fixed) is more problematic, whether under the ciborium with
tle Paul mentioned by Presbyter Gaius, and some sarcophag
the shrine, under the triumphal arch, or in the nave. Arbeiter
buried nearby. Part of an apse wall facing in the opposite di
(p. 204) suggests that it was in the nave or under the triumphal
rection to the present one came to light in 1850. Arbeiter's

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