Le Corbusier's legacy and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
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Re: What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
#32Yes, Corbusier's vision of cities was tied to speed, and by consequence, to cars.
But Chandigarh today has fantastic segregated bike infrastructure! No other Indian city comes close. The city itself is pan-flat and relatively small (shaped as a rectangle where the longer side is 10 kilometers).
Cycle the routes and you see the vast array of tradesman, workers, maids, and vegetable vendors travel by cycle. Big apartment complexes will have bike stands full of pink bicycles that the maids would use.
Granted the city has far too many cars, but the article doesn't adequately reflect the town and all its people.
Re: What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
#33As I saw someone say, "In all its years modernism has failed to produce beautiful cities".
Tourists still flock to old parts of towns and 19th-century factories are refurbished into elite apartments.
Re: What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brazilia in Brazil was the same thing with Niemeyer. But not sure how much of the actual city he did, or just the most iconic buildings. ps. see comment below, it was the work of multiple architects
I used to go to Brasilia 3-4 times a month for work. If you got on a Tuesday morning flight you could rub shoulders with congressmen, top-level cabinet ministers, supreme court justices and so on. Many would easily engage you in conversation, too; maybe because I didn't open with political subjects and mainly complained about having to go to Brasilia. The first problem with Brasilia is that it's horribly located. We…
If you ever find yourself in or near Albany, New York it’s worth looking at the state government complex and university to compare and contrast.
The capitol complex really settles the arguments. You have the NYS Capitol, which is an amazing expression of the excess of 19th century monumental building. Across one street is a circa 1910 replica of a Greek temple turned office building, with a gross 1950s addition in the rear. Across the park is an Art Deco mid rise, and then you have the Empire State Plaza, which is an interpretation of Brasilia in the US.
It’s designed as an over proportioned Roman forum built on a parking garage and mall-like concourse, but the buildings themselves are bizarre. Full of little warrens, and dependent on chaulk and constant maintenance to endure.
The architects sold the place based on the modernist form, but the building interiors are really not designed for their intended use. Function always follows form in these sorts of buildings.
Re: What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
#35We can't have a discussion of Le Corbusier and modernism with mentioning the concept of "legibility" as illuminated here: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call... Relevant quote: " High-modernist (think Bauhaus and Le Corbusier) aesthetics necessarily lead to simplification, since a reality that serves many purposes presents itself as illegible to a vision informed by a singular purpose. Any el…
I've watched many architecture TV programs presenting works of Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus school, and other examples of modernism. And often I've walked away with a "Wow" feeling, there is in some sense a kind of majestic beauty in it.
But OTOH I'm thinking that actually living in an environment like that would get, well, quite boring after a while. Lacking all the small ornaments and other minor details that you notice when you're there day in an out. It might look cluttered and disorganized in a glossy architecture magazine, but, well, I guess people actually living there might well prefer it that way.
Re: What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
#36As I saw someone say, "In all its years modernism has failed to produce beautiful cities". Tourists still flock to old parts of towns and 19th-century factories are refurbished into elite apartments.
I'm currently reading Suburban Nation by Duany et al, and they talk about this exact thing - how the most desirable neighborhoods in old US cities like Boston or Washington are the old, dense, mixed-use parts of town. The book is twenty years old but it is still a good introduction to some of the problems of American-style suburbia.
Re: What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s fashionable to say that. Yet I think NYC would be worse off had he not been around. Moses was a complex man and he did stuff good and bad. The unique thing about Moses is that he was an incredibly talented individual, both genius and villain. His acquisition, wielding, and addiction to power is fascinating. The other thing is that he attracted the attention of the greatest biographer of the modern era. His legac…
Fair about anonymity, and fair about his talent. But I can't forgive him for what he did to the Rockaways, as much as I can't forgive whoever designed the Inner Loop highway in Rochester. The fact that I know one's name and not the other doesn't change my dislike of what they did.
Agreed.
If you haven’t, it sounds like this is a topic you’re into and i would recommend that you read “The Power Broker”. It’s a summer read (as in June-September), but is a uniquely awesome book.
Re: What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
#38Wonderful article - I had no idea that Le Corbusier was involved in "modernizing" an Indian city. But I feel like some maps and aerial views and wider shots would've illustrated some of the higher-level discussions for a Westerner like me. I kept craving more visuals to correspond to what the author was talking about. Often the phots they did provide contrasted quite strongly with the descriptions - like when discuss…
I looked at the city on Google maps; the street grid is prominent but I didn't feel like I good a good idea of how the city is laid out into sectors as the article mentioned. One thing I did notice were some blocks of the city that did not conform to the overall grid (there's a prominent one in the southwest of the central city). Does anyone know if these were instances of post-Corbusier demolition and rebuilding, or were these part of the original plan? It would be interesting to know how much the city has changed sense it was designed and built (in the 60s I guess?).
Re: What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
#39Le Corbusier is a mystery to me. I would very much like to understand the intellectual bending of his esthetic instincts that lead him going from this [0, 1, 2] to this [3, 4, 5] and his ideas of "machines for living" [6]. With good intentions, he invented the modern ghetto. [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Maison_b... [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/CF05.jpg [2] https:/…
The first few are single family villas, the last four are multi family housing complexes. For some reason, people in Europe back in the 60s believed that creating dense housing only units with no sense of scale, long commutes and walks and 100% car dependence was the way forward. That experiment backfired almost everywhere. Some of these homes, both in Eastern and Western Europe are well connected via public transpor…
You're missing how some of those places were built with, or without, the necessary secondary support architecture that was specified in the original ideas.
For example, Communist-era housing blocks in Poland had standardised requirements for availability of grocery shops, healthcare, transportation, sport and recreation areas, etc. for each community built this way, and generally you never had to walk far to get to a grocery store in my experience. What was problematic is that due to worse processes at the time, it took years for green areas to get, well, green.
Corbusier and many places inspired by him seemed to have put the requirements, but often for various reasons those were stripped out - either due to subpar followers, or costs, or even outright malfeasance (one place I lived in had the design changed by builders while architects were on vacation, resulting in much maligned building)
Re: What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
#40First a cookie popup with only an "Accept" button (that isn't auto-clicked by Super Agent); then a demand for payment that can't be dismissed, and blocks the article. Please don't post paywalled articles.
For me there's a cross to close the donation dialog box (top-right).