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Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

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Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#61

Post by maborowsky »

richliss wrote: post #2

As someone who grew up in a city that did this, it was a terrible idea then and remains so. Town planners who like brutalism and everything modern are insane. Just look at Birmingham, England - they knocked down beautiful buildings to put up brutalist eyesores to then knock down brutalist eyesores and replace them with a different type of modern architecture that will look awful in 20 years. There's a reason that peo…

I think it’s less about the specific architectural style and more about if the building itself is designed well. There are both good and bad “modern” buildings. For example, I think the Seagram building is beautiful, but I don’t like a lot of the buildings that ripped off its style. Most buildings I see attributed to a “modernist” style are actually just cheap ugly buildings.

Furthermore, when we see old buildings there is a lot of survival bias going on.

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#62

Post by wardedVibe »

OpieCunningham wrote: post #14

Le Corbusier, a pioneer of YIMBYism. To be fair, housing costs in Paris would be much more reasonable, both due to such a glut of housing and the subsequent decreased interest in living there.

What? No, advocating for destroying the old world and remaking it according to a"scientific" vision isn't particularly yimby. Ymimby is about not banning people from doing what they want with their property.

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#63

Post by 8note »

swayvil wrote: post #49
hikingsimulator wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I offer a solution to a problem that is non-existent. The world will have less population by the end of the century. You would make a more cogent point if instead you were asking about policies improving the quality of life of future people instead of defending genocidal ideas. Sadly you don't.

First you tell me that my horrible solutions are horrible. Then you tell me that there isn't a problem. Your end seems to be the unreasonable one.

Your solutions are bad because they are trying to solve problems that don't exist.

Before you start on a solution, understand your requirements and existing state of the art

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#64

Post by [deleted] »

car_analogy wrote: post #46
cm2187 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the cutoff is the invention of photography. The only way painters could remain relevant is by doing something original rather than beautiful. Then the other arts followed. Modern classical music is impossible to listen to most ears. And architects followed too, more interested in creating an original shape of glass or concrete rather than building anything beautiful and pleasing. There is hardly any piece of…

> I think the cutoff is the invention of photography. The only way painters could remain relevant is by doing something original rather than beautiful. You are letting them off too easy. Have you ever seen a photograph that looks like https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ICilJlD5nhA/ThQQ_v2LKzI/AAAAAAAAA... ? Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abbey_in_the_Oakwood#/medi... ? Or https://i.pinimg.com/originals/11/9f/2a/119f2ac…

[deleted]

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#65

Post by bsedlm »

cm2187 wrote: post #38
rich_sasha wrote: post #25

It should probably be pointed out that Paris has a history of "knocking it all down" to make space for the New. Haussman did that. Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, one of the most iconic sacral buildings of the world (?) sits on the rubble of its Christian predecessors (as well as an ancient pagan temple, oh well, zeitgeist). The difference was that Le Corbusier's stuff is, as most of this thread attests, ghastly, mayb…

I think the cutoff is the invention of photography. The only way painters could remain relevant is by doing something original rather than beautiful. Then the other arts followed. Modern classical music is impossible to listen to most ears. And architects followed too, more interested in creating an original shape of glass or concrete rather than building anything beautiful and pleasing. There is hardly any piece of…

I don't think that the musicians have responded yet to the reccording technology in a comparable way to painters responding to photographic technology with impressionism and other non-realistic painting techniques (which do seem to have sprung up when photography became widespread)

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#66

Post by dopidopHN »

ambrozk wrote: post #56
pembrook wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While everybody loves Haussman's Paris today, at the time, it was extremely controversial and he was eventually ousted. Paris used to be like the cramped medieval old towns you see throughout the rest of Europe. Here's a classic quote from one of Haussman's most powerful critics: "We weep with our eyes full of tears for the old Paris, the Paris of Voltaire, of Desmoulins, the Paris of 1830 and 1848, when we see the g…

I don't like Paris' broad boulevards. In my opinion they're the least interesting part of the city. The best places to congregate are always off the main line of commerce, away from cars and trucks. Obviously, proper waste disposal and lamps are good, but I don't know why we're taking it for granted that criticism of Hausmann's aesthetics is "hilariously wrong."

Those grand boulevards also had a security / social goal : to make sure police keep access and make it hard to barricade entire blocks. ( as opposed to narrow street that are easier to close down)

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#67

Post by eadmund »

pembrook wrote: post #48
rich_sasha wrote: post #25

It should probably be pointed out that Paris has a history of "knocking it all down" to make space for the New. Haussman did that. Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, one of the most iconic sacral buildings of the world (?) sits on the rubble of its Christian predecessors (as well as an ancient pagan temple, oh well, zeitgeist). The difference was that Le Corbusier's stuff is, as most of this thread attests, ghastly, mayb…

While everybody loves Haussman's Paris today, at the time, it was extremely controversial and he was eventually ousted. Paris used to be like the cramped medieval old towns you see throughout the rest of Europe. Here's a classic quote from one of Haussman's most powerful critics: "We weep with our eyes full of tears for the old Paris, the Paris of Voltaire, of Desmoulins, the Paris of 1830 and 1848, when we see the g…

> Fast forward 100+ years and suddenly that quote sounds hilariously wrong.

Does it? I prefer those 'cramped mediæval old towns' to Paris.

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#68

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

Sharlin wrote: post #42
captainmuon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. And the funny thing is Le Corbusier and other modernists intended to design for humans: - They add large parks between the buildings - You get the huge highrises and long boulevards because of separation of function, because they want to put the living quarters far away from the smelly factories - They use a lot of concrete and prefab components to keep everything affordable - They design community areas into t…

Quite so. And in reality those large parks would have (and did!) turn into fields of asphalt and concrete, as automobile infrastructure expanded to fill all available space (Le Corbusier and his contemporaries didn't quite get how drastic the consequences of automobilization together with separation of functions would be…)

I think this is an under appreciated point. Something I find striking in watching historical footage of urban areas is just how empty the roads were. Just the other day I was watching some restored footage of Paris in the 1920s, and they drove the camera car through famous areas that today would be a near parking lot most of the day, but back then were wide open.

If you look at car centric infrastructure through this lens, it's easier to understand how it all went so wrong. The American dream as designed in say the 1950s was quite pleasant if you could afford it. A nice modern house on clean brand new wide open roads. Sure you have to drive everywhere vs walk to the neighborhood main street for errands but gas is cheap and those roads make it all so fast and convenient.

Of course the problem is non of this scaled, but that didn't stop us from trying, and ending up with the worst of both in many ways.

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#69

Post by andi999 »

eadmund wrote: post #67
pembrook wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While everybody loves Haussman's Paris today, at the time, it was extremely controversial and he was eventually ousted. Paris used to be like the cramped medieval old towns you see throughout the rest of Europe. Here's a classic quote from one of Haussman's most powerful critics: "We weep with our eyes full of tears for the old Paris, the Paris of Voltaire, of Desmoulins, the Paris of 1830 and 1848, when we see the g…

> Fast forward 100+ years and suddenly that quote sounds hilariously wrong. Does it? I prefer those 'cramped mediæval old towns' to Paris.

Which cramped mediaeval town are you comparing it to?

Re: Le Corbusier's project Plan Voisin – a radical urban design for Paris from 1925

#70

Post by AnimalMuppet »

davidivadavid wrote: post #54
febeling wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem was that people started believing that there's no such thing as beauty. How do you build a beautiful building, if you think beauty is an illusion anyway? I have the idea that it's related to atheism. Once you believe all of life and all of nature is ultimately some brute atoms buzzing back and forth anyway, then what your imagination creates is likely to look pretty brutalist. If you believe it's angels a…

Nah. First, I don't think any major aesthetic theory claims there's no such thing as beauty. At best, they question the definition of beauty and the classical canons of beauty. Second, you can put meaning and symbols into atoms buzzing back and forth (atoms buzzing back and forth are more or less a symbol, anyway).

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp):

> Fountain is a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt". In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing chosen by Duchamp was submitted for an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, the inaugural exhibition by the Society to be staged at The Grand Central Palace in New York. When explaining the purpose of his Readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice."...

> The work is regarded by art historians and theorists of the avant-garde as a major landmark in 20th-century art.

So here's a major artist, saying that a urinal can be a work of art, needing only the artist's choice to make them so. And here's a major art movement agreeing that that "art" piece is a major landmark.

That doesn't quite claim "there's no such thing as beauty", but it pretty much says there's no such thing as art, other than an artist saying so. But then, who is an artist? Whoever says they are?

And if all it takes is the artist saying so, then a urinal is just as much art as the Mona Lisa.

But I think this does somewhat trace back to febeling's point. If nature is all there is, and nature is deterministic, then art is just what deterministic people do. It's not intrinsically different from non-art. And when people believe that, they act like what they do is just the same as the Mona Lisa, when we can look at it and tell that no, it's not.

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