Marian Zervan
On the Problem of Defining Architecture in Toward an Architecture / Směrem (či K) architektuře
This study deals with question, how Le Corbusier actually understood the very notion of architecture, or to put it another way, how he understood and defined architecture. Hence the image of Le Corbusier as a revolutionary modernist who relied on modern science and technology and held reservations about historical architecture. The image of Le Corbusier as a revolutionary modernist who held reservations about historical architecture is still cultivated today, even though Le Corbusier clearly praised e. g. Parthenon and used Palladian diagrams and techniques in his work. These interpretive inconsistencies are also reflected in various translations of his most famous book, including the changed title from the French original Vers une architecture into Towards a New Architecture. Le Corbusier works with several sub-definitions of architecture, using the genus proximus of art, play and harmony. Alongside these, he also uses enumerative definitions through elements and types. Yet, he also aspired to a universalist understanding not only of art, but also of architecture itself, as evidenced by his manifesto of Purism and the book Toward an Architecture. He was thus faced with reconciling his universalist orientation with the partial definitions mentioned above; this generated the impression that Corbusier is inconsistent. This text attempts to show that he sought to overcome the seeming inconsistency with a relational definition capable of linking the transhistorical, historical and period with the unique and unrepeatable conception of architecture through ordering (ordonnance), axiality and modénature. Le Corbusier’s revolution in the concept of architecture, then, is not that he devised a radically new notion of architecture to signify its radically discontinuous nature. Rather, the revolution lies in his practiced ability to distinguish different types of orderings in contemporary architecture, and to link together the aforementioned transhistorical, period, and unrepeatable or eventful arrangements.
Author's email:
zervan@vsvu.sk
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54759/ART-2024-0202
Full-text in the Digital Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences:
https://kramerius.lib.cas.cz/uuid/uuid:db873e26-30fc-4ad4-b0b0-9c2cf7d8d0b0
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