5 Points Of Modern.docx

5 POINTS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE The famous concept of Le Corbusier the “5 Points of Modern Architecture” are tought in architecture schools throughout the world. It is the list of the essentials that the architect regarded modern houses must have to provide their inhabitants with healthy conditions.

Critical look at the points, compared to the historicism in architecture at that time will inevitably bring us to the conclusion, that Le Corbusier made it. The access to vast amounts of light and air, as well as sterility and ergonomy of his designs were the cornerstone of modernism.

The points are:

1. pilotis 2. roof garden 3. free facade 4. free plan

5. horizontal windows 1. Pilotis are the constructial method of erecting buildings. The invention of reinforced concrete frame enabled building in a simple method of supports and slabs.

Le Corbusier had penchant for organizing pilotis in a grid, what added order to the buildings. The architect was under a deep impression of classic architecture, especially Parthenon and villa Rotonda. The grid was a mean to bring this classic qualities to his modern designs. The impression Pathenon made on the young Le Corbusier was profound and life-lasting what especially accentuates Nicholas Fox Weber during his lecture on the archtiect’s life.

2. Roof Gardens were a mean of bringing nature to houses. Le Corbusier was inspired by steamliners, which superstructure lifted high above the ground level provided clear views over the site. In the same way Le Corbusier opened roof of his building on these views, simultaneously arranging an arcadian atmosphere on them. 3. Free facade was a consequence of concrete frame construction. Because walls were then deprived of their constructional role, their design became free as well. 4. Free plan was the consequence of the construction as well. The plan is no longer limited by construction and its design becomes free also. In effect, many important figures of modernism movement came up with idea of ‘open plan‘ (Frank Lloyd Wright) or continuity of space (Mies van der Rohe), which assumed that archtiecture at its best doesn’t devide space utterly, but rather allows space to flow among different abstract compositions of volumes and planes. Le Corbusier called this idea ‘promenade architecturale‘ and an important feature of this concept was building alongside staircase, a ramp. After all, he claimed that the ramp is something that links the floors, while staircase divides it.

5. Horizontal windows or ribbon windows are the effect of free facade. It’s an imporant element of Le Corbusier crusade toward liberating people from the evil historism. First of all, they give access to a big amounts of light, which can evenly lit the interior. Secondly it also effectively frames the view outside, bringing outside inside. Coming up to the points was something Le Corbusier worked on throughout all 1920s. He built next and next villas for rich clients from artistic circles eager to invest their money in the sake of progress and to possess a house they could show off before their firends. Ozenfant Atelier in 1922, villa La RocheJeanneret in 1923, villa Le Lac in 1924 were all experiments of putting Le Corbusier ideas into practice.

The culmination and the realization closest to perfection turned out to be villa Savoye, which today is regarded as the architect masterpiece. It is the first villa which lifted the whole volume to the air. Moreover, although the atmosphere inside may seem cold, it is a type of ‘mathematical lyricism’ that Le Corbusier sought, which he could only acheive through total use of the Five Points of Modern Architecture.

THE

START

OF

WORK

IN

BOGOTA

Le Corbusier started his contacts to work in Bogotá through Ambassador Eduardo Zuleta Angel, who was part of the commission to choose the location of the UN headquarters, (whose project Le Corbusier finally failed) invited him to visit the city with the firm purpose to

secure

a

contract

to

formulate

the

Capital

Plan.

The first time Le Corbusier stepped on Bogota soil was on June 16, 1947. He is received at the airport by the Mayor of the city Fernando Mazuera accompanied by a group of young people architects that under the cry of down the academy! they supported the arrival of the teacher, as well as the ideas of modern urbanism.

FIRST CONFERENCE On June 18, 1947 Le Corbusier dictated the first of two conferences that were part of the future focus of the Bogota Plan, in which he showed his strong connection with the ideas set forth in the Athens Charter. The initial title proposed to Dr. Zuleta Ángel and Mayor Mazuera was "Urban planning, social computer par excellence" but as stated in the recording made at the Teatro Colón. From the first moment Le Corbusier decided to adjust his lecture to what he called "a way total types of urbanism as a social benefactor ".

From that first visit, Le Corbusier was sure that Bogota had the foundations of a large modern city. Through the window of the plane he saw the hills, one of the most admired elements of the capital, because he considered that with them is the harmony that all cities need. Even so, in his two lectures he affirmed that what was missing in Bogotá was a contemporary disaster, that is, to understand architecturally those essential laws and combine them with the notion of civics to be magnificent and respond to the needs of his time and people. To Bogotá, it must be demolished, rebuilt and expanded.

Although Zuleta invited him only to give two lectures, favorable moods towards the modernization of the capital generated, implicitly, a pre-agreement to later develop an urban plan. The talks and meetings with Mazuera Villegas fulfilled their mission, as well as Zuleta's lobby in favor of the participation of Le Corbusier in the renovation plan, it is the mayor of Bogotá who requests his participation in collaboration with the firm Town Planning Associates ( TPA) founded in New York by Josep Lluís Sert and Paul Lester Wiener. Le Corbusier leaves Bogota with the certainty of being the creator of a new city.

the mayor of Bogotá requests his participation in collaboration with the firm Town Planning Associates (TPA) founded in New York by Josep Lluís Sert and Paul Lester Wiener to develop an urban plan.

This previous relationship involved a friendship between Le Corbusier and his collaborators. However, TPA was the company that was in charge of the urban approaches that had been imposed by the World Bank, which is why in Bogotá the renovation plan was divided into two: Pilot Plan or Director (Le Corbusier) and Regulatory Plan (Sert and Wiener). "The pilot plan has two moments: one is the establishment of the general ideas of ordering the plan, of how the city is going to have some basic premises of ordering and that later it enters a regulatory plan that is the one that converts those general premises into regulations so that this can be carried out "

Two years after his first visit, Le Corbusier returned to the capital to sign his contract and found

a

city

collapsed

by

the

Bogotazo.

After these events, Le Corbusier requested all the plans of the historical growth of Bogota, a geological study of what the Savannah was like in terms of terrain, what the floodplains were, how the rains and winds worked, where it was better to build and where do not. The

OPRB did some studies on the densities that existed in Bogotá and how they could be improved. With this material, in August of the same year, the three teams met at Cap Martin, in the summer residence of Le Corbusier, to discuss the ideas that would initiate the process of

creation

and

reconstruction.

Le Corbusier and the TPA also had the support of a group of Colombian architects from the Bogota Regulatory Plan Office (OPRB), an organization created especially for the renovation plan. On March 30, 1949, the scope, objectives and responsibilities of each of the teams were defined. Bogotá would have a transatlantic participation in its renewal process. Le Corbusier from Paris, Sert and Wiener from New York and Herbert Rieter and Carlos

Arbelaez

Camacho

with

his

group

of

professionals

in

Bogotá.

The material that left Bogota for France was impressive. With what remained of the meeting, Le Corbusier arrived at the atelier of the rue de Sèvres to work with Rogelio Salmona, Germán Samper and Reinaldo Valencia, the three Colombian architects who were working in his office at that time and began to make the proposal.

Last

visits

The following visits by Le Corbusier already had a clearer objective. In the first semester of 1950 he returned to work for a month with the people of the OPRB, to discuss what the ideas were about and to visit several places. With this visit he managed to deliver, in the second semester of that same year, the Pilot Plan. Finally, he returned in May 1951 as an advisor to Wiener and Sert, who had already taken over to make the regulatory plan with proposals on how to make that regulation based on their projections and designs.