Letter to Mme Meyer (Promenade architecturale)

In addition to the axonometric design drawings Le Corbusier used for his architectural projects, he developed one more method in the 1920s. Its main purpose was to make architecture experienceable. Le Corbusier would later call this method the “promenade architecturale” – the architectural walk. The sheet shown here is part of a letter from Le Corbusier to his client Madame Meyer. The architect planned a villa in Neuilly-sur-Seine for her – a house now known as Villa Meyer. The sheet shows neither ground plan nor side elevation, and technical information and dimensions are missing from it too. The sheet does not look like an architectural design at all, instead resembling a comic or a storyboard for a film. Le Corbusier recorded a number of different views of Villa Meyer. Each drawing is a perspectival sketch of a part of the villa – from the external view right up to the roof. In the accompanying text, Le Corbusier used the sketches to guide clients to the building and take them into it and through all the rooms:

“The entrance door would be pushed sideways off its axis. Would the academy punish us for that? The large light-filled entrance hall, the cloakroom and the toilet are concealed there. The entrance hall can be reached directly from the service room. If you go up one floor, you get to the lounge. This lies above the shade of the trees. From it, you have a magnificent view of the foliage and the sky…”

Le Corbusier’s remarks reveal the aim of his architectural walk: it was an attempt to explain what was extraordinary about his design. Most of all, though, it was intended to convey an impression of the effect. The sketches thus became a series of spatial events.

Le Corbusier often used different types of designs at the same time: they ranged from technical ground plans and axonometric depictions to architectural walks. This reveals a change in Le Corbusier’s fundamental attitude towards architecture. Architecture no longer has the function of combining different elements of a building to form a harmonious whole. Instead, architecture is holistic in itself – a sequence of events.