Le Corbusier

This schematic representation of a human body with one arm raised – Le Corbusier’s Modulor – is widely known, even though it has not often been used in architecture. With the Modulor, the artist -architect found a striking image for a system of proportions. The image is used frequently and is even integrated into the façades of many buildings. Le Corbusier’s Modulor is one of a long series of attempts to base art and design on the proportions of the human body. As with Vitruvius in ancient times or Leonardo da Vinci in the Renaissance, to name just the most important ones. The Modulor also entered into Le Corbusier’s countless efforts to realize order and classification. These included his “regulating lines”.

Le Corbusier developed the Modulor between 1942 and 1955. In it, he took a human mass – that of a man – which with its arbitrary size of 1.83 metres was more an assumed human mass than anything else, and linked it with the Golden Section. Le Corbusier described it as follows:

“The Modulor is a measuring tool derived from the human form and from mathematics. In the main points of spatial displacement – the foot, the solar plexus and the fingertip of the raised arm – a human being with a raised arm provides three intervals which result in a series of Golden Sections named after Fibonacci.”

The system is intended for determining the dimensions of rooms and furniture – such as the seat height of a chair or the height of a room. In this way, Le Corbusier made an attempt to promote standardization in architecture and in the production of building elements. However, he often failed with his measuring system due to the building regulations. The system was also supposed to be applied to architecture as a whole and ultimately to urban planning too. Le Corbusier used the Modulor for the first time in the “Unité d’Habitation”, a residential block in Marseille.