Le Corbusier

Many of Le Corbusier’s urbanistic ideas and projects are met with incomprehension today. However, he developed them with a view to the conditions prevailing in large cities of his time such as Paris. The photographs of Paris shown here in the exhibition by Charles Marville were taken in the 19th century and reveal these conditions. Le Corbusier criticized historically grown cities as being inhumane, unhygienic and chaotic and as not fitting in with the modern way of life. He wanted to use his ideas to improve the life of the inhabitants and meet the challenges facing industrialized society. Le Corbusier’s thought processes were no less radical: cities were to be redesigned from the ground up according to rationalist criteria. Many of his ideas are now considered as obsolete, but they nevertheless had a major impact on decades of urban planning.

The project entitled “Ville radieuse”, meaning “shining city”, was a radical project of this kind which remained unrealized. Le Corbusier designed a city for 3 million people on the drawing board using order and geometry as central points of departure.

“Order characterizes the works of man. Seen from above, this order appears in the form of geometrical figures.”

The city is built on a geometrical grid and is clearly divided into zones for residential buildings, office buildings, traffic and green spaces. In contrast to historically grown cities, everyone was to have access to light and nature. However, Le Corbusier also provided for a hierarchical, centralized structure in the centre of which the intellectual and political elite was to live in residential towers. The living space of the working classes is arranged in block settlements surrounding the core. Concepts of this kind are seen critically today. They are at odds with individualism and cultural self-determination and are considered as anti-democratic and standardizing.