Five Points Towards a New Architecture
The declaration, Five Points Towards a New Architecture, is
roughly contemporaneous with the designs for Le Corbusier's
houses in the Weissenhof settlement,
The theoretical considerations set out
below are based on many years of practical experience on building sites. Theory demands concise formulation. The following points in no way relate to
aesthetic fantasies or a striving for fashionable effects, but concern
architectural facts that imply an entirely new kind of building, from the
dwelling house to palatial edifices.
1. The
supports.
To solve a problem scientifically means in the first place to distinguish
between its elements. Hence, in the case of a building a distinction can
immediately be made between the supporting and the non-supporting elements. The
earlier foundations, on which the building rested without a mathematical check,
are replaced by individual foundations and the walls by individual supports.
Both supports and support foundations are precisely calculated according to the
burdens they are called upon to carry. These supports are spaced out at
specific, equal intervals, with no thought for the interior arrangement of the
building. They rise directly from the floor to
3, 4, 6, etc. metres
and elevate the ground floor. The rooms are thereby re- moved from the dampness
of the soil; they have light and air; the building plot is left to the garden,
which consequently passes under the house. The same area is also gained on the
flat roof.
2. The
roof gardens.
The flat roof demands in the first place systematic utilization for domestic
purposes: roof terrace, roof garden. On the other hand, the reinforced concrete
demands protection against changing temperatures. Over- activity on the part of
the reinforced concrete is prevented by the maintenance of a constant humidity
on the roof concrete. The roof terrace satisfies both demands (a rain-dampened
layer of sand covered with concrete slabs with lawns in the interstices; the
earth of the flowerbeds in direct contact with the layer of sand). In this way
the rain water will flow off extremely slowly. Waste pipes in the interior of
the building. Thus a latent humidity will remain continually on the roof skin.
The roof gardens will display highly luxuriant vegetation. Shrubs and even
small trees up to 3 or 4 metres tall can be planted.
In this way the roof garden will become the most favoured
place in the building. In general, roof gardens mean to a city the recovery of
all the built-up area.
3. The
free designing of the ground-plan. The support system carries the intermediate
ceilings and rises up to the roof. The interior walls may be placed wherever
required, each floor being entirely independent of the rest. There are no
longer any supporting walls but only membranes of any thickness required. The
result of this is absolute freedom in designing the ground-plan; that is to
say, free utilization of the available means, which makes it easy to offset the
rather high cost of reinforced concrete construction.
4. The
horizontal window.
Together with the intermediate ceilings the supports, form rectangular openings
in the façade through which light and air enter copiously. The window extends
from support to support and thus becomes a horizontal window. Stilted, vertical
windows consequently disappear, as do unpleasant mullions. In this way, rooms
are equably lit from wall to wall.
Experiments have shown that a room thus lit has an eight times stronger
illumination than the same room lit by vertical windows with the same window
area. The whole history of architecture
revolves exclusively around the wall apertures. Through use of the horizontal
window, reinforced concrete suddenly provides the possibility of maximum
illumination.
5. Free
design of the façade.
By projecting the floor beyond the supporting pillars, like a balcony all round
the building, the whole façade is extended beyond the supporting construction.
It thereby loses its supportive quality and the windows may be extended to any length
at will, without any direct relationship to the interior division. A window may
just as well be 10 metres long for a dwelling house
as 200 metres for a palatial building (our design for
the League of Nations building in Geneva). The façade may thus be designed
freely.
The five essential points set out above
represent a fundamentally new aesthetic. Nothing is left to us of the
architecture of past epochs, just as we can no longer derive any benefit from
the literary and historical teaching given in schools.
Constructional considerations
Building construction is the purposeful
and consistent combination of building elements. Industries and technological undertakings are
being established to deal with the production of these elements. Serial manufacture enables these elements to
be made precise, cheap and good. They can be produced in advance in any number
required. Industries will see to the
completion and uninterrupted perfecting of the elements.
Thus the architect has at his disposal a
box of building units. His architectural talent can operate freely. It alone,
through the building programme, determines his
architecture.
The age of the architects is coming.
1926, Le Corbusier/Pierre Jeanneret