WI: Le Corbusier died in 1938 ?

Le Corbusier was most influential Architekt of the 20 century,
A Pionier of Modernism Architecture

in Summer of 1938 he was swimming in bay of St Tropez
as he was run over by motorboat, it's propellor almost cut his leg off

so what if Le Corbusier died's in summer 1938, What impact would have that on Architecture and Modernism ?

i mean this will not be build:
His Modulor system for the scale of architectural proportion.
United Nations headquarters, New York City. (he was Design Consultant)
Unité d’Habitation
Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut
Government Buildings in Chandigarh
The Dominican Order priory of Sainte Marie de La Tourette
 
I am by no means greatly knowledgeable about architecture but from what I've read he had some rather dodgy political beliefs and I find brutalism and the associated urban planning in the main to be generally awful with a very small number of decent projects so reducing his influence on things would mostly be for the better in my opinion.
 
It would certainly be interesting to see how many of the world's skylines would look without his influence. I know he wasn't the only pioneer of high rise housing, but his influence seems pretty big on what happened after the second world war.
 
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It would certainly be interesting to see how many of the world's skylines would look without his influence. I know he wasn't the only pioneer of high rise housing, but his influence seems pretty big on what happened after the second world war.
Good point, fewer system built concrete tower blocks could only be an improvement for the UK's urban landscape in my opinion.
 
Well, one thing I can say for sure, the capital of Brazil would be absolutely different.

That's therefor to late
See in 1936 Le Corbusier made tour in South American and work with Architect's Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.
And Niemeyer was influence by Le Corbusier ideas.

interesting how much Le Corbusier is associate with brutalism, while he was (in begin) more in the International Style
without Le Corbusier after WW2 that style would be dominate more by Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra and Alvar Aalto.
i hope that influence the British and Americans architects to keep there fingers from Brutalism

On Americans architects we go Frank Lloyd Wright and this interesting style: Streamline Moderne aka Art Modern , they two could evolve more freely without brutalism.
 

guinazacity

Banned
That's therefor to late
See in 1936 Le Corbusier made tour in South American and work with Architect's Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.
And Niemeyer was influence by Le Corbusier ideas.


God, i completely forgot about that!

And i was reading an article about that same thing last week lol

he even designed a building with them while he was around here.
 
A lot of urban-life killing ugly buildings don't get built - or if they do, not quite so ugly or quite so urban life killing.
 
Praise be to the Most High, that the great apostle of soul-dead Modernism would be unable to spread his ugly styles and love of concrete across the world of architecture.

Seriously, I hate Modernism so so so so so much. If it's old--from Indo-Saracenic to Mudejar to Gothic to Neoclassical--I'm down. The new is the enemy of beauty.
 
Interesting how much Le Corbusier is associate with brutalism, while he was (in begin) more in the International Style.
As I understand it whilst he himself was more of an international style man as you mention he was fairly influential on those that led the brutalist school of thought.


Without Le Corbusier after WW2 that style would be dominate more by Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra and Alvar Aalto. I hope that influence the British and Americans architects to keep there fingers from Brutalism.
You and me both, alas it was not to be and we instead got stuck with a lot of badly manufactured concrete dross. When the time travel/what would you send back in time threads come up over in the Alien Space Bats forum I often think that among some of the best books would probably be ones on architecture and urban planning, just think of all the mistakes we could have avoided. Doing a quick search on the quartet that you mentioned on the face of it there doesn't appear to be anything majorly objectionable, or at least they're an improvement, in my opinion, on Le Corbusier.
 
yes you are right Simon

le_corbusier_haus_corbusier.jpg

early Le Corbusier was new, enjoyable work
later Le Corbusier work resemble more war Bunkers
card-14440142-front.jpg


not to imagine that Le Corbusier had the chance to build the new French administration Capitol they planned in 1960s
other wise the Government Buildings of Chandigarh, would be now in La Roche-Guyon.

but worst was as other Architects try to copy this style what let to those atrocities
19340496_1cc874a3bd.jpg

Soviet architecture in Kalingrad, Russia

9232714808_7217663e23_z.jpg

Gropiusstadt in Berlin, Germany. influence by Le Corbusier ideas on Urbanism.
named in honor for Architect Walter Gropius, last one was outrage baut this "atrocities"
and he was right Gropiusstadt was fiasco it became the German version of Pruitt–Igoe aka "The death of Modernism"
again this also try to use Le Corbusier idea of urbanism.

by the way, how Walter Gropius consider social urban housing project f
bauhausbc3bccher-1-walter-gropius-ed-internationale-architektur-1925-111-p-23-cm_page_1011.jpg
 
LOL, no love for Modern Architecture in this forum, I see! I won't quite hate on it as bad as everyone else (some of it is kind of interesting, IMO, though the worst of it is truly awful), though I'll put myself in the "prefers Streamline Moderne" faction. One interesting knock-on effect might be on Postmodern Philosophy, where IIRC he was held as some sort of secular saint along with Madonna, Cyberpunk, and Las Vegas.

"Modern architecture; fully functional and beauty-free!" - Crow T. Robot, MST3K.
 
LOL, no love for Modern Architecture in this forum, I see! I won't quite hate on it as bad as everyone else (some of it is kind of interesting, IMO, though the worst of it is truly awful), though I'll put myself in the "prefers Streamline Moderne" faction. One interesting knock-on effect might be on Postmodern Philosophy, where IIRC he was held as some sort of secular saint along with Madonna, Cyberpunk, and Las Vegas.

"Modern architecture; fully functional and beauty-free!" - Crow T. Robot, MST3K.

The problem is not so much modern architecture, but Le Corbusier's insensibility in fashioning it into aggressively sterile urban planning - especially his penchant for "megablock" developments like Gropiusstadt pictured up above. A Corbusier development leaves no place for communal life to develop and flourish; the scale is inhuman, the open spaces too open and empty. In the United States, these kinds of developments ended up as crime ridden towers like Cabrini Green, which in turn had replaced lower density traditional neighborhoods that, while poor, operated on a human scale.

Le Corbusier simply left no room for human beings to operate in his more grandiose plans. They created awe and scale, but were atomizing. As SimoN Richards put it, "In proposing the elimination of side alleys and shops, in granting limited space for cafés, community centers, and theaters, in dispersing them over great distances, and constructing them of uninviting concrete, glass, and steel, Le Corbusier expressed his contempt for the teeming hubbub that urbanists now esteem."
 
I see a common opinion that Le Corbusier ideas on Urbanism were totally bad.

to defend him we have to look in his time of 1930s and Urban defects during the Great Depression
10-31nyomor.jpg

yes not only USA, also France and Germany look like that in 1930s
the demand for clean organize City became popular and Le Corbusier was it's visionary.
Sadly no one had teste this concept unit the build of Unité d’Habitation or Cabrini Green and infamous Pruitt–Igor
who had to be destroy in April 1972
were there alternatives to Le Corbusier urbanism ?

Frank Lloyd Wright had interesting Idea: the great city could be fragmented and decentralized.
instead to build skyscrapers as habitation he proposed mixture of suburbia, commerce/food production and industry and if needed for government building a skyscraper.

waldheim-agrarian-urbanism-6.jpg
 
were there alternatives to Le Corbusier urbanism ?

Le Corbusier used architecture like Pol Pot used social politics. "Une maison est une machine-à-habiter"-like statements showed all too well how he really thought: in an utterly banal and totalitarian way.

David Szondy has a good summary of the subject:

...Modernist dreamers that did away with all that bourgeois ornamentation and obsolete classical nonsense in favour of good, clean lines suitable for the enlightenment of the proletariat who didn't know what was good for them. They loved to plop down great slabs of brick that were cities unto themselves in vast plains of concrete dotted with trees that gave no shade, marble benches that no human being could sit comfortably on, steps that were so wide and low that they made you walk like a duck, and nothing to give any pedestrian any protection from the forces of nature. In the summer you roasted under the sun and in the winter you froze in the raw northern winds. But it gave the cardboard models a wonderful sense of perspective. It's all horrible, so why do it? Because it was all so anti-bourgeois and it was the sort of place where, in the words of Alexi Sayle, "They expected working class people to wander around discussing Chekhov."
 
Le corbusier was not that special.

The fact is that in 1945-50 you are in Europe with a massive housing problem: outdated and old cities, millions of houses destroyed during the war and slums around all cities.

The solution was a massive building program with pre-fabricated concrete walls and specific solutions (for example the size/shape of many buildings was designed such that you don't have to move the crane often).

We can expect other people to have more or less the same ideas given those constraints (using concrete, going fast).
 
Le corbusier was not that special.

The fact is that in 1945-50 you are in Europe with a massive housing problem: outdated and old cities, millions of houses destroyed during the war and slums around all cities.

The solution was a massive building program with pre-fabricated concrete walls and specific solutions (for example the size/shape of many buildings was designed such that you don't have to move the crane often).

We can expect other people to have more or less the same ideas given those constraints (using concrete, going fast).

You're ignoring his ideological side completely here. There's a world of difference of just using certain materials and imposing a totalitarian vision to architecture and urban planning.
 
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