Le Corbusier and Order
Man walks in a straight line because he has a goal and knows where he is going [...]. The pack-donkey meanders along, meditates a little in his scatter-brained and distracted fashion, he zigzags in order to avoid the larger stones, or to ease the climb, or to gain a little shade; he takes the line of least resistance. [...] The Pack-Donkey’s Way is responsible for the plan of every continental city; including Paris, unfortunately.1
“Paris, Rome, and Stamboul,” Le Corbusier writes, are all “based upon the Pack-Donkey’s Way,” and thus of the curvilinear type.
Rome is particularly interesting, because the Romans were colonizers, and according to Le Corbusier, the cities they founded in colonies were of rectilinear plan, “so that it should be clear and well-arranged, easy to police and to clean, a place in which you could find your way about and stroll with comfort.” Le Corbusier finds this ironical, that “they allowed themselves to be stifled by the Pack-Donkey’s Way,” being such “great legislators, [...] great administrators.”
He goes on to mention Louis XIV4, who “became disgusted” at the overcrowding and chaos of Paris at the time, and thus built, outside of the Cité, “the Observatoire, the Invalides and the Esplanade; the Tuileries and the Champs Elysées” – and Versailles, “where both town and château were created in every detail in a rectilinear and well-planned fashion.”
What I find interesting is his claim “that man, by reason of his very nature, practices order,” but that we somehow lost touch with this nature. He writes:
The prehistoric lake village; the savage’s hut; the Egyptian house and temple; Babylon, the legend of which is a synonym for magnificence; Pekin [Beijing], that highly cultivated Chinese town; all these demonstrate [...] the right angle and the straight line which inevitably enter into every human act [...].
I’m not clear on exactly what he thinks caused humans to “respect the Pack-Donkey’s Way,” when we’re predisposed to create order, “pure geometry.” But he writes:
The human animal [...] creates for himself a state of equilibrium which is primitive and inferior no doubt, but which is perfect as far as it goes. Thus we can see the savage using pure geometrical for, for instinctively he submits to those universal laws which he does not even try to understand [...]. Nations which are moving towards a culture [...] and emerging from their animal existence, arrive at a condition which involves a lack of equilibrium by reason of the successive leaps they take [...].
Disruption? I don’t know. “Equilibrium means calm,” Le Corbusier writes, “a mastery of the means at our disposal, clear vision, order, the satisfaction of the mind, scale and proportion.” At some point, “when every means has been proved, and where a complete equipment assures the perfect carrying out of rational schemes,” we reach equilibrium, calm. “The period of struggle is over. The period of construction has arrived.” Then, “we are able to appreciate and to measure; we can recognize what is best; we can bring proportion to bear.”
I kind of get what he says, but it’s still confusing. In the previous chapter he writes:
If you were to look down from the sky on the confused and intricate surface of the earth, it would be seen that human effort is identical throughout the ages and at every point. Temples, towns and houses are cells of identical aspect, and are made to the human scale. One might say that the human animal is like the bee, a constructor of geometrical cells.
But:
Of course we may admit at once that in the last hundred years a sudden, chaotic and sweeping invasion, unforeseen and overwhelming, has descended upon the great city; we have been caught up in this, with all its baffling consequences, with the result that we have stood still and done nothing. The resultant chaos has brought it about that the Great City, which should be a phenomenon of power and energy, is to-day a menacing disaster, since it is no longer governed by the principles of geometry.
If it is true that we’re naturally inclined to strive towards order, then what “kind of order? The use-zoning kind of order, where residences are kept separate from commercial buildings, creates inefficient and if not dead so at least not living cities, etc.). Or is it merely order through right angles and straight lines?
1 Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, 1929.
2 Photo credits Ssj Toma, found via stock.xchng.
3 Photo credits Ciska Wesselius, also via stock.xchng.
4 Also mentioned by John Massengale yesterday; see also my note about it.
5 Photo credits Floor van Wulfften Palthe, via stock.xchng.