Today is Le Corbusier's birthday! While I was never a big fan of his work (I think the Villa Savoye, at top left, is, frankly, ugly) he was a great contributor to the International Style. In architecture school I got the nickname Mies, because I was a devotee of another famous International Style architect, Mies van der Rohe. Despite the aesthetic differences (I think his Farnsworth House [lower picture] is actually quite beautiful), you can see the stylistic similarities: the vertical supports seem to be separate from the continuous curtain wall (in Corbu's case, the wall is on the exterior, like a screen, while Mies preferred the supports (usually I-beams) on the outside so they did not break the horizontal planes of the floor and ceiling. In both cases, the mass is made to float above the ground. With Corbu this is achieved with an inset, dark core at ground level, where Mies literally has the floors suspended above the ground. Any questions?
1 comment:
Well, I know nothing about architecture, and your explanation of the similarities and differences made sense to me. Interesting.
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