Ian and Dennis

hey this is my part, its still kind of in the drafting process so yeah

i added it with ian's



Architect


Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965)

Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), who was also known as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, was a Swiss-French architect, designer, urbanist, writer, sculptor and also painter. He is famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called Modern architecture or the International style. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in his 30s.

He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities.

His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America.

Mario Botta (April 1, 1943- Present)

Mario Botta (April 1, 1943- Present) is a well known Swiss architect and designer who was born in Mendrisio, Ticino. He was trained as a technical draftsman before he went to study at the Liceo Artistico in Milan. 1 Botta then study at the Istituto Universitario di Architecttura in Venice from 1965 to 1969. During this period Botta was very lucky to work as Le Corbusier’s assistant and then, Louis Kahn. 1 Botta gained architectural fame during the early 1970s when he began designing small houses in Ticino. 2 Mario Botta has essentially a modernist approach to architecture and had been strongly influenced by both Carlo Scarpa and Louis Kahn in his earlier works. 1 It is stated that because of Botta’s innovated work, the present generations of Swiss architects are internationally acclaimed. 2

Building & Purpose

Villa Savoye (1929 – 1931), France, Poissy

The Villa Savoye was designed as a weekend country house and is situated just outside of the city of Poissy in a meadow surrounded by trees. The building represents the apotheosis of Le Corbusier’s attempt to create the ideal dwelling during the twenties. The design brings to fulfilment ideas first explored in the Citrohan house and developed in a series of major houses during the decade.

The dwelling is seen as a cell for sunlight elevated above the landscape. This is expressed with le Corbusier’s ‘heroic’ imagery of sun decks, ramps, spiral stairs and ribbon windows; it uses a dialogue of solids and planes compacted as in a Purist painting.

The villa crystallises Le Corbusier’s ideals which can be traced back to his admiration for the Parthenon, although his interpretation resembles a Renaissance villa. The centralised form is set temple-like in the landscape, elevated on pilotis, which can be regarded as a contemporary equivalent of classical columns.

The villa is seen as one of the components of Le Corbusier’s utopian city, a symbol of how architecture would enrich life both physically and culturally. The medium is a form, controlled through geometry.

Influence, Social & Cultural Background

Le Corbusier was heavily influenced by problems he saw in industrial cities at the turn from the 19th to the 20th century. He thought that industrial housing techniques led to crowding, dirtiness, and a lack of a moral landscape. He was a leader of the modernist movement to create better living conditions and a better society through housing concepts. Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities of Tomorrow heavily influenced Le Corbusier and his contemporaries. By the 1920s Le Corbusier had become one of the most important figures in Modern architecture.

Type

Residential

Style; Architectural Elements

Purism & Modern Architecture

The Villa Savoye represents the culmination of Le Corbusier’s Purist style of the 1920s. Purism was a form of Cubism advocated by Le Corbusier. It rejected the decorative trend of cubism and advocated a return to clear, ordered forms that were expressive of the modern machine age. Le Corbusier's interest in mechanation and pure proportion persisted into his architectural endeavours which represent Purist aesthetic as a whole. They have become the foundation to the evolution of modern architecture leading by Le Corbusier in France, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius in Germany.

“Five Points of a New Architecture”

The design exploited to the full of the possibilities of concrete frame construction, which Le Corbusier had proclaimed as the ‘Five Points of a New Architecture’:

1. Columns (pilotis) raise the house in the air, freeing the ground for people and vehicles.

2. A roof garden on the flat roof replaces the ground lost by development.

3. Extending the pilotis through as a structural frame enables partition walls to be freely arranged in what he called the plan libre, or free plan.

4. Disposing windows as required by the interior creates a free façade.

5. Long horizontal windows or ribbon windows – give a more even distribution of light.

Movement; Architectural Promenade

As in all Le Corbusier’s work during the twenties, the movement route has a special significance, being the means of linking the successive experience provided by the villa. The sequential nature of these events becomes the thread which holds the design together, and Le Corbusier cross-references the various relationships of elements with the way these are perceived along the movement route.

Machine Aesthetic

The hard surface and geometrical purity of the villa reinforce the rational and intellectual implications of Le Corbusier’s symbolism. Order and clarity were central to his architecture, reflecting an idealistic attitude towards form which was seen as analogous to the precision and efficiency of machines.

Uniting the Motorcar and the house

The car is an inherent theme of Le Corbusier’s architecture. Aware that this phenomenon would totally change people’s loves, Le Corbusier made it an integral component of his work on urban planning and architecture. It is however, the Villa Savoye that it assumes its purest expression, with the movement of the car in some way forming one of the fundamentals of this architectural oeuvre, connecting the architectural promenade experience.

Site Context

The Villa Savoye stands in Poissy, a small town bordering a river around thirty kilometres west of Paris. The residential district that accommodates the Villa Savoye is located on a hilltop position from where it commands views of the river. “The site: a vast lawn, slightly convex. The main view is to the north in opposition to the sun. The villa is tucked out of sight from the street: only a large millstone wall can be perceived, running along the southern edge of the property, crowned by treetops that hint at the grounds behind.

Function

The distribution of rooms on the ground floor splits the house into three main functional zones: First, the reception rooms, including an entrance hall and a large cloakroom. Second: the living space, comprising the kitchen, dining room, salon, son’s bedroom and guestroom. And third, the service core – two maid’s rooms, caretaker/gardener’s lodge and chauffeur’s apartment. Garaging for three cars, a tool store, a trunk room, wine cellar and storage cellar complete and ensemble. The First floor provides for a master bedroom, measuring around 20m² with an en-suite bathroom and lavatory, as well as a boudoir and linen room.

Form

The form is intended to be an elevated cubic volume above the meadow, the geometry of man poised above the geometry of nature.

The centroidal form is placed centrally within the centroidal site, a horizontal form in a horizontal situation. A prolonged contemplation of this primary form was intended.

The entry block shape is determined by the turning capability of a vehicle, with the fundamental dynamic of a curvilinear volume tensioned against a rectangle.

Material, Technology & Structure

As one of the Modernist architects, Le Corbusier exploited the flexibility of concrete to create new forms and shapes that aligned with the quality of machine. The Industrial Revolution triggered new interests in engineering, innovation, structure and form. Reinforced concrete was used to achieve new architectural aesthetic. The construction of Villa Savoye allows Le Corbusier to fully realise the architectural philosophy he has developed throughout a decade of modern movement.

A representation of 20th century architecture

References

Sbriglio, J. (1999). Le Corbusier: The Villa Savoye. Birkhauser: Foundation Le Corbusier.

Baltanás, J. (2005). Walking through Le Corbusier : a tour of his masterworks. New York : Thames & Hudson



Casa Rotonda (Round House) (1980-1982), Stabio, Ticino, Switzerland

“The Medici home at Stabio reveals itself as an unexpected presence in an anonymous and sparsely developed context whose few buildings have, however, irreparably changed the character of the setting.” 3

When Botta was designing this building, he envisioned a circular building, cut on its north-south axis by a slit from which the light falls from above. The intent of the building was not to grab attention or contrast with the surrounding buildings; instead it was to seek the spatial relationships with the landscape and the distant horizon. 4



Influence, Social & Cultural Background

Mario Botta’s background is Swedish and was influenced by Carlo Scarpa, Louis Kahn and Le Corbusier in his earlier works. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Ticino region was going under some dramatic changes. Ticino changed from being a primary agricultural economy to an industrial economy that emphasised on tourism. 2 Due to this, most of Ticino’s architects designed for the wealthy bourgeoisie, who had profited from the change in economy. The school that Botta attended generates its designs from an architectural and contextual perspective. These designs were an attempt to relate to the old and the new, which was to continue the trends and to realise them in an architecture conceived as an act of culture. 2

Type

Residential



Style; Architectural Elements

It is stated that Mario Botta often quotes Le Corbusier’s theory of how “a theoretically perfectly realised architecture drives away contingent presences and achieves the ‘miracle of inexpressible space,’ yet the solidity of his architecture, with its precise symmetry and geometry, seems to strive for control and certainly.” 5 In all of Botta’s work he shows similar ideas and concepts; however these elements seem to be very repetitive which makes the viewer almost bored with his architecture. Casa Rotonda is a perfect example of Botta’s concepts and ideas. Botta strives for simplicity in creating uncomplicated, expressive designs for both the city and the mountain. 5

Site Context

The house appears a little out of town, an area of recent subdivision. It is stated in a sparsely developed context whose few buildings have.



Function

In each of Botta’s buildings it aims to understand the situation and therefore generate a new function. Botta stated that “I do think architecture lives beyond its function, it gives shape to history.” 5 In Casa Rotonda Botta make us questions the nature of dwellings with everything subordinated to form. The interior of this building is symmetrically laid out around the central slot of the stairwell. The skylight and the rooms are irregular, left over spaces resulting from Mario Botta inserting a rectangular grid into the house’s cylinder.



Form

Casa Rotonda has an obvious geometrical form which seems seemingly impenetrable at first glance. Its cylindrical shape contrasts with the large cuts in its surface and imply a confliction between fortification and openness.



Material, Technology & Structure

The great portico faces directly onto the countryside, north-south



References