On Le Cobusier's 'City of Tormorrow' chapter 10

In the 10^th chapter, titled ‘Our technical equipment’, of the book ‘City of Tomorrow‘, Le Corbusier talks about the construction of a dam in the Alps. He starts off by describing the change from the individual to the collaborative, there is now a ‘solidarity of thought’ which means that

‘No longer can a piece of work result solely from the effort of an idividual’.

Corbusier seems to be very hyped by the fact that we have now a

                                          ‘possibility of a universal collaboration’

at our disposal.  He then talks about the construction of the barrage in quite some detail and the ‘mighty captains’ who oversee and direct the work. He describes them as

‘very normal gentlemen, just like yourselves; the notion that they represent a “new state of mind” would make them roar with laughter. If you praise them because of their work, they protest (…) If you talk of their splendid achievement, they take you for a fool’.

The fact that they do not realise their potential is upsetting him. When talking to them excitedly about how their plant is a

                                      ‘superb foretaste of an age fast approaching’

by revealing the ‘potentialities of a new epoch, and how that would help to rebuild Paris on a large scale, the men say that it would be a destruction of the historic, beautiful town for a new world that to them seems to be of considerably lower.

‘You mean the eight-hour day, jazz, the cinema, and girls who go about with everybody!’

This reminds me of Dave Hickey’s ‘At home in the neon’. The most important thing about this is the fact that Le Corbusier actually did plan to rebuild the centre of Paris. He believed in starting from scratch by knocking down entire parts of a city like Paris and shaping them according to his vision of what would work architecturally. Anyone else thinking of Zaha and her ‘Hadidopolis’ (I still love this word so much, always makes me smile because it is so absurd)? Trying to build an Utopian city that would mainly consist of skyscrapers, strictly for commercial use, is a perfect example of the Faustian Imperative. Well I guess from my previous blogs you can safely assume that I am VERY glad that this Utopian nightmare did not become true. How horrible and dreadful would that place be, I can only imagine how many more people would have been depressed by that concrete jungle. This reminds me of one of the paragraphs in ‘Howl’ that pretty much sums my thoughts up:

‘What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? (…) Moloch whose buildings are judgment! (…) Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! (…) Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!’

Le Corbusier really is like the character Professor Silenus in Evelyn Waugh’s book who thinks that

                                            ‘the only perfect building must be a factory’

and who hates all humans. In his text Le Corbusier says that

                                                    ‘man is petty and narrow-minded’

but ‘the barrage itself is magnificent’.  Thinking of his ‘Voisin’ plan for Paris and about his love for geometry and order through repetition, this actually reminds me of Lefebvre’s ‘The production of space’ not because it is similar but because it is the complete opposite of what he thinks. Lefebvre said that

‘repetition has everywhere defeated uniqueness,(…)the artificial and contrived have driven all spontaneity and naturalness from the field‘.

 Indeed to build an Utopian idea of a city like that would defeat uniqueness. The centre of the city would become like a dead, cold machine that would destroy all naturalness but probably be heaven for someone like Le Corbusier. I certainly do not want to live in a ‘Corbusieropolis’ (sorry I couldn’t resist). But is this to say that one should not strive after the big ideas, the all-changing, never look back, start from scratch, utopian ideas? Wouldn’t most people actually be like Faust and sign the contract to get what they desire most or in this instance build their own little perfect world? But in order to do that you have to sell your soul, which means you do not care anymore about anything else than your work, which I think is a horrible thing. I for one started to study architecture primarily because I want to design and build something that people can live in, cherish and enjoy, as an architect you have the chance to build someone’s house, someone’s dream. Of course I have dreams and opinions on how I would like a city to be, but realizing these will not make everyone happy, of course you can’t win them all, but I think to build an entire city as one tiny human being, cannot possibly be a good idea. There are so many different kind of people living in a city, which for me makes it interesting, and I think a city should be just as diverse as its citizens, which is impossible if it is designed by one person.