Le corbusier

Biography:

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier. He was Swiss architect, designer, urban designer, writer and painter. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, one in North and several in South America.

Introduction :

He was born as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in a small city in north- western Switzerland, just 5 kilometres across the border from France. Young Jeanneret was attracted to the visual arts and studied at the La-Chaux-de-Fonds Art School. His architecture teacher in the Art School was the architect ReneChapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusier's earliest houses.

Concepts:The modularOpen hand

The modular :Le Corbusier used the golden ratio in his Modular system for the scale of architectural proportions. In addition to the golden ratio, Le Corbusier based the system on human measurements, Fibonacci numbers, and the double unit.He took Leonardo's suggestion of the golden ratio in human proportions to an extreme he sectioned his model human body's height at the navel with the two sections in golden ratio, then subdivided those sections in golden ratio at the knees and throat he used these golden ratio proportions in the modular system.Le Corbusier placed systems of harmony and proportion at the centre of his design philosophy, and his faith in the mathematical order of the universe was closely bound to the golden section and the Fibonacci series.

Open hand : The Open Hand is a recurring motif in Le Corbusier's architecture, a sign for him of "peace and reconciliation. It is open to give and open to receive.“ The largest of the many Open Hand sculptures that Le Corbusier created is a 28 meter high version in Chandigarh, India.

Le Corbusier placed systems of harmony and proportion at the centre of his design philosophy, and his faith in the mathematical order of the universe was closely bound to the golden section and the Fibonacci series.

Double unit

It was Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, (1929–1931) that summed up his five points of architecture. The bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting it by reinforced concrete stilts. These provide the structural support for the house.A free façade, meaning non-supporting walls that could be designed as the architect wished, An open floor plan, meaning that the floor space was free to be configured into rooms without concern for supporting walls. The second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows that allow unencumbered views of the large surrounding yard, and which constitute the fourth point of his system.

Villa Savoye

The fifth point was the roof garden to compensate for the green area consumed by the building and replacing it on the roof. A ramp rising from ground level to the third floor roof terrace allows for an architectural promenade through the structure. The white tubular railing recalls the industrial "ocean-liner" aesthetic that Le Corbusier much admired. The driveway around the ground floor, with its semicircular path, measures the exact turning radius of a 1927 Citroen automobile

The most significant role played by Le Corbusier in Chandigarh was in conceiving the city's present urban form. It is the well-ordered matrix of his generic ‘neighbourhood unit' and the hierarchical circulation pattern of his ‘7Vs' that has given Chandigarh its distinctive character.

The Matrix comprises a regular grid of the fast traffic V3 roads which define each neighbourhood unit, the ‘Sector'. The Sector itself was conceived as a self-sufficient and - in a radical departure from other precedents and contemporaries concepts - a completely introverted unit, but was connected with the adjoining ones through its V4 - the shopping street, as well as the bands of open space that cut across in the opposite direction.

le Corbusier Chandigarh city

A city such as described above could be placed almost anywhere. But what distinguishes Corbusier design for Chandigarh are the attributes of its response to the setting. The natural edges formed by the hills and the two rivers, the gently sloping plain with groves of mango trees, a stream bed meandering across its length and the existing roads and rail lines - all were given due consideration in the distribution of functions, establishing the hierarchy of the roads and giving the city its ultimate civic form.

Day-to-day facilities for shopping, healthcare, recreation and the like were arrayed along the V4 - all on the shady side. The vertical green belts, with the pedestrian V7, contained sites for schools and sports activities.

Connecting the various accents of the city - such as the Capitol (the ‘head'), the City Centre (‘the heart'), the University and the Industrial Area (the two ‘limbs'), etc. and, also scaling its seemingly undifferentiating matrix, were the city's V2s. Corb's ‘V2 Capitole' or Jan Marg (People's Avenue), was designed as the ceremonial approach to the Capitol. His ‘V2 Station', the Madhya Marg (Middle Avenue), cut across the city, linking the railway station and the Industrial Area to the University. The third V2, Daksh in Marg (South Avenue) demarcates the first developmental phase of the city.