Page 64 - Studio International - January 1968

Ebenezer Howard and other reformers produced
To Le Corbusier, the idea of garden cities, an hygenic Utopia, to has been enthusiastically adopted in planning
legislation round the world. Probably because it is
despite combat the crowded slums of their time. Le simple and easily understood.
Corbusier's ideas are firmly based on their work.
Fed into the existing Victorian city it has decanted
enchantment He accepted entirely their stress on sun, space and the workers from their sordid slums to housing
verdure for every man. Not being mad about home
estates on the periphery, packed off the workshops
weaving, he saw as an alternative sport and market to industrial estates and turned the city centre over
gardening. For a Frenchman they were two very to the speculative office block.
characteristic discoveries of the twenties. They Le Corbusier also proposed a, largely ignored,
could be put forward in Paris as something new series of economic controls, starting with national-
and revolutionary, part of the great new leisure age. ization of the land, massive government investment
They were also splendidly economical in the middle in cities, and naturally even more massive develop-
Review article of a depression. In its way it's an endearing vision ment control to ensure that the state's investment
even if it doesn't have many takers nowadays in a would pay off.
by Theo Crosby
world of pot, pop and instant affluence. Where these conditions have been present (as in
Le Corbusier's vision combined into a synthesis the British new towns) his predictions have been
all that was considered good and viable in the triumphantly vindicated. They are economic
twenties, and each proposition was dependent on successes. Unfortunately they lack his architectural
To re-read Le Corbusier after twenty-five years, a
the state of technology at the time. expertise.
lifetime, is a salutary experience, especially with
Where the technology was well developed (lifts, In effect, forty-four years after their first appear-
the double take of his own commentary on these
heating, constructional methods have improved ance practically all of Le Corbusier's concepts have
early writings. 'The Radiant City' is a collection
only marginally since 1900) his proposals are still been realized in practice, though usually at fifth
of early pieces, previously published in other books,
viable. He could not, however, foresee the effect of hand and compromised to the hilt. They lack
magazines, the complete works and so on, dealing
the motor car on cities, or the actual spatial re- coherence but we can get some feed back from each
with his vision of the future city. *
quirements of this element when deployed en experiment.
It is a vision that has haunted a generation, and
masse. The first lesson to be learnt is that propositions
one that comes ever closer to reality.
The Radiant City grew from the proposals of 1923 such as his, if built quickly and tested experi-
Like most visions it is hermetic. It presupposes a
and used always the same elements : terraced mentally, would probably be an excellent invest-
way of life, a series of closed systems which are all
apartments, with interior streets, enclosed great ment. If we had built a Radiant City in 1945, we
interdependent. It was also, like most true visions,
squares containing gardens, tennis courts, etc. would have learned a great deal by 1955. As it is
anticipatory. Le Corbusier was one of the great
Ground level is for pedestrians. Vehicular access our conclusions are muddled, and our way un-
men of our time, a poet, a propagandist of genius
was to be at first-floor level, with links to urban clear, standing as we do in the wreckage of a dozen
who had something sane and constructive to say.
motorways, which would convey the worker to the half-hearted experiments.
He was loudly and emphatically on the side of the
central glass towers of offices, or to the linear The second lesson is to beware of the very ex-
good, proclaiming eternal truths. He was a great
factory area on the other side of a green belt. cellence and clarity of his synthesis. It is ineluctably
formgiver from whom we all steal daily.
It will be seen that this solution depends on the tied to his poetic vision as an architect and to his
His vision was a marvellously exact diagnosis, and
famous separation of the four functions : living, formgiving capacity. Both of these are for a grand
prescription, for 1923. But the city is constantly
working, recreation and transport. This principle classical simplification. For him it was so easy. In
changing, extending and retracting at wildly
different rates. He called it a chaos of disorganized
effort, and called for a PLAN. Twenty-five years 'This diagram provides a clear expression of the prodigious reform implied in the Radiant City population
after getting some plans, we have learnt that a figure of 1,000 to the hectare. It means a whole new way of life. (The plans of Paris, New York, Buenos
PLAN is the merest beginning. Aires and the Radiant City are all on the same scale.)'
To explain the dilemma of city planning today we
must understand its deep roots in the past, and
particularly in the Utopias of the past. Mediaeval
planning, we now discover by the increasingly
accurate tools of art history, was by no means
accidental. Cities grew, slowly perhaps, but with
precise intention, answering to climatic and social
preconditions. The rectilinear Roman cities of
Cologne and Chester turned themselves into more
easily defensible and relatively windproof warrens
in a climate less stable than that of their Mediterra-
nean prototypes.
The nineteenth century, the first to face the pro-
blems of mass production and consumption, lacked
elements to ensure dispersal. (The steam engine
and the railway are essentially concentrating
devices.) By the end of the century the great evil
was over-concentration of people, factories and
dwellings. Current technology, based on the burn-
ing of coal, produced an increasing environmental
pollution.
* The Radiant City by Le Corbusier, 345 pp., 4 col-
our plates, illus. in monochrome throughout, pub-
lished by Faber and Faber. 8 gns.