Le Corbusier: Five Points of Architecture

Le Corbusier: Five Points of Architecture Five Points of Architecture Le Corbusier is one of the most significant architects from the 20th century. He is known as one of the pioneers of modern architecture due to many of his ideas and ‘recipes’ within architecture. One of his most famous was ‘The Five Point of a New Architecture’   that he had explained in‘LEsprit Nouveau’  and the book ‘Vers une architecture’, which he had been developing throughout the 1920s. Le Corbusier’ development of this idea altered the architectural promenade in a new way, which was presented in 1926.[1] The five points are as follows: pilotis, the roof garden, free plan, free faà §ade, and the horizontal window. Le Corbusier used these points as a structural basis for most of his architecture up until the 1950’s, which are evident in many of his designs. The essay ‘Les Cinq points dune architecture nouvelle’ by Le Corbusier focuses on questions that are raised within architectural design, suggesting a foundation and arrangement in it. Similar texts for example the progress of ‘cellule’  and figures of the Maison Standardisee, do not have relation to the design process of the five points. The Modulor, which is the study of proportions of the human body scale that is used as a system to plan a number of Le Corbusier’s buildings, is another theoretical attempt, which did not achieve a proper relation to the design process and also the architectural search for form that personifies the five points. On the other hand, these ideas can be portrayed more freely as ‘merely theoretical ideas’.[2] One exception is the concept of the tracis regulateurs (regulating lines), which uses proportions of geometry in buildings. It predicted certain ideas behind the five points in a number of aspects. The first point is the piloti, which are columns or piers that elevate a structure off the ground. The fact that the structure is lifted provides many functional advantages. As the pilotis raise the building off the ground, it allows circulation beneath the house, which frees the building site, and allows a driveway, parking space, or a garden to be placed beneath the house. The pilotis provides many advantages, and also new constructional possibilities. The artistic moments as well as the extended usefulness are the results of those ‘recherches assidues’ and those ‘acquis de laboratoire’[3]. The same area is also gained on the flat roof. This area is known as the next point, which is the roof garden. This is to balance the green area that was already used by the building and substituted it onto the roof, which is then used for domestic purposes. Free plan is the next point, which means the floor space can be arranged freely without the concern for supportin g walls into rooms. Replacing interior load-bearing columns from walls dividing the space, and moving the structure of the building to the exterior is a way to achieve this. Le Corbusier designed an open floor structure called the Dom-ino house in which the model removed load-bearing wall and the supporting beams for the ceiling. This invention was most unexpected at time; it was a ‘forecast of the potentialities of reinforced concrete, of mass-production, of human scale, of the modern factory.’[4] The frame did not depend on the floor plans of the house, giving the architect freedom when designing the interior. Free faà §ade is another point. It is the ability of designing the faà §ade freely as the walls are non-supporting, which is the result of the free plan. The next point is the horizontal window. This allows the faà §ade to be cut along its entire length. By doing so it allows maximum illumination, better ventilation and also gives views of the surrounding yar d, which is evident in the Villa Savoye. The five points were demonstrated in many of Le Corbusiers architecture throughout his career. One of first designs that Le Corbusier attempted to include the points in was the Maisons Citrohan. The house was developed through different versions. Numerous elements of the houses design turned out to be essential factors, which make up Le Corbusiers style. Certain characteristics of the Maison Citrohan can be detected in most of the villas in the 1920’s.[5] Maison Citrohan introduced the ‘five points of new architecture’. The house was elevated by pilotis allowing free circulation on the ground, and also consisted of a reinforced-concrete frame structure, which was achieved from the Dom-ino’s constructional system. The open space created by the pilotis and the flat roof increases the small area that already exists. It also had a roof garden/terrace. Le Corbusier voiced himself on the subject of the Maison Citrohan in the first volume of the ‘Oevre compl dte’: â€Å"Stuttgart, cest Ioccasion enfin!. Le Corbusier did not talk of individual objects or designs; he talked about the constant development of an idea stretched over many cases.[6] Le Corbusier studied the essential philosophies of Egyptian, Hindu, Byzantine, and Greek architecture in ‘Vers une architecture’, which is a collection of essays that supports study of the concept of modern architecture.[7] Egyptian and Greek architecture were particularly important for Le Corbusiers application of the five points. From Egyptian architecture, Le Corbusier acquired the idea of symmetry and repetition. In addition, Le Corbusier obtained the notion of movement and contraries from Greek architecture. The lesson of regular repetition from Egyptian architecture, as mentioned above, provided the idea of using repetition in vertical supports that Le Corbusier would later apply to his architecture as a constant scale, a rhythm, a restful cadence. Le Corbusiers design theories were put in practice to a certain level within a number of his designs such as the Maison Cook, the Villa Stein, and also at the Villa Savoye. In these buildings ‘the regular grid of columns served as a foil to the organic shapes of the curved walls and stairs, which together combined to organize a pleasant architectural promenade with asymmetrically balanced views’ according to the lessons of Greek architecture. [8] Similar to the Citrohan House, the Villa Stein had a roof, which became a terrace garden; regularly spaced structural piers, which allowed freely curved interior partitions, and also horizontal windows that extended across facades. The Maison Cook was a terrace house. The upper floors of the house were supported by concrete piloti, and the ground floor consisted of a open plan which had a parking space, entry, and a terrace. The roof was also used as a garden terrace. Le Corbusier wanted to show that the partitions of the rooms on each floor were independent of structural supports, thus the partitions were curved.[9] The Villa Savoye follows the five points best strictly, and can be considered as a built plan of Le Corbusier’s five points. The exterior maintains the idea of symmetry as all four elevations are really similar, which consist of horizontal windows and openings running the width of the faà §ade at the second floor level, supported by regularly spaced pilotis.[10] Within the points, the free plan is the most important in the design, where the large wall curves freely between the pilotis on the ground floor, which reflects the idea of the ‘free plan’ the strongest. As much as the five points have contributed to the development of modern architecture greatly, some points such as the horizontal windows are not necessary in terms of the designing of good architecture. Also the idea of the roof garden has been criticised over the years for leaking, it also would be considered very strange in domestic houses in countries such as the UK, as they use the more traditional pitched roof as it seems more homely. Furthermore, Le Corbusier abandoned the idea of the piloti shortly after some point; his later work does not strictly follow the points. Le Corbusier’s ‘Five Points in Architecture’ manifesto, as explained above, has had great influence on modern architecture. This is evident in The Villa Savoye, which summed up the five points, which turned out to be a masterpiece of the 20th century design and one of the greatest works by Le Corbusier. The five points have allowed a wide variety of ideas and possibilities within designing arc hitecture even to this day such as the use of free faà §ade in Zaha Hadid’s Performing Arts Center in Hague (2010).   Ã‚   [1] Le Corbusier, Choisy, and French Hellenism: The Search for a New Architecture by Richard A. Etlin. The Art Bulletin, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), p.275 [2] Les Cinq Points dune Architecture Nouvelle by Werner Oechslin trans. Wilfried Wang. Assemblage, No. 4 (Oct., 1987), p.84 [3] Les Cinq Points dune Architecture Nouvelle by Werner Oechslin trans. Wilfried Wang. Assemblage, No. 4 (Oct., 1987), p.93 [4] Five Points of Architecture; the Promenade Architecturale, mimesis (copying), p.43 [5] Key Houses of the Twentieth Century:Plans, Sections and Elevations, Laurence King Publishing, 2006 , p.56 [6] Les Cinq Points dune Architecture Nouvelle by Werner Oechslin trans. Wilfried Wang. Assemblage, No. 4 (Oct., 1987), p.84 [7] Le Corbusier, Choisy, and French Hellenism: The Search for a New Architecture by Richard A.Etlin. The Art Bulletin, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), p.275 [8] Le Corbusier, Choisy, and French Hellenism: The Search for a New Architecture by Richard A. Etlin. The Art Bulletin, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), p.276 [9] A World History of Architecture by Marian Moffett, Michael W. Fazio, Lawrence Wodehouse, 2003 edition, p.509 [10] Design and Analysis by Bernard Leupen, 1997, p.51 What is white space? What is white space? What is white space? White space, also recognized by most as negative space, is the unmarked space between graphics, texts, and margins. To be precise, it is basically all spaces that possess absent of contents. Sandy Wheeler argued that, most people do not understand the role of white space and often consider them simply as ‘blank space.However, in my opinion, this perception is incorrect. Even though white space does not hold contents in the way that a photograph or text holds meaning, it essentially serves to carry meaning through context to both image and text. It is an important element of design which allows the objects in it to even exist. In addition, it may even make or break the effective transmission of image and text. As designers, we are trained to often use white space where it is appropriate in our designs. This is not limited to only graphic design, but also extends to other types of design such as web, product, interior, architecture, and many others. First of all, let us explore the use of white space in graphic design. White space can be categorized into 2 categories, the ‘macro white space which represents the space between major elements in a composition, and ‘micro white space which represent the space between smaller elements, several of which include those between list items, between a caption and an image, or between words and letters and the rest of the small spaces. White space is also often used to build a balanced and harmonious layout. The white space other than can be categorized into macro and micro white space, both marco and micro white space can also be divided into active and passive white space. The active white space is space which is left empty intentionally. Also, it serves to lead a reader from one element to another. As for passive white space, it is the white space that does not appear to be intentional. In other words, most passive white space is â€Å"unintentional† which means it is just the unconsidered space or left over space present within a composition.In my opinion, all white space in a good design, whether active or passive, should be planned out by the designer from the very first. If a designer only planned on the macro white space used and let the rest of the white space unconsidered, it will be just considered as poor design. Passive white space creates breathing room and balance and its role cannot be underm ined. A web design aims to allow visitors to subconsciously develop an impression and predict where the navigation and content areas will be as they navigate from page to page. A well-designed webpage includes active white space as an intentional page element that visually separates the navigation, content, header and footer. Lacking of which can result in the website appearing cluttered, and visitors might feel that the information they are looking for would be difficult to find and thus head to other websites. Micro white spaces often help improve legibility. Many people disregard the importance of the micro space and always feel that the small little spaces will not make much difference in design. In some cases, white space can be very limited and a lot of information has to be fitted into a page, for example newspaper, yellow pages and etc. When a lot of information is crammed together, the layout will eventually to be appearing messy and hard to read. This is when we, the designers come in to find ways to solve this problem. One good example is ‘The Economist newspaper, which has been redesigned as the owner of the company realized that their newspaper design was too heavy and the contents are too difficult to read. This is an important issue as the design and legibility of the newspaper affected the sales of the newspaper. The company hired Erik Spiekermann, a German designer and typographer to search for a solution. In newspaper design, information is often dense and many times, it is difficult to add in additional whitespace because of the content requirements. Spiekermanns solution to this was to use a lighter typeface for their body content with plenty of whitespace surrounding the characters. Spiekermann redesigned the typeface by adding more whitespace to the individual characters while retaining the quirkiness of the original Economist typeface. He proceeded to set the type slightly smaller and using leading. All these small changes added up to create more micro white space to the design, r esulting in the content being more legible. The overall feeling of the newspaper was lighter, while the amount of content remained the same.Spiekermanns successful redesign for ‘The Economist proves that the space between the â€Å"itsy-bitsy† stuff can have a big impact on the effectiveness of a design. This concept could essentially be applied to designs for other magazines, yellow pages, the web and other medium that require a substantial amount of texts. Shown below is the redesign of typeface from ‘The Economist by Spiekermann, illustrating how such small changes could make a big difference. The images below show two typical spreads, one before the redesign, when ‘The Economist was printed in black and white with bits of red, and another article after the redesign which has went on to full color. In addition, white space also plays an important role in brand positioning. On the surface of paper, white space is â€Å"that of chosen not to print†. From the perspective of economy and conservation, white space should then be at a minimum, and logically all space should then be used up and not come to a waste. In this case, white space is used for purely semiotic values. It is insisted then, that the image of what is presented is more crucial than what the paper that could save. In countries such as Japan, some printing jobs are very costly as they would still charge for the printing plates, separations, paper, and four-or-more color presses even to print white space.Therefore, average brands that have a limited budget would try to fully maximize the whole paper by including as much contents as possible. On the other hand, some designers utilize white space to create a feeling of luxury and elegance to upscale brands. With the sensitive use of typography and image, generous white space is seen over several luxury market products. Extensive white space is used in marketing material to sell to the target audiences the idea that the products are of the highest quality and extravagant value. Images below show the examples of white space used in some luxurious brands. Essentially, it all boils to which target audiences are designers after. There are indeed exceptions of which white space may not be necessary in design. For example, in direct-mail products, designs need to be appeared down-market to work. By adding white space to it, the design would appear to inherit an undesirably upscale quality, which may not appeal to the targeted mass audience in the community.Below is an example of direct mail versus luxury brand design. The contents shown above are the same, including the text information and image. However, the two designs stand at opposite ends of the brand spectrum. Such comparison illustrates how less white space portrays a cheaper image, while more white space portrays a more luxurious image. The discussion of white space is not simply restricted to the contemporary. In my opinion, the significance and role of white space has change and evolved over time. According to Ken Kelman, in older days, white space was not considered to play a too important role.However, I believe that designs in the past do utilize white space, such as to emphasize a particular content or object. However, a distinct difference between the use of white space between the past and modern days design would be that older designs tend to cram contents together. Even though compositions and macro white space within designs are considered, micro white space is often less regarded or even neglected. The posters below show examples of older days designs when an entire page is often filled up with text and image. The typefaces used in such posters are often big and bulky compared to modern day designs where white spaces hold more importance. Often, large crammed texts with little white space in between are often spotted in vintage design. I believe that in todays world with improvement in technologies, better designs have emerged as we designers are able to create even spaces between each lines of text. We are also able to experiment and play around with composition within design with ease, compared to the past when such hardware did not exist. With this, we could create design that look more professional and clean. Over the time, with the good use of white space by designers, more and more people start to appreciate and realized about the importance of white space in design. Therefore, more of better design pieces are born and white spaces are used more often by designers nowadays compared to the past. Examples of vintage design Example of modern design Not every posters of the past disregard the concept of white space. One such example is the poster below, which was considered to be a success in terms of delivery of its message content. This was partly due to the effective and unique design elements employed which were rarely seen in its counterparts during that period. Using short and straight forward text, with ample of white space around the contents, the importance of the contents stood out and its message was effectively emphasized. Another cause for the change of the signification of white space over time in my opinion is influenced by the changes in human lifestyles. According to a survey by Austin Mott Anastacia, people nowadays are getting busier, more stressful and impatient than ever before. Only 30 percent among 20 000 adults have enough sleep most days and the rest are too busy doing more â€Å"important† stuffs such as working, studies, playing games and so on.In my opinion, because of the busy lifestyle, people would not be willing to spend more time on anything else than what they want to do, not to mention spending too much time on an advertisement. Therefore, designers nowadays tend to use more white space and less content for that purpose. Taking a billboard advertisement for example, a simple, creative and straight forward advertisement is always more successful than the advertisement with a lot of contents as readers would need more time to read and too much contents make the advertisement appear messy. Most readers have busy lifestyle; they would only be willing to spend a limited amount of time on that advertisement. Moreover, billboards are mostly placed along road or highways which made the readers who are travelling in cars have much less time for it. The billboard advertisements would need to convey messages across to readers in a few seconds. Comparing to olden days where most people have more time to spare, they would have a higher chance to spend time on advertisements that are packed with contents. Below are two examples of advertisements for the purpose mentioned above. Another change of signification of white space over time in my opinion is that olden days design put in as much details to minimize as much white space as possible to represent luxury where modern days designers tend to use as much space for that purpose. Focusing on interior and product design as references, olden days tend to put in a lot of details and minimize white space in their design. Regardless of any country and culture, their olden days designs tend to share this same character. To support my point, shown below are the examples of olden days interior design from a few different cultural background such as Europe,   Modern designs In my opinion, olden days folks appreciate details and craftsmanship very much because with the lack of building and engraving technology and machine exist in the olden days, to have a piece of furniture engraved in detail, it needed a lot of effort, time and labour. Only rich people in the olden days could afford that craftsmanship. In another word, it represents status and luxury. As the saying goes ‘less is more. Such wisdom cannot be more emphasized in the concept of white space. Increasingly, white space is being regarded and recognized as part an important design element, and also a design technique. Once you know how to design and manipulate the space surrounding your content, youll be able to amazing feats such as giving your readers a head start in your design, position products more precisely, and last but not least, perhaps even begin to see your own design content in a new light.