“Der Zeit ihre Kunst. Der Kunst ihre Freiheit.”
(“To every age its art. To every art its freedom.”)
The phrase now makes a lot more sense to me. Le Corbusier invented an architecture that belonged to a defined age. However, more important is to note that, the age in which he did so was one of the most critical periods in the history of humanity. It was when modernity and its impact on humanity was highly criticized; but for some, it was the period of change.
The industrial revolution of 19th century had changed the way humans existed and performed. For some it was an event that would help humanity rise to unknowing limits, but for others it was an event that would send humanity crashing to its doom. Some identified this development of humanity as a myth; like Max Weber and Marquis de Sade who saw the cracks and fissures of this ‘enlightening’ and ‘uplifting’ process in lives of people. They saw every value being flattened under this forced rationality. Friedrich Nietzsche called this industrial push as a ‘destructive force of creation’, which would have to be balanced by ‘creative destruction’ by a ‘Noble Savage’.
Le Corbusier was the person that the time needed, who recreated the balance between the haunting past and terrifying future by holding them together and balancing them further. He belonged to class of noble savage, who understood the change of times so close, that they directed its path in the right direction. He was powerful enough to raise voice against the powerful of the times.
Corbusier announced himself as ‘the agent of change’ by his book ‘Toward a New Architecture’ in which he advocates and explores the concept of modern architecture. He dismisses the contemporary trends of eclecticism and art deco, replacing them with architecture that was meant to be more than a stylistic experiment; rather, an architecture that would fundamentally change how humans interacted with buildings.
Corbusier had greatest contribution to modern architectural thinking. He neither revolted against the past, nor against the development of humanity into the unknown; moreover did he identify the balance the past and the future needed. Corb once said, “the past is this fertile ground, a rich and interpretative matrix out of which principal for future can be extracted”. It is one of the best ways one could have explained the balance, neglecting none of the both. His idea was to not reject change, but to be it; so much so that he transmuted his identity to Le Corbusier from Charles-Edouard Jeanneret.
Architecture builds heavily on context, be it climatic, locational, architectural, cultural or referring to time and age. Corbusier’s informed architecture, responded to the time it was built in. It rejected the usual business with his stern philosophies and invented what the time actually needed. He was thus in a true sense, a ‘noble savage’.
here in architecture 