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38 THE PICTORIAL DESIGN IN THE CURUTCHET HOUSE

The Curutchet house is an odd example in the work of Le Corbusier. The exact response to a complex program and the spatial riches achieved out of the small size of land, characterize it as one of the best samples of his long career.

In the same sense, the design of the street elevation, adopts compositional methods derived from his pictorial conceptions which from its particular identity, give added value to the architecture of the house.

By Marcelo Gardinetti

“The purist element born of the purification of the standard forms is not a copy but a creation, whose end is materializing the object in all its generality and its invariance. The purist syntax is application of the constructive and modular means, is the application of the laws that govern the pictorial space”

This paragraph published in “L’espirit nouveau” in 1921, is part of the conceptual genesis that Le Corbusier with Amédée Ozenfant addressed in formulating the principles of purism pictorial. The compression process of the renaissance perspective initiated by cubism was transferred to the architecture of Le Corbusier through the purism.

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The purist pictorial space is characterized by the insertion of objects represented in a shallow space. Cubism adopts the combination of abstract and figurative forms and the space management in layered and ambiguous set.

The purism promulgated for the precision and the mathematical order and differed of the nonobjective art the “De Stijl” and the pictorial compositions of Piet Mondrian, qualified by Le Corbusier as “too asceticism”

In that space the light and the tonalities are determinants. A color palette reduced articulate the objects, the elements located from behind is approach to enlighten same the front located, an effect the lights and shadows that induces the pictorial compression.

When Le Corbusier charges a Bernhard Hoesli the design of the street elevation, he applied to the composition the purist pictorial principles. Hoesli was a studious of the methods of pictorial composition of Le Corbusier, which apply to the teaching of the architecture in the Austin University since 1951.

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MELODIES IN THE CURUTCHET HOUSE

The external elevation of the Curutchet house, because of its parallels with the obliquity of the street respect to de axial of the lot, required a development in itself. For this reason, Hoesli the elevation design as a separate plane of the set, in a composition of autonomous planes superimposed.

The traditional components of the façade: structure, carpentry and protection are separate and transform on independent planes. The “brise soleil” is treated as a loose plane before the volume of the surgeries, the carpentry plane is inserted flush the volume from side to side and the plane of structure passes behind of the carpentry traversing the volume. These three layers are generated from different modulation. Brise soleil and carpentry modules are based on the modulor dimensions and the plot of pilotis is based in structural needs.

Le Corbusier and Hoesli make a musical analogy of the composition calling it “3 melodies” in a graph is preserved in the original plans in Fondation Le Corbusier. The brise soleil ahead of the volume serves a dual function: interrupts the passage of the sun and becomes the terrace balustrade and as a visual frame to de forest.

The plot of pilotis pierces the volume of the surgeries to rise above the terrace and hold the canopy of top level. This shadow effect contrasts with the house elevation in the back that through the hole in the roof appears as an illuminated plane. Modulation of light and shadow similar to those used the purist pictorial works.

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The portico in the ground floor balances the asymmetry with the canopy of the top level. The beveled design encouraged by the prospect and its vertical contrast with the “fenêtre en longueur” of the surgeries.

The composition summarizes the pictorial vision differentiating and superimposing foreground, medium and background. The façade design is a balanced set of forms and a simultaneous plastic exercise. In him is articulated the flat and uniform vision generates for the brise soleil and the visual vanishing point generated for the access portico.

In the floor, the pictorial influence is present in the level of the bedrooms, where the curved walls of the service stand the characteristics of the free plan. The elvel exhibits similarities with the still life of 1920, with shows the objects in a shallow pictorial space. This analogy in the works of Le Corbusier was subjected of several studies.

The final project representation is also atypical and not repeated in none of the drawings which form part their complete works. A drawing of the façade in perspective incorporates a small foreshortening the front of the housing behind the main façade.

The design of the street elevation resolved as a pictorial exercise, applying the theoretical concepts which Le Corbusier and Ozenfant had developed 25 years ago are part of the enormous wealth of design of this singular work of the modern architecture.

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Nota: Bernhard Hoesli (1923-1984) arquitecto Suizo que colaboro con Le Corbusier entre 1948 y 1951 por recomendación de Fernad Leger, con quien había colaborado un año antes. Fue designado por Le Corbusier para integrar el equipo de diseño de la casa Curutchet, y posteriormente trabajo en la Unité d’Habitation de Marsella. En 1951 se estableció en Estados Unidos, donde impartió clases en la Universidad de Austin, Texas. Junto a Colin Rowe integro los Texas Rangers, que ejercieron gran influencia en varios jóvenes arquitectos, entre ellos Peter Eisenman.

BIBLIOGRAFIA

L’espirit Nouveau, versión en castellano, “Acerca del Purismo, escritos 1918/1926” El Croquis editorial, 1993.

Alejandro Lapunzina, Le Corbusier’s Maison Curutchet, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997

Daniel Merro Johnson, El Autor y el Interprete, 1:100 ediciones, Buenos Aires. 2011

Jorge Francisco Liernur con Pablo Pschepiurca, La red austral, obras y proyectos de Le Corbusier y sus discípulos en Argentina, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2009

Willy Boesiger, Le Corbusier, Obras Completas, Vol V (1946-1952)

William J. R. Curtis, Le Corbusier, Ideas y Forma, Hermann Blume, 1986

William J. R. Curtis, La Arquitectura Moderna, tercera edición ampliada, Phaidon press limited, 2006

Geoffrey Broadbent, La Casa Curutchet, Revista 47 al fondo n° 11 año 2004

Willy Boesiger, Le Corbusier, editorial Gustavo Gili, 1976

Tracing the genesis of the inhabitable picture plane, School of Architecture at the Austin University.

Jacques Barzac, Le Corbusier, film documental, 1985

Jerzy Soltan, Working Whit Le Corbusier.

Photographs: ©Marcelo Gardinetti

Published in TECNNE ©Marcelo Gardinetti

March 2012