HISTORY OF

ARCHITECTURE

ASSIGNMENT -1
SEMESTER 6

SUBMITTED TO- SUBMITTED BY-

AR.SHUBHANGI SAXENA SARTHAK RASTOGI
B-ARCH 3-C
 Le CORBUSIER
PHILOSOPHY AND THEMES
• He called houses machines for living
in, and said that the base principal for
design is that it must be beautiful.
• He had a fascination with proportion,
modularity, and geometry, often taking
his cue from classical architecture
theory.
• The main features of his ideology
are rationalism, purism and
functionalism.
• The living places he drew are
uncluttered and simplified at best.
• Prefered bright and tidy areas

. Le Corbusier’s 5 Points of a
New Architecture

1. Pilotis: Elevating the mass off the

ground
2. Free Plan: achieved through the
separation of the load-bearing
PHILOSOPHIES columns from the walls sub diving
• The five points of the spaces
modern architecture 3. Free Façade: the corollary of the
• Architectural Promenade free plan is vertical plan
• Ville Radieuse and 4. Ribbon Windows: long horizontal
Urbanism sliding window
• Modular 5. Roof Garden: restoring the area of
• Open Hand ground covered by the house
 VILLA SAVOYE

.
CONCEPT
• It was designed by Le Corbusier as a paradigm of the "machine as a home", so that
the functions of everyday life inside become critical to its design. The movement of
cars to enter the interior of the house is the trigger for the design of the building
• It also includes the fact that housing is designed as an object that allegedly landed on the
landscape, is totally autonomous and it can be placed anywhere in the world. Architecture
followed the style of airplanes, cars and ships, with the
declared aim of achieving mass production of housing.
• Pillars supporting the ground floor also advanced this idea, and the
independence of the Villa from its garden, and was recognized as one of the key
points of the first generation of International Architecture
 GROUND FLOOR
1. HALL
2. OFFICES FOR THE
SERVICE
3. GARAGE (SPACE
FOR 3 CARS)
The ground floor is largely
determined by the movement
of a car entering the building.
This movement also determines
the structure, based on an
orthogonal grid of concrete
pillars separated 4.75 meters
from each other. This forms a
square grid of 23.5 meters on
the side, on top of which sits
the Villa

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

FIRST FLOOR :
1. LIVING ROOM
2. KITCHEN
3. BEDROOMS
4. BATHROOMS

SECTION

• SECOND FLOOR
• series of sculpted spaces that
formed a solarium.
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
1. All four sides of the building was designed in response to
the view and the orientation of the sun.
2. The plan was set out using the principle ratios of the
Golden section: in this case a square divided into
sixteen equal parts, extended on two sides to
incorporate the projecting façades and then further
divided to give the position of the ramp and the
entrance.
3. The four columns in the entrance hall seemingly direct
the visitor up the ramp.
4. The ramp, that can be seen from almost everywhere in the
house continues up to the first floor living area and salon
before continuing externally from the first floor roof terrace
up to the second floor solarium.
 CARPENTER CENTRE FOR
VISUAL ARTS

• Location :
Cambridge,
Massachusetts
• Project Year : 1963
• Context : Urban
Campus

1. It was designed to be home to Harvard’s visual arts, the Carpenter

Center houses large open studio spaces for students to work and
showcase their art.
2. In addition to being a place for art, it holds the largest collection of 35mm
films in the New England region often holding screenings of independent,
international, and silent films.
3. It was meant to be the synthesis of the arts where architecture would
join with painting, sculpture, photography and film.
4. It takes on a less than traditional approach to the design and
organization of the interior spaces.
5. Rather the Carpenter Center is a mix of Corbusier’s earlier works with the
typical beton-brut concrete, angled brise soleils that were used in
Chandigarh, and ondulatoires [narrow windows].
6. From first glance, it appears to be an inverted version of Villa Savoye
embodying the Five Points of Architecture on the exterior of the building
rather than within like Villa Savoye.
 1. Pilotis – The replacement of supporting walls by a grid of reinforced
concrete columns that bears the load of the structure is the basis of the
new aesthetic.
2. Roof gardens – The flat roof can be utilized for any purpose while also
providing essential protection to the concrete roof.
3. The free designing of the ground plan – The absence of supporting walls
means that the house is unrestrained in its internal usage.
4. The free design of façade – By separating the exterior of the building from
its structural function the façade becomes free.
5. The horizontal window – The façade can be cut along its entire length to
allow rooms to be lit equally.

• Le Corbusier's earliest design showed a

much more pronounced ramp that
further separated the two parts of the
central mass which created the problem
of too much disruption of the central
mass
• The landing at the top of the ramp is
located in the core of the building and
leads to various studios and exhibition
spaces seen through glass windows and
doors,
 ALVAR AALTO
Aalto was known for linking his buildings to the
surrounding nature. Architecture and location,
technology and man, were always in harmonious
interaction in Aalto's designs. No detail was too
small. Aalto even designed the door knobs to his
buildings. Everything between the landscape to a
glass vase on the table was treated with careful
consideration. His idea was that the leg of a chair
was ‘the little sister of a column.’ Thus furniture
was an integral element of architecture.

Alvar Aalto was already very aware of the

Modernist movement on an international scale
before the cutting edge design of Paimio
Sanatorium. Later Alvar and his wife, Aino,
travelled around Europe and Scandinavia
where they befriended many of the biggest
names in modern design
 VIPURI LIBRARY
Despite being one of the seminal works of
modern Scandinavian architecture, Alvar
Aalto’s Viipuri Library languished in
relative obscurity for three-quarters of a
century until its media breakthrough in
late 2014. Its receipt of the World
Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize
for a recent renovation was covered by
news outlets around the world, bringing
the 1935 building previously unseen levels
of attention and scrutiny.

• The library is considered one of

the first manifestations of
"regional modernism". It is
particularly famous for its wave-
shaped ceiling in the auditorium,
the shape of which, Aalto argued,
was based on acoustic studies.
• Nowadays, integrated in the
Russian Federation city of Vyborg,
the library is officially known as
the Central City Alvar Aalto
Library.
This renaissance is nothing less than
extraordinary. Abandoned for over
a decade and allowed to fall into
complete disrepair, the building
was once so forgotten that many
believed it had actually been
demolished. For decades, architects
studied Aalto’s project only in
drawings and prewar black-and-
white photographs, not knowing
whether the original was still
standing, and if it was, how it was
being used. Its transformation from
modern icon to deserted relic to
architectural classic is a tale of
political intrigue, warfare, and the
perseverance of a dedicated few
who saved the building from ruin.

EXPLODED 3D

SECTION
 AALTO THEATRE
• The opera house contains a large,
asymmetrical auditorium with
seating for a total of some 1,100
spectators, partly on the sloping
parquet and partly on three rows of
balconies with serpentine fronts
leaning inward in an effect related
to that of Aalto's 'Northern Lights'
wall in the New York World's Fair
pavilion.

• The functional gain was that the distance to the stage for the spectators sitting
highest up was the same as for those in the lowest balcony rows.
• The side walls, which point towards the
stage, are clad with a system of bent
battens which have both an acoustic and
an aesthetic function.
• The ceiling, with a system of metal
netting that is permeable by sound
waves but hidden from sight, conceals
an 'echo chamber' above with moveable
acoustic screens producing the 'flexible
acoustics' that Aalto had so long sought
to implement in various ways.
• Behind the auditorium, and equal to it
in height, is the foyer, with open,
sinuous entrance galleries to the
balconies forming an upward-growing
light court - a mirror image to the
auditorium.
• As in the Helsinki House of Culture, Aalto
mirrors the forms of these principal spaces
in the exterior: the walls curve softly, and
the whole massive structure is covered by a
lean-to roof which takes a low step up above
the auditorium and stage. The building
stands alone, set in a park.
ALDO VAN EYK
• Dutch Architect Aldo van Eyck built
the Amsterdam Orphan age in 1960.
His design focused on a balance of
forces to create both a home and
small city on the outskirts of
Amsterdam.
• The Amsterdam Orphan age was van
Eyck’s opportunity to put his opinions
in practice through his first large scale
built project.

AMSTERDAM
The building is constructed out
ORPHANAGE of two sizes of modules, a
smaller size for the residences,
and a larger size for community
spaces.
The modules consist of four round
columns at the corners with a domed
roof of pre-cast concrete on top. The
floor is also concrete. The many
facades in the building are either a
glass wall or a solid wall made with
dark brown bricks.

Within the Orphanage, units of program are laid

out on an orthogonal grid. The units project off
two diagonal paths so that each unit has multiple
exterior facades. By projecting off of a diagonal
within the grid, van Eyck creates an equal
amount of negative spaces from the positives
he’s formed. Each individual unit is then
neighbored by its own outdoor space.
A larger courtyard is offset diagonally
from the residential spaces, and the
entrance and administrative spaces
connect with the street, the large
courtyard, as well as the residential
units. Van Eyck avoids creating a
central point within the Orphanage by
allowing for such fluid connections
between all spaces.
 SCULPTURE PAVILION
-NETHERLANDS

• Built of concrete block and glass, the

pavilion is a rectilinear block with straight
and curved walls, and is roofed by glazing
that attracts diffuse light from all sides.
• The building is currently being renovated, and the sculpture has been removed
from the site; this sucks out part of the soul of the project, but the statues will
be reinstated.
• The lines of its ground plan is so compelling that a commercial firm has
emblazoned it on articles of clothing and its linear patterns also suggest the
complexities van Eyck found in the tribal artifacts he included in a video he
narrated and made for students.
• On the north side, the pavilion is composed of
regimented, straight rows of walls, but, from within,
the walls are voluptuously curved; there is an
orchestrated bending one way, then the other, so the
viewer is partially closed in.
• Informally placed within and outside the
structure, the sculptures have admiral pedigrees
of sculptors and artists of van Eyck’s period of the
avant-garde.
• The remarkable sculptures are placed on low
plinths and in niches at the level of the visitor, so
there is an immediacy to the relationship
between subject and viewers.

• The opposition of curved and straight walls, together with the sculptures on
plinths and in niches, are part of van Eyck’s version of “twin phenomenon”
which, in turn, can be linked to his take on opposites and the notion of
relativity.
• Large, rough-surfaced, rectilinear concrete blocks joined with mortar, like bricks, give
texture, and force an implied brutalist effect on the walls.
• Above the pavilion, the transparent roofing lets the diffused light in from all
sides, creating an aura to the sculpture and building elements below. From the
pavilion’s open and closed, straight and curved walls, there is intimacy in the
narrowed spaces.