Le Corbusier - The Art of Architecture

'Une auto est une machine pour rouler.
Un avion est une machine pour voler.
Une maison est une machine à habiter.'
- Architecture d'aujourd'hui (1930)
I must confess to having mixed views about Le Corbusier. There is something about the spareness of his designs - zen, almost, in their simplicity: full of clean lines, free façades and ribbon windows - which appeals to my sense of order. At the same time, I can't help feeling a disturbing sense of sterility at the heart of them. Here are spaces, you feel, where laughter never quite rings true and is to be dissipated, quickly and clinically; and where memories of the hearth are discouraged as too much clutter.

In what might have been a manifesto for the Barratt boxes of our age, Le Corbusier wrote in l'Esprit Nouveau: 'Il faut construire en série pour pouvoir se loger. [...] Construire en série, c'est atteindre le prix acceptable. C'est aussi affronter le problème du plan de l'appartement: c'est fixer les données de ce plan; c'est commencer la réorganisation indispensable de l'économie domestique.'

Simplified forms and standardisation. The house as a machine for living. It occurs to me, sauntering through the exhibition, that my problem with Le Corbusier is that I don't fundamentally believe in either. I believe in living spaces which are just that: living. The best domestic spaces I've encountered have always had a certain unique 'lived in' quality, like a teenager's bedroom writ large, perhaps - slightly messy, but always full of its own quirky character.

In the background, a group of grungy young architecture students is being told off. 'Please don't rest your sketchbooks next to the original models. I believe one of my colleagues has already spoken to you about this.' Indeed. Tear up your sketchbooks and start again! I sneak a peek at their sullen faces as they gather up their materials and imagine that some of them might, one day, do better.