I can understand Corbusier’s desire for this perfectly designed city that celebrates architecture based on geometry, but in reading it, it didn’t feel alive. I don’t know if that makes sense, but even in seeing the image on pg 178-179, it didn’t feel like an inviting place, it looked daunting and too organized for life to actually be happening. There is only so much of an extent of order that you can put on life. It felt like he planned the solution to city planning but it didn’t feel like there was any way to adapt, it felt stagnant, which is the antithesis to progress.
However, I do recognize that the purpose of “The City of To-morrow” “was not to overcome the existing state of things, but by constructing a theoretically water-tight formula to arrive at the fundamental principles of modern town planning”. (Le Corbusier pg). I think he was successful in identifying the necessary principles of de-congesting city centers, augmenting their density, increasing the means for getting about, and increasing parks (Le Corbusier 170). I am just hesitant to fully get behind the plan that he laid out.
I felt like Gropius‘ “Scope of Total Architecture made more sense to me”, as in his thinking there was no “assuming an ideal site”, it was more of giving people the tools to identify, learn, and adapt to whatever challenges are thrown at them, it is based on the idea of learning and progress, which is what I think architecture is about, we are always striving to improve on what has been done, using the new technologies and ideas that are available to us.
I think this quote summarizes Gropius’ feelings about architecture and I very much agree with it. “I want [a young architect] independently to create true, genuine forms out of the technical, economic, and social conditions in which he finds himself instead of imposing a learned formula onto surroundings which may call for an entirely different solution. It is not so much a ready-made dogma that I want to teach, but an attitude toward the problems of our generation which is unbiased, original and elastic” (Gropius 3).
Gropius, Walter. Essay. In Scope of Total Architecture, xvii-19. London: Allen & Unwin, 1956.
Le Corbusier. “A Contemporary City of Three Million Inhabitants.” Essay. In The City of To-Morrow: and Its Planning, 164–77. London: Architectural Pr., 1947.