| 134 Architectural Theory Review LE CORBUSIER’S HORIZON: Technique and the Architectural Plan Antony Moutis In this paper the difference between an architect's idea or ‘vision’ and its production through the plan is examined in some detail, using the work of the architect Le Corbusier as exemplar. One of Le Corbusier's more persistent ideas concerned the use of architecture to frame the view to the borizon—an idea that is acknowledged as a key aspect of the architect's thinking. For Le Corbusier, the experience of viewing the horizon tookona heightened subjective quality compared to other kinds of viewing and it was clearly an experience to be exploited and manipulated in architectural terms. This paper begins with an extended discussion of Le Corbusier’ concept of the horizon, as described in the architect’s polemical writings, before dealing with the concept of the horizon a second time—as that concept which is constructed and mediated through techniques of the plan. Conceptualising the horizon In an anecdote presented in one of his 1929 South American lectures, Le Corbusier takes time to explain a seminal moment. He recalls an experience he had while walking along a French coastline. 4 Corbusier begins his account as if back in that moment, stating: “I am in Brittany; this line is the limit between the ocean and the sky; a vast horizontal plane extends towards me.”™ This line’ that Le Corbusier speaks of the horizon line, a line denoting the boundary of that part ofthe earth's surface visible from his given viewpoint. And yet it soon becomes obvious, from Le Corbusier's unfolding description, that seeing the horizon is not to just mildly observe it. The architect continues his walk and is startled by a new experience: Suddenly I stopped. Between my eyes and the horizon a sensational event has occurred: a vertical rock, in granite, is there, upright, like a menbir: its vertical makes aright angle with the horizon. Crystallisation fixation of the site. This is a place to stop, because here is a complete symphony, magnificent relationships, nobility. The vertical gives the meaning ofthe horizontal. One is live because of the other. Such are the powers of synthesis *135 Vol. 8 No. 2, 2003 On the basis of this ‘event’ the horizon seems present in an instantaneous and direct moment of experience. The meeting of the horizon with the vertical, signified by the rock, determines the site, thatis, it fixes the relation of things in the view. That this moment occurs in nature gives it the sense of being original and seminal, at least for Le Corbusier. He tums this moment into a drawing made of twollinesforminga cross, whichis published lateralong with the Precisions lectures: This experienced ‘moment, which he refers toas the “point of al dimensions,” appears to be more than a mere accident orhappenstance. Above al, itis an experience with an orchestrated or symphonic quality,and certainly a transcendent one. The architect, in his preceding remarks in the lecture, calls it ‘sublime. * In relating this story to his audience, Le Corbusier is, of course, speaking as an architect who casts himself in the role of the conductor; the producer of symphonic effects through his projects. Thus, he weighs up this experience for his audience carefully and decides that it is absolutely architectural in its implications; particulary for the projects that he makes. He writes again of this experience: Here 1am on the way tosearch for greater architectural truths. perceive that the project weare designingis neitheralone norisolated; theairaround itconstitutes othessurfaces,othergrounds, other ceilings, that the harmony that stops me dead in Brittany exists, can exist, everywhere else, always, A project is not made only of ielf: its surroundings exist. The surroundings envelop me in their totality as in a oom Le Corbusier describes a moment in which architecture takes into account every possible surface. The entirety of the site to the horizon has the quality ofa ‘room,’ a quintessential architectural space. What the architect puts forward in relating his experience at Brittany is a particular lesson about the visual and spatial limits which are of concern toarchitecture. What can be made of this lesson? That a building positioned within a larger site is self-evidently addressed to everything that is seen within that larger site seemsa problematic suggestion. And yet, we could imagine Le Corbusier trying to orchestrate that possibility of seeing for those who would occupy his architecture: to have them perceivea relationship betwen the building and the surrounding space all the way to the horizon. Le Corbusier's interest in visual and spatial concepts for his architecture is, of course, well known and it is not proposed to represent those claims here further. However, what will be given particular attemtion is the manner in which vision and space are tied up, in particular ways, with the architect's conception of the horizon. In The Home of Man, published in 1948, Le Corbusier announced what he called a ‘new scale’ in architecture: a scale which implied the need to properly resolve the relation between built forms and the surrounding landscape. The principal requirement of the ‘new scale’ was the revealing of the horizon to the occupants of towns. Le Corbusier used a pair of drawings to illustrate his proposal The first drawing offers a critique of conventional urban space form arrangements, showing a figure standing between two terrace house buildings in a street space as if trappedbetween them ina meagre136 Architectural Theory Review space. The second drawing offers a counter proposal. Here a figure stands in an open and continuous landscape space rather than being trapped between built forms, To one side of the figure isa single, Jarger slab block on pilotis. In his commentary Le Corbusier berates those forms of development that favour the first illustrated scale relationship over the latter. The architect is also particular when he comes to describe the relationship between landscape and built form that his proposed type of, development will allow. He writes: Nature lived before the town arose; the town chased her away, filing her place with stones, with bricks and with asphalt. In nature were present rolling perspectives, moving horizons, mountains, the sea, streams and rivers. The towns have set up, in sixty foot ranks, one before the other, the obscuring screens ofits houses, ‘Trees stood and meadows spread here; they have been built underfoot. The horizon must be redisclosed.® ‘The new scale of architecture, incorporating the re-disclosure of the horizon, is not simply about the appropriateness of built form, itis also related to vision and the extent of vision. Architecture, it seems, must account for everything at this new scale: everything to the limit of what itis possible to see from any occupiable built form (that is, to unlimited ‘rolling perspectives’ and ‘moving horizons’). But more than this, seeing must contend with obstacles. In this sense vision is characterised as waging a battle with the kinds of limits that would mask an unlimited vision, in particular, towns with ‘the obscuring screens of its houses,’ that get in the way of what one might naturally see. In the terms of Le Corbusier's rhetoric about the relation between architecture, town planning and landscape, it would seem that architecture holds the key, because it is through architecture that one could ‘return’ an unimpeded sight of an original landscape, signified by the view to the horizon, Recovering this sight which had been ‘lost’ not only affects the proper positioning of buildings it also bears upon the well-being of building occupants who naturally ‘desire’ or ‘long for’ such a view. Accordingly, the relation of the occupant to the horizon is not simply visual, there is also an implied ‘emotional or experiential relation, and itis this type of relation that is taken up in other commentaries by Le Corbusier. For instance, in his commentary on the design of the monastery at La Tourette (1953-57), Le Corbusier reveals that the horizon was a particular concern for the architecture. Where he comments on his design for the project, he begins by reporting that on an initial visit to the site he had “sketched the road and the horizon.”” He then continues discussion of his design as follows:132 Vol. 8 No. 2, 2003 Fora moment | thought of putting the cloister up there [with the horizon line]. But, I said, if] put it up there it will be so beautiful that the friars will make an escape of it, pethaps perilous to their religious life... the delights of thesky and the clouds are perhaps too easy. You may go there from time to time, you might be allowed to climb the ladder on to the roof, itis privilege that shall be granted to those who have been wise This type of thinking about the horizon is, of course, reflected in the form and organization of the building, The monastery’s subterranean spaces and ‘bling’ central courtyard largely keep the long broad views available from the site at bay—views that are only entirely ‘open’ from the roof terrace. In Le Corbusier's thinking, then, isthe idea that the horizon provides subjective experiences that can be exploited or held in check by the organisation of architecture, According to the architect, there is a need to treat visual access to the horizon carefully, lest the stimulating qualities of the horizon become dull for being over-abundant, Here the experience of the horizon is thought of as a more complex phenomena than a purely a visual one, and the way of canceptualising such a sight has a critical bearing on Le Corbusier's architectural decision making. And yet how might we witness the architect moving from his concept of the horizon, described through his writings and images, to the guarantee of that concept for his architecture? If Le Corbusier proposes that the visual limits of concern to architecture include the space to the horizon, and that this sight has its own particular experiential qualities, then his task in making buildings would at least include the task of highlighting the horizon from the point of view of those who would occupy his buildings, However, such a simple conclusion belies the specificity of the task faced by architects, particularly when we acknowledge how they work directly with drawings, rather than with the buildings, for the purpose of their practice. In this sense, architectural drawing must itself be an entirely efficacious site of production, allowing architects the opportunity to form and exemplify their chosen concepts in drawing in relatively unambiguous terms. As Robin Evans reminds us, architects must rely on drawing, asa medium of translation, despite their reservations concerning the effects of such a process. In the discourse of design, efficacy must be established and this is achieved differently in the various modes of drawing~plans, sections, elevations—and in the way that those modes are conceptualised in their use. Thus the modes of drawing have a range of instrumental effects in design practice—not only in relation to the basic concerns of orthographic form but also in relation to concepts that are allied co forms—and Le Corbusier's concept of the horizon can be accounted for in one of these modes, namely, in the plan. Constructing the Horizon The project to be discussed in some detail, The Museum of Unlimited Extension (1935), is one ofa set of projects known as the spiral museums, which Le Corbusier and bis studio worked on between 1929 and 1965. The 1939 museum comes after a decade of research by the architect into this ‘prototype,’ in which a sxace spiral formis used a. plan. Interestingly, itis project that features two kinds of plan form used.inXt Architectural Theory Review combination—the spiral ormand theswastika form. This combination of plan formshad been tried in prior spiral schemes." However, itis in the Museum of Unlimited Extension plan that these plan forms are finally crystallised in their arrangement. While this particular project never becomes a realised building, it isa project that has much to reveal about the operations of technique within drawing (and at the level of design practice) From Le Corbusier’s commentary on the project in the Oewure Complete it is clear that the role of the spiral arrangement of the planis specifically o orchestrate the museum. visitor's experience. This is indicated where at he states that, “the square spiral... makes Figure 1. Museum of Unlimited Extension, model, aerial for a discontinuity in the flow of circulation, view. (Le Corbusier, Oeuvre Complete 1938-1946, p.21) extremely favourable for attracting the ‘©Fondation Le Corbusier required attention from the visitors.”"' How is it that the plan works in this regard? For the architect to think of his chosen plan form as a means to guarantee the attentiveness of the museum visitors, he is presumably reflecting on the fact that his plan organises a particular kind of movement for the museum visitors and that this movement then produces certain affects. Thus, if visitors follow the square spiral then they would experience a halted and slow movement around the central hall and it is perhaps this slow halting movement that makes the circulation ‘discontinuous’ and encourages visitors to slow down and concentrate on the displays. Andyer, Le Corbusier's orchestration of movement in the plan goes beyond this particular affect. There are other formations in the plan, which appear as amendments to the spiral form, that also aid the visitors’ experience according to the architect and his commentary continues as follows: .. the means of orienting one's self in the museum is provided by the rooms at half-height which forma ‘swastika’; every time visitor, in the course of his wanderings, finds himself under a lowered ceiling he will see, on one side, an exit to the garden, and on the opposite side, the way to the central hall? ‘The form of the swastika, as the architect calls it, is in fact a grouping of four axes that run out from the central hall to the museum edge across the rings of the square spiral plan, These axes are not simply geomettic prescriptions ofthe plan, ust lines, they are designed, like the spiral itself, so that visitors might appropriate experience from them, In this sense, the axes are activated when the visitor is locared.on aline between two aligned views; one to the centre (the entry hall) and one to the edge ; (the garden beyond). 5 oO1 Vol. 8 No. 2, 2003 Beyond the type of affects already described are affects that are produced by the plan forms read én combination with each other. Firstly, we can note how the combination of plan forms would institute an obvious play with the horizon from the point of view of museum visitors. When visitors are positioned in the space set out by the spiral form, they are freetoconcentrateonthe isplaysthatareclosearound them. ‘When visitors are positioned in the space set out by the axial form, they experience the extension of space to the horizon (the garden) and its connection to the ‘origin’ of space in the interior the central all. More than this play (considered as Fig.2, Museum of Unlimited Extension, a simple act of viewing) is the possibility of more complex Plan diagram showing overlay of spiral affects for experience, in that the combination of plan forms and swastika forms. (by author) not only orchestrates the view to the horizon, but also the desire to find it. Reading such desite from the plan can be inferred where Le Corbusier himself recognises the role that his axes play in dealing with a problem attributed to the spiral form. This problem (according to the architect is that his square spiral plan might create a Yabyrinth."® ‘The square spiral, used asa plan hereis, indeed, akind of labyrinth—thatis, a unicursal one, consisting ofasingle line that coils around itselfagain and again—anditis clear that sucha plan denotesa particular kind of experience, Penelope Doob suggests that the impact of labyrinthine space is twofold: firstly, the process of movement through the labyrinth sets up real or imagined inextricability and, secondly, the journey itself forms a “path of ignorance.” Thus, the labyrinth sets out a “difficult but necessary process... that may lead to knowledge, transcendence, [or] extrication.”" In that subjective process there is a particular kind of relation between the possibility of transcendence and its lack within labyrinthine space which has debilitating effects for the maze-walker. The aim of the labyrinthine plan might be to confuse but this is done in order to prepare the maze-walker, and make them expectant of, transcendence or extrication." Looking back at Le Corbusier's scheme for the museum, and taking into account this aspect of labyrinthine form, there is a key for understanding the particular subjective relation to the horizon described by the architect. The square spiral form is essential for constituting this relation because it sets up difficult and blinding process for the visitor within the space of the museum. As a result the square spiral form is the means of producing the sense that something is being obscured or withheld from sight. Indeed, looking at the plan, itis evident that the sense that something is being obscured increases as the route described by the spiral unfolds, for each leg of the journey is slightly longer than the last. As the space unravels, there are fewer and fewer turns for the distance travelled. Fewer tums and, it would seem, no end; just a space which is baffling because it appears endless. And yetwo Architectural Theory Review at the same time, this internment (this subjection to endless wandering in a space) facilitates a desire for transcendence (of some kind of escape). Itis the possibility of transcendence which preys heavily upon those caught in labyrinth. It accompanies them on every turn of their blind wanderings. While the square spiral plan form creates a sense of wandering (and concomitantly) the desire for transcendence from wandering; it is the axial plan form that ‘satisfies’ this desire, intermittently, by forminglong views out ofthe spaceofthe spiral. The wished for transcendence fromfabytinthinespace is given in @ look that takes in the fullest extent of space from the interior to the horizon, Here, the long axial views out ofthe labyrinthine space are like the view mentioned earlier from Le Corbusier’s commentaries: the view that fixes the relationship of elements in the viewinan ‘instantaneous’ moment of experience, ‘crystallising’ the site from an embodied viewpoint. Inschematicterms, then, the building represented in the drawing isa machine for producing complex experiential affects, Thus, itis not simply that the organisation ofthe building makes the line of the horizon appear and disappear as the visitor moves from the axial space to the spiraling space. It also the case that the organisation of that movement could make the sight of the horizon desirous and compelling, by shifting the visitor from labyrinthine enclosure to extensive axial prospect. Notice how after the serial set of views offered on the first coil of the square spiral the visitor i offered blind tums as they progress through the museum. If we imagine the museum’s ‘yalimited extension’ then the process would become more difficult as the moments of transcendence in sighting the horizon become less frequent: less frequent perhaps, but more sought after or more greatly desired. All the while, however, this desire is subtly formed in that it relies on the idea that the subject's desire to find the view is self-formed, that this desire comes from ‘within’ them. Accordingly, the desire to find the horizon, which the architect naturalises in his commentaries, is not, here, a desire that the notional visitors come ‘already’ armed with (or atleast the architecture does not assume that to be the case). Ratherthat desire is determined forthe visitors by the architect's careful and considered manipulation of the museum's plan forms. Conceptualising the Plan Beatriz Colomina states with great clarity the paradox of Modernist concerns for the occupant of architecture when she writes as follows: —— Architecture is not simply a platform that accommodates the viewing subject. It is a viewing mechanism that produces the subject. It precedes and frames the occupant.” While architecture produces its subject, as Colomina suggests, we might go further, in the case of the Museum of Unlimited Extension project, to say that itis the plan that is given the critical role in that production. However, the role of the plan needs to be seen differently from its reading in conventional Modemist terms, where the plan is read in relation to function and organic analogies as “organ141 Vol. 8 No. 2, 2003 a free and contingent entity. Here the plan has been shown to operate in another way, as an assembly of prescribed forms deployed and understood in terms ofthe types of instrumental effets they might produce. In Le Corbusier's use of both these plan forms is a technique based on the concept that the vertical/visual field ofthe subject is mediated through the plan. In the case of Le Corbusier’s work, this concept reverses the conventional or rhetorical formula of his work: that experience is constructed, in and for, the vertical/visual field. This point can be highlighted by referring back to the architect's commentary on the experience of the horizon (quoted at the beginning of this paper) where the architect states that the vertical gives the meaning of the horizontal. The vertical, in this case, is the visual embodied viewpoint and the horizontal is the formation of space around that viewpoint. In Le Corbusier's polemical formulation of this idea, itis the former that gives the meaning of the latter, and this privileging of vision over the plan is given weight by the conventional reading of the relation of ‘free plan’ to ‘promenade.’ However, on the basis of reading the 1939 spiral museum project and its plan forms this formula for awarding privilege to visionis reversed twice over. Once for the architect, who pictures the possibilities of the vertical/visual field in the way that he uses and conceptualises the horizontal (as the ‘mastery’ of the total arrangement of space in the plan) and, secondly, for the subject of architecture, whose heightened awareness of their visual field is mediated by the constraints and patterning of the plan. ‘Thus, via this technique, i is the horizontal that gives the meaning of the vertical. The relatively obscure and formalist project discussed here is clearly something of a curiosity in Le Corbusier's oewwre, seemingly at odds with the architect's reputation as the maker par excellence of plastic forms. And yet the aim of this paper in discussing the project has not been to make some broad revisionist claim about Le Corbusier as a formalist, Rather, the task of this paper, in working carefully over an architectural concept and its production, has been somewhat subtler, namely, to highlight specific uses of the plan in the discourse of design practice. Emphasis has been given to the consideration of the plan as technique—where technique is understood to describe the types of alliances architects make between their forms and architectural concepts in the act of design. Morebroadly, this discussion has meant tosuggest ways forre-conceptualising the planunder Modemism towards consideration of the deployment of forms in their composition and effects and away from broad functional and organic analogies. At face value such a suggestion is hardly new but it is made with a particular aim in mind—to deepen an understanding of architectural Modernism by revealing the operational modes of architectural concepts in design practice and not simply by rehearsing the broad rhetorical claims made in justifying those concepts. ‘Thus, in this paper, a deliberate attempt ‘has been made to separate affects of subjectivity (understood through an architect’s commentaries) from the production of those affects in design in order to appreciate the differences and exchanges between them. From the point of view of architectural theory, the aim has been to acknowledge the position of architects in relation to their work as critical to the discourse of design practice. This acknowledgement seeks to make sense of the architect's role as a designer/technician operating on4 Architectural Theory Review paper—with marks, lines and projections—not only for the purpose of picturing the building they design but also as a means to confirm the various concepts and affects intended for it. Notes 1 Le Corbusier, Precisions: On the Present State of Architecture and City Planning, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991, p. 75. Le Corbusier, Prectsions, p. 75. Le Corbusier, Precisions, p76, Le Corbusier, Precisions, p.75. Le Corbusier, Precisions, p. 77 Le Corbusier and F. Pierrefeu, The Home of Man, London: Architectural Press, 1948, p. 86 Cowvent Le Corbusier: guide du visiteur (English translation), p. 7 [no publishing details/purchased on site) Couvent Le Corbusier: guide du visiteur, p. 8. See Robin Evans, “Translations from Drawing ro Building,” in Translations from Dratving to Building and Other Essays, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press 1997, pp. 158-194. For instance, iti evident in the overlay of axially organised stairs on the spical plan of the World Museum (1928). Iv also evident ina sketch plan for the Bata Exposition pavilion (1935) and lates in the project for a Centre of Contemporary Design (1936). Le Corbusier, Oewure Complete 1938-1946, London: Thames & Hudson, 1964. p.16 Le Corbusier, Oewire Complete 1938-1946, p.16, 3 Le Corbusier, Oewwre Complete 1938-1946,. p16. 4 Penelope Doob, The idea ofthe Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990 p.56. Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth, p. 58. 18 Doob, The idea of the Labyrinth, p. 56. 1 Beatriz Colomina, “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism,” in Beatriz Colomina (ed), Sexuality and Space, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992, p. 83. 0 "