Question

Le Corbusier was fascinated by certain engineering objects. This interest was well expressed in his book Towards a new Architecture (1923) and well captured by his definition of house as “a machine for living in”. In a similar vein, Walter Gropius outlined the new orientation of his school as “the Bauhaus believes the machine to be our modern medium of design and seeks to come to terms with it.”

What do these two statements mean? What is the relation between ‘architecture’ and ‘machine’ as stated by these two architects? Explain your answer by using at least one building by Le Corbusier and one building by Walter Gropius.

Answer 1

the modern architect Le Corbusier's

The idea of architecture as machine was proposed by Le Corbusier particularly through his well-known statement ‘The house is a machine for living in.’ This phrase appeared in his writing Toward A New Architecture to illustrate his argument that architecture should be designed in a way that refers to the engineers’ working methods in problem solving and that it should be designed in accordance to standards. The idea that house should be designed following the same logic as the machine has led to the establishment of standardization in architecture, which Le Corbusier then also further extended into the standardization at the city scale. Le Corbusier's idea of machine by particularly examining how it could potentially depict the way architecture fulfills its functional purpose for human well-being.

The idea of machine was not exclusively proposed by Le Corbusier. Various works in architecture and other related disciplines has addressed both the abstract and concrete meanings of the machinic concepts, such as Guattari’s desiring machine and Daniel Libeskind’s reading, memory and writing machines . Some works took further the idea of machine in architecture through the concepts such as mechanics and appliances, such as Nicholson’s appliance house and Banham’s idea of house as an ensemble of mechanical gadgetry . These works suggest that the idea of machine involves the mechanisms of interface, complexity and causality, and therefore it provokes some critical ways of comprehending the relationship between elements involved in a system. Nevertheless these examples suggest the continuous attempts to think of architecture in a metaphoric way by referring to various properties associated with the machine.

Le Corbusier argued that the establishment of standard was a logical way to address the problem. Each of the requirements that were demanded in the Manual of the Dwelling illustrated an aspect of the dwelling space, and it was established for logical reasons and to address certain problems. The major problems identified by Le Corbusier, as he further explained, were primarily related to comfort and health. The demands for physical comfort constantly appeared in his works, especially in the established requirements for an open plan design which allowed for light and air to come through. It also appeared in the Manual of the Dwelling: ‘the house is only habitable when it is full of light and air.’ Such openness as spatial properties was then developed into what was called the form language of modern architecture: One of the more important attributes of modern architecture style was the freedom it gave architects to plan the interior areas of buildings without regard to the previous conventions… With the new style, architects could open whole wall surfaces to light and air. The introduction of modern materials that allowed for larger span of space also meant possibility to have more open space design, which was open to light and air that functioned to provide comfort for the inhabitants.

In the Twentieth Century, the American designer Ben Nicholson conceived and constructed the Appliance House, an experiment in the search for the ideal model of a mass-produced suburban home. Appliance House was an installation built to elaborate upon the tensions inherent in the modern domestic interior. It was never occupied, and it was not intended to function as a real dwelling, instead it was conceived as an experiment in which the conditions of occupancy could be analysed and then fabricated. In the book ‘Appliance House’ Nicholson suggested,

Le Corbusiers’ Modular Man was considered to be the harmonious measure of human scale, based on the mathematics of the human body, and a possible occupier of the ‘House Machine’, the Kleptoman is the disharmonious inhabitant of Appliance House. He is the scavenger of the city, accumulating unwanted objects, and applying them to his shelter. All of these objects are rescued from oblivion, and are then incorporated into the trophy room, the first room of Appliance House. This room is called ‘The Kleptoman Cell’, Appliance House was a unique experiment used for exploring some of the concerns in the creation and occupation of modern domestic space. In its short life it became both a concretization and also an inversion of some of the central ideologies of Modernist domestic design. It also offered an amusing narrative on the issues of occupancy, and also collecting, by creating a house that has been extensively reformed through the expression of a compulsive and intense habit.

Walter Gropius.

''the Bauhaus believes the machine to be our modern medium of design and seeks to come to terms with it.”

Summary of Walter Gropius

Not only was Walter Gropius one of the pioneers of modern architecture, he was the founder of the Bauhaus, a revolutionary art school in Germany. The Bauhaus replaced traditional teaching methods with a flexible artistic community, focusing on a collaborative approach to learning and the creation of integrated design projects. Later, the Bauhaus also incorporated mass production techniques into its output, designing objects and buildings for a wide audience. The school taught some of the most famous names in modernism as well as attracting established artists working within the fields. Despite its relatively short-lived existence, the Bauhaus and the design styles associated with it were hugely influential on a global scale, but particularly so in the United States where many of the artists moved before and during the Second World War to escape persecution by the Nazis.

This “model” or “experimental house” was built to satisfy all the needs of a citizen of the times and contains all the architectural principles of the Bauhaus: streamlined shapes (squares and rectangles), without any frills, and a structure that can be built with few resources and using novel materials. Inside, it had the most advanced technology of the time, like central heating and a laundry, and furniture made in the school’s workshops. This white cube was supposed to be the first of many which would house students and teachers, but these were never completed due to the school’s relocation.

MetLife Building, US

Plans for what is now the MetLife Building date to 1955, when Grand Central Terminal was proposed for demolition. Developer Erwin S. Wolfson proposed a 65-story tower called Grand Central City to replace the six-story baggage structure (which had by then become an office building) north of the terminal. He revised the plan in 1958, downsizing the tower to 50 stories. The tower would contain three movie theaters with a total capacity of 5,000; an open-air restaurant on the seventh floor; and a 2,000-spot parking garage. This plan was ultimately approved. In July 1958, it was announced that architects Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi, noted architects in the Modern style, would assist Richard Roth of Emery Roth and Sons in designing Grand Central City. The initial plans called for the tower to rise 708ft, with 2,703,112sqft of floor area.The building remains one of the city's most recognizable skyscrapers. Designed in the International style, the MetLife Building is mixed use commercial and office, with large floor plans, simple massing, and an absence of ornamentation inside and out. The octagon shape and window wall were intended by the architects to reduce the building's perceived sense of scale.