Meanings of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye

Wong Weng Yew, Joshua

1 IntroductionLe Corbusier’s Villa Savoye was a building commissioned by the Savoye family, completedin the early twentieth century,¹ and located in Poissy, near Paris. One cannot deny thatthe building is of importance to the development of ideas in architecture and also its statusas an iconic purist milestone, in particular, of modernist architectural ideas.² In this essay,instead of attempting to explain how exactly do the architectural principles of Le Corbusierplay out tangibly in the design and construction of the Villa Savoye,³ we focus on the lesstangible aspects of the building with respect to the many meanings constructed for it andon how do these differing interpretations of the building in uence us and the way in whichwe perceive the building and its symbolic meaning in history.

We explore the origins of the villa and see in what way did Le Corbusier mean it tobe more than a place for living. e idea of “a machine of living” needs clari cation, andthere have been attempts to link the building’s meaning to the architect’s own psyche. Wesurvey the place and meaning assigned to the building in architecture and national history,referencing the myriad ways in which the meaning of the building was an outcome of pro-cesses that, while directed by the architect himself, was also inextricably linked to a creationnarrative of a historic monument involving various players interacting with the spirit of theage.

1. Constructed within a year, beginning in April 1929, the Villa was nonetheless not t for living in until1931. See “Le Corbusier, Giedion, and the Villa Savoye: From Consecration to Preservation of Architecture.”Also, there is evidence that despite the Villa being a place of residence, Le Corbusier did not really care aboutit being habitable. In a letter dated 6 September 1936, Madame Savoye complained to the architect that “It’sraining in the hall, it’s raining in the ramp, and the wall of the garage is absolutely soaked. What’s more,it’s still raining in my bathroom, which oods every time it rains.” See Tim Benton, “Villa Savoye and theArchitects’ Practice,” in Le Corbusier, ed. H. Allen Brooks, Reyner. Banham, and Le Corbusier (Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), xix

2. Le Corbusier, “Five points of a new architecture” (1975) is the document Corbusier wrote as he tookon the role of rule-making for modern architecture on himself. ese principles–pilotis, free plan, free façade,at roof, and ribbon windows were all evident in the design of the Villa Savoye.

3. But Figure 5 gives a plan of the building as well as a picture of the interior.

1

We suggest that the study of the development of the Villa Savoye into its iconic statustoday represents a principle of idea development and preservation that runs through archi-tecture history, and it is in this sense in which this study contributes to the debate over theutility of the doctrinal tradition of architecture.⁴

1.1 A short history of the Villa Savoye

e Villa Savoye was built and completed by 1930. By May 1940, the owners, fed up withthe various physical defects of the building and constant leaking from the roof, decided toabandon the building for good. e Second World War saw the dereliction of the build-ing⁵ under successive German and American forces⁶ and was in very bad condition by the1950s. e development of Poissy prompted the appropriate of the building by the Mayorof Poissy in 1956 as the site of a new secondary school for 1,271,875 francs. As a result,the building was altered in many signi cant ways.⁷ Mme Savoye, upon the appropriationof her property conveyed the news to the architect, who immediately sent out telegrams fornancial assistance to save the Villa Savoye. While Le Corbusier intended the building to

function as a “research center focusing on ‘the development of Western architecture fromAntiquity to the present by routes other than the academic ones”’, the collective actions ofthose whom the architect sought help from eventually led to the Villa Savoye being the rstbuilding of modern architecture listed as monument historique in France.⁸

2 A VillaIn “e Villa as Paradigm”⁹ Ackerman attempts to articulate the meaning or paradigm thatthe “Villa” represents. In contrast to other building types, he argues that the villa is notsubject to as much to architectural rules as much as it should be a re ection of the uniquestatus of the individual in the city. e villa, ful lling the psychological and ideological needsof the owners, is distinct in its meaning and thus the paradigm of the villa is unchanging.According to Ackerman, “two contrasting models [of the villa] were rmly established inRoman times: the condensed-cubic and the open-extended”, and it is within this tradition

4. e rst architectural treatise written, P. Vitruvius, e ten books on architecture. Translated by MorrisHicky Morgan (Dover Publications Inc, New York, NY, 1960) was essentially a rulebook: prescribing theright ways to build civil buildings or temples, or the correct proportions for different kinds of columns.

5. See Figure 8 showing masonry deterioration of the building.6. “e former poured concrete down the toilets when they left; when the Americans arrived they shot

bullets through the windows.” Quote from Kevin D. Murphy, “e Villa Savoye and the Modernist HistoricMonument,” e Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 61, no. 1 (2002): 68–89

7. See Figure 7 for the new walls that Le Corbusier highlighted in sketches to the Ministry of Culture.8. It was the second building of the twentieth century listed, after the eatre des Champs Elysées.9. James Ackerman, “e Villa as Paradigm,” Perspecta 22 (1986): 10–31.

2

that Le Corbusier attempts to connect his design of the villa to.¹⁰Le Corbusier, writing to a client states:

e inhabitants come here because this rustic landscape goes well with countrylife. ey survey their whole domain from the height of their jardin suspendu orfrom the four aspects of their fenêtres en longeur. eir domestic life is insertedinto a Vergilian Dream.¹¹

e reference to the client’s whole domain is interesting as it re ects the privileged posi-tion of the owner in society, and Le Corbusier, by appealing to the need of the Savoye familyfor distinction, further creates a reason for the Villa to be built. We also see the allusion toclassical Greek mythology further cementing the wish of Le Corbusier to place his designwithin the greater scheme of architecture history and progress.

us we can see that the architect, in espousing his new “Five points of a new architec-ture,” wanted his building to be seen as a modernist interpretation of age-old principles ofvilla design.

3 e Hidden Meanings of the VillaIn “Le Corbusier and the Problems of Representation”,¹² Carranza develops the thesis thatLe Corbusier subconsciously maintained an aversion to women that can be seen by carefulpsychoanalysis of his works. A large part of the evidence presented relies on Le Corbusier’sartwork, architecture and photography of his architecture. In particular, the resources for thelatter two representations of his works derive mainly from the design and his photographsof the Villa Savoye.

e author argues that the Villa Savoye, construed as a “machine for living”¹³ by LeCorbusier should be viewed within the constructs of feminism as a sharp representation ofthe active nature of the male in contrast to the passive role of the female. For example,by representing the machine as the “generating element”¹⁴ in his building, Le Corbusierassigned a “gendered distinction” to the building.

To further the thesis that Le Corbusier maintained a dislike to women, the author usedextensive use of the artwork and photography of Le Corbusier, particularly the photos of

10. See Figure 6 for a view of the building from the exterior.11. Ackerman, “e Villa as Paradigm.”12. Luis E. Carranza, “Le Corbusier and the Problems of Representation,” Journal of Architectural Education

(1984-) 48, no. 2 (1994): 70–81.13. Le Corbusier, in Essential Le Corbusier : L’esprit nouveau articles, meant in more literal terms that the

house should be conceived as a machine to aid in the regular actions of life: “…the use of the house consistsof a regular sequence of de nite functions. e regular sequence of these functions is a traffic phenomenon.To render that traffic exact, economical and rapid is the key effort of modern architectural science.”

14. e “curvilinear shape on the ground level of the Villa Savoye …was obtained as a result of the maximumturning of a car” ibid.

3

the interior of the Villa Savoye. Figure 1 for example shows a masculinized woman and herexaggerated breasts depicting the refusal or inability of Le Corbusier to accept the feminineform. Figures 2 and 3, pictures taken by Le Corbusier of the kitchens of the Villa Savoyeand the Villa at Garches respectively are analyzed closely and the objects in these picturesindividually¹⁵ and collectively represent the control of man over women.

As a purely architectural analysis of the Villa Savoye, the author fails to portray a fullyconvincing narrative of the hidden meaning of the building. While there was mention ofthe architectural promenade in the Villa Savoye being an “element that serves to objectifywomen as she traverses space”,¹⁶ the author at no point makes explicit what exactly does hemean with respect to the actual architectural space of the building. Instead, the only form ofevidence presented is in the form of photographs and artwork interpreted under subjectiveterms and repudiated Freudian theory¹⁷ which severely undermines the conclusion of theauthor.

Nonetheless, this paper has the merit of pointing out the psychological factors affectingthe architect and further research should widen the perspective of the motives and meaningsthat Le Corbusier attached to his building beyond his modernist ideals and sense of self im-portance. Critically, we suggest further research into the meanings that speci c architecturalspaces in the building convey, and attempt to tie it in with the psychological motives of thearchitect.

4 Architecture and Historical Meaning

4.1 e Script of the Meaning of the Villa Savoye

In “Le Corbusier, Giedion, and the Villa Savoye: From Consecration to Preservation ofArchitecture”,¹⁸ the author argues for how a holistic look at the various words (written forand about the building) and photographs, which together form the script for the history of

15. For example, the teapot, the author tells us, “can be said to represent the phallus through the shape andplacement of the nozzle”, while the sh, according to Freud, is a standard metaphor for the male organ. Eventhe open door and fan have a speci c meaning: the door signi es the passage of man through space, or the“female genital ori ce …which can only be opened by the male keys”, while the fan as a machine represents“an element of activity and represents man”. In Figure 4 the woman is similarly objecti ed under the gaze ofthe privileged male viewer and is subjected to the voyeuristic power of the male. Carranza, “Le Corbusier andthe Problems of Representation”

16. Ibid.17. See Malcolm MacMillan, Freud evaluated the completed arc (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997) for a

comprehensive critique.18. Panayotis Tournikiotis and Geoffrey Cox, “Le Corbusier, Giedion, and the Villa Savoye: From Conse-

cration to Preservation of Architecture” [in English], PD: Bibliographic footnotes; Illustration; Portrait; WRK:Le Corbusier et l’architecture contemporaine [Essay]: Giedion, Sigfried, Future Anterior 4, no. 2 (2007): XII,1–11.

4

modern architecture, is the germane way to regard the symbol of the Villa Savoye as “anarchitectural symbol of the modern movement.”¹⁹

e story picks off after Le Corbusier sends off his telegrams to his friends. One ofthem, Siegfried Giedion,²⁰ was then a professor at Harvard University, and Le Corbusierwas counting on him to amass funds from American institutions to repurchase the VillaSavoye. is was ultimately unnecessary because the building was accorded the status of ahistoric monument, thanks to the many letters that were sent from all over the world to theFrench State minister André Malraux, in large part to the credit of Giedion’s efforts.

Admittedly, the author’s aim is not to provide a working full theory of how the variousletters and communications and support of Le Corbusier’s friends in actual fact constitutea script which we can accept as being fundamentally part of the symbol of the Villa Savoye.However, what the author does is show in very factual terms how we cannot neglect theimportance of how the international movement contributed to the perceived importance ofpreserving the Villa Savoye. In this sense, the evidence presented and the detailed chronol-ogy of this paper is a valuable adjunct to the arguments of the next paper that we shallconsider.

4.2 French National Ideals

André Malraux²¹ has been claimed to have “saved” the Villa Savoye,²² and while it is true thathis cultural policy of preserving key canonical works was instrumental in the preservation ofthe Villa Savoye, Murphy in “e Villa Savoye and the Modernist Historic Monument”²³considers other players and factors that played a decisive role in the preservation of the VillaSavoye.²⁴

Is it possible that the defense of the Villa Savoye can be equated directly with the de-fense of the French nation itself? Murphy claims that Paul Nelson, architect, made thisstriking argument. By asserting that France was the source of modernist architecture, andcontending that the Villa Savoye represented directly the “centrality of France to the ModernMovement”,²⁵ Nelson argued for the preservation of the building as a “historic monument”.

19. See Figures 9 and 10 for a sample of what the author considered to be part of this script.20. A Swiss from Zurich, Giedion was the secretary of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture,

of which Le Corbusier was the principal founder.21. France’s rst Minister of Cultural Affairs from 1959 to 1969.22. Tim Benton, “Historic architecture: Le Corbusier: Villa Savoye, monument of the modern movement

at Poissy” [in English], RW: Benton, Tim. Architectural digest 43, no. 5 (1986): 182–187,232.23. Murphy, “e Villa Savoye and the Modernist Historic Monument.”24. In a similar vein invoking French history, the architectural history scholar Nikolas Pevsner, in “Time and

Le Corbusier” also argues that the Villa Savoye was transformed into a site where international visitors wouldvisit to see the maturation and expression of modern architecture just as the medieval churches in France hadbeen transformed into places of cultural and religious pilgrimage.

25. Ibid.

5

is argument is novel in two ways. First, it claimed historic signi cance for a con-temporary building, which shows how the Modernist Movement has already been acceptedas some to have come and past to form part of history. More interestingly, the nation-alistic argument suggests, as Murphy argues, “that the Villa Savoye was incorporated intoa nationalist understanding of the architectural patrimony that equated the destruction ofbuildings that possessed no real functional importance for the national government withpolitical threats to the state”.²⁶ e meaning of the Villa Savoye was subsumed under andmade bigger because of the overarching ideals of French nationalism.

5 Progress of architectural ideasAs noted earlier, the Villa Savoye was seen even during the lifetime of Le Corbusier as abuilding important enough to be preserved as part of a historic and yet modern movement.e many ways in which scholars have attempted to ascribe, interpret and explain the mean-ing of the Villa Savoye suggest the wide degree of latitude of conditions under which thisbuilding can be construed. is suggests that further research be done to unify these differ-ent perspectives under a more general theory.

e wishes of Le Corbusier to link his building to architectural traditions and his ferventattempts to preserve it together with the artistic, architectural and cultural collective impetusto wish that the building was preserved suggest a fundamental principle of idea preservationand linkage of architectural innovations to previous traditions. In this sense, the mean-ing of the preservation of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye is not merely in its importance as abuilding and an exposition of the architect’s ideals, but more signi cantly in its representa-tive symbolism of the Modern Movement and the place of this movement in architecturalhistory.

26. Murphy, “e Villa Savoye and the Modernist Historic Monument.”

6

ReferencesAckerman, James. “e Villa as Paradigm.” Perspecta 22 (1986): 10–31.

Benton, Tim. “Historic architecture: Le Corbusier: Villa Savoye, monument of the mod-ern movement at Poissy” [in English]. RW: Benton, Tim. Architectural digest 43, no. 5(1986): 182–187,232.

———. “Villa Savoye and the Architects’ Practice.” In Le Corbusier, edited by H. AllenBrooks, Reyner. Banham, and Le Corbusier, xix. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UniversityPress, 1987.

Carranza, Luis E. “Le Corbusier and the Problems of Representation.” Journal of Architec-tural Education (1984-) 48, no. 2 (1994): 70–81.

Corbusier, Le. Essential Le Corbusier : L’esprit nouveau articles. Oxford; Boston: ArchitecturalPress, 1998.

———. “Five points of a new architecture” (1975).

MacMillan, Malcolm. Freud evaluated the completed arc. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1997.

Murphy, Kevin D. “e Villa Savoye and the Modernist Historic Monument.” e Journalof the Society of Architectural Historians 61, no. 1 (2002): 68–89.

Pevsner, Sir, Nikolaus. “Time and Le Corbusier” [in English]. RW: Pevsner, Nikolaus. Ar-chitectural review 125 (1959): 159–165.

Tournikiotis, Panayotis, and Geoffrey Cox. “Le Corbusier, Giedion, and the Villa Savoye:From Consecration to Preservation of Architecture” [in English]. PD: Bibliographicfootnotes; Illustration; Portrait; WRK: Le Corbusier et l’architecture contemporaine[Essay]: Giedion, Sigfried, Future Anterior 4, no. 2 (2007): XII, 1–11.

Vitruvius, P. e ten books on architecture. Translated by Morris Hicky Morgan. Dover Publi-cations Inc, New York, NY, 1960.

7

List of Figures1 Le Corbusier, Nude Female, 1931. Copyright 1995 Artists Rights Society

(ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Kitchen of the Villa Savoye, from L’Architecture Vivante (Editions Albert

Morance, 1931). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEMParis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3 Kitchen of the Villa at Garches, from L ’Architecture Vivante (Editions Al-bert Morance, 1929). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEMParis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

4 Exterior of the Immeuble Clarté, from L’Architecture Vivante (Editions Al-bert Morance, 1930). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEMParis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

5 Villa Savoye, from Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (1941) 136 G. E. Kidder Smith, photograph of Villa Savoye, published in Historic

Preservation 11 (1959) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier drawing showing new walls shaded in red, 2

April 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Villa Savoye, photo by Jean-Yves Le Guyader showing masonry deterioration 169 e rst page of the letter sent by Giedlon to Le Corbusier on March 5,

1959 (FLC H1-12-187). Copyright Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. . . . . 1710 e Villa Savoye as photographed by Jullian on April 30, 1960, before any

preservation work (FLC L2-17-136). A comparison of these photographswith those of the Cahiers d’Art of 1930 reveals a remarkable resemblance.Photograph copyright Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris. . . . . . . . . . . . 18

8

A Figures

Figure 1: Le Corbusier, Nude Female, 1931. Copyright 1995 Artists Rights Society (ARS)N.Y./SPADEM Paris.

9

Figure 2: Kitchen of the Villa Savoye, from L’Architecture Vivante (Editions AlbertMorance, 1931). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris.

10

Figure 3: Kitchen of the Villa at Garches, from L ’Architecture Vivante (Editions AlbertMorance, 1929). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris.

11

Figure 4: Exterior of the Immeuble Clarté, from L’Architecture Vivante (Editions AlbertMorance, 1930). Copyright 1994 Artists Rights Society (ARS) N.Y./SPADEM Paris.

12

Figure 5: Villa Savoye, from Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (1941)

13

Figure 6: G. E. Kidder Smith, photograph of Villa Savoye, published in Historic Preserva-tion 11 (1959)

14

Figure 7: Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier drawing showing new walls shaded in red, 2 April 1960

15

Figure 8: Villa Savoye, photo by Jean-Yves Le Guyader showing masonry deterioration

16

Figure 9: e rst page of the letter sent by Giedlon to Le Corbusier on March 5, 1959(FLC H1-12-187). Copyright Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris.

17

Figure 10: e Villa Savoye as photographed by Jullian on April 30, 1960, before anypreservation work (FLC L2-17-136). A comparison of these photographs with those of theCahiers d’Art of 1930 reveals a remarkable resemblance. Photograph copyright FondationLe Corbusier, Paris.

18