The Walls of Le Corbusier

walls were not merely structural supports For Le Corbusier but movable partitions that can decisively transform spaces.

He believed that a wall must not interfere with what is placed in front, making ornaments and any form of decorative treatments unnecessary. For the architect, they were nothing but deceptions to coverup the scars and that they would diminish the presence of objects in space. As a result, Le Corbusier's walls are often singular in color and act as flat backdrops.

His architectural works were sometimes referred to as the “white boxes,” however, he never made a building that is pure white. His use of colors derived from the notion of polychromy. Recently renovated Maisons La Roche-Jeanneret has light cream colored exterior walls, while the interior, with the white as the base, is painted with dark brown, blue, green, and pink, giving characters to each rooms. These walls are adorned with Raoul La Roche's collection of desaturated cubist and purist paintings, which resonated with the simple light colors of the walls.

Le Corbusier was an architect, but also a well-known artist who created numerous paintings in his lifetime. He often painted lakes and landscapes of his home town of La Chaux-de-Fonds in watercolor. He pursued Purism using rational geometries and calm colors with Amedee Ozenfant in Paris, which resemble his architecture in their compositions and hues.

The objects in his paintings, such as cups, bottles, musical instruments, and books are often drawn with vertically variable perspectives. Their outlines connect with other objects, and one can follow them in rhythmical manners through the paintings. Le Corbusier referred to these flowing lines as the “architectural promenade,” leading to the joyous harmony of multiple spaces. This is made interesting by introducing impedance, contrast of light, and various widths in the sightlines.

By the late 1920s, he not only used the painted walls, but begins expressing the materiality of the objects. Influenced by surrealism and the notion of regression of humanity, his art as well as architecture began their transformations. As his paintings portrayed more “poetic objects,” such as bones and rocks, as well as female figures and trees, his architecture used more steel, glass, concrete, wood, and bricks in their bare forms. Houses such as Villa de Madame H. de Mandrot, Villa “Le Sextant”, and Maison de week-end were built using natural materials from the local sources. The wall surfaces were given contours using stones, wood, and glass blocks, while the interiors were left unpainted and adorned with natural textures. Contrary to preceding notion of walls as backgrounds, Le Corbusier began expressing the walls to stand out on their own.

He used exposed stone and bricks for Pavillon Suisse and Immeuble locatif a la Porte Molitor. In Pavillon Suisse, he placed a photo mural of stone, wood, and steel pipes in a curved wall in the lounge and entrance areas. Perhaps he was influenced by a popular technique of the time, photo montage. He has made numerous photo murals from this time on. In the National Museum of Western Art, the only work of Le Corbusier in Japan, the central hall which he named “the hall of the 19th century” was originally planned to be covered with such photo murals.

Wall murals became popular in France in the late 1930s. Association Art Mural was established, and Le Corbusier was among the members. In the Expo 1937 Paris, local artists were entrusted with the task of making decorative murals throughout site. Such works as Raoul Dufy's La Fee Electricite as well as those of Leger and Delaunay left memorable impressions on the pavilions. Le Corbusier participated in this exposition with his Pavillon des Temps Nouveaux, which consisted of corridors exhibited with photo montages by the architect himself.

Around this time, Le Corbusier, for the first time, drew a mural painting in a house of architectural journalist Jean Badovici in Vezelay. It was the architect himself, influenced by his friend and artist Fernand Leger, who asked for the opportunity. Murals, unlike the removable paintings, cover all the walls and act as constructor of space. Le Corbusier, who initially began his creative career as an aspiring artist, must have felt a joyous sensation of applying his work to the entire wall, and would go on to make many more in his career.

The mural he painted in the drafting room of his own atelier was of a conglomeration of a nude woman and a shell. Light yet strong hues along with brush strokes must have given strength to those who saw it. He must have realized the power of his “hands” as he applied the strokes on these walls.

The walls became art installations, expressing materiality and the murals and that no furniture should be placed in front. The walls became independent entities in their own rights.

Le Corbusier's post WWII works became heavier and boasted utter presences. The colorful Unite d'Habitation in Marseilles give lively impression to the building. The colors were intended to cover the defects of concrete surfaces, but without them the building would have looked suffocating with its repetitive grey mass. It is also possible that the conservative colors, like his works in the early 1920s, would have been dominated by the grey, making the building gloomier. His use of strong colors can also be seen in his paintings. Primary colors, like the sun in the Southern France, together with simplified lines dance on the surfaces. The colors on his buildings resemble similar impressions, lightening the mass of the concrete structures.

Le Corbusier's email was applied to the exteriors of Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp and the Palais de l'Assemblee in Chandigarh for their glass like brightness and resistance to the elements.

For buildings constructed with columns and beams, wall are mere partitions that can be applied relatively freely. Le Corbusier used them to impede sightlines and dictate passages in effective ways. His sliding and large revolving doors may be considered a type of “movable walls.” It is possible that his intention for the email encrusted revolving doors was to create constant variation in the spaces.

Le Corbusier did not always paint muralson the walls. There are no examples of murals and wall paintings in community housings of altering tenants. He recommended hanging of tapestries in these cases.

Le Corbusier began working with tapestries in the 1936 when Madame Marie Cuttoli called on the artists to supply the drawings in order to revive the tapestry as a French traditional craft. He accepted to submit a drawing for her. In the post WWII era when he fully appreciated the potential of tapestries, he favored the insulating qualities of the fabrics for the exposed concrete constructions, but most of all, valued the portability of the rolled tapestries and the notion of “movable wall murals.” This is the reason why he often directed the contractors to hang them like a standing wall. That is mean the lower side of the tapestries touch the floor.

The tapestries in question are designed using modulor, making them large enough to be used as space creating elements able to convert any spaces into Corbusian spaces.

Le Corbusier turned walls into admirable objects, an example of how art and architecture came together.

Often murals and tapestries are created by collaboration between architects and artists. However, Le Corbusier, an avid painter himself, have merged the two practices together. This is the birth of the new architectural spaces of Le Corbusier who admirers of multi-discipline renaissance geniuses.

Some walls, particularly in the religious buildings, are represented by a combination of colors and light. The sunlight that is inserted from the ceiling and the lighting window pierced on the wall brings colored light to the floor and the wall. The light changes over time, giving expression to space.

The tower for the small alter at Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp and the cannons and machine guns of light at Couvent Sainte-Marie de La Tourette all face different directions, giving variance to morning and afternoon lightings during the corresponding services. The moving of colored lights on the rough surfaces of Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut give a very sensual experience. Additionally, in Eglise Saint Pierre in Firminy, completed recently, the morning light illuminates the space in festive and talkative manner through openings signifying the Orion of the east wall, the mid-day sun illuminates the entire space through the top-light of the tower, the afternoon sun is directed through a light well of the west wall and brightens the alter, and reflecting the movements of the headlights of cars running outside, the colorful light under the side-slits makes feel the atmosphere of the light. Le Corbusier used light to express time in intellectual and sensual ways. He has constructed religious spaces with sunlight and colors, all of which divine and noble.

Furthermore, the bars on the corridors of Couvent Sainte-Marie de La Tourette and Maison de la Culture de Firminy, pan de verre ondulatoire, or waves of glass, and brise soleil create rhythmical compositions.

The walls of Le Corbusier began as backdrops that do not interfere with other objects in space, proceeding to more colorful versions, and in the end became works of art through expression of materiality and mural paintings. In religious structures, he created walls to experience the new space with light.

The walls of Le Corbusier are culmination of his creativity and the discipline he attained in pursuit for comprehensive art.