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Volume CXXXIII, Number 16 |
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Architecture professor designs speech on visionary
ADAM BABER
ORIENT STAFF
In 1935, the French architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, more commonly known as Le Corbusier, visited Bowdoin and presented his vision of the future city-the "Radiant City," he called it. At the time he was little-known outside intellectual circles, but he would go on to change the world.
Le Corbusier, whose name means "the crow" and is often shortened to Corbu, is one of those historical figures who few know by name but whose work and influence are instantly recognizable. Mardges Bacon, Matthews Distinguised University Professor and Professor of Architecture at Northeastern, hopes to enlighten her audience on Tuesday, when she presents a lecture titled "The Radiant City on Tour: Le Corbusier at Bowdoin."
Bacon's lecture will be in English, which is an improvement over her French predecessor, who spoke in his native tongue to a mostly English-speaking crowd. His visit was part of a larger lecture tour intended to introduce elements of European modernism to Americans. But due to the language barrier, many had to resort to Corbu's impromptu drawing of his city plan to see what he meant.
In the architect's lectures, Professor Bacon said, "Corbu advanced his idea of a 'second machine age' that would unite standardized industrial methods with a new humanism responding
to the social deficit of the Depression." His "Radiant City" was to be the greatest expression of this second machine age. According to Professor Bacon, "Corbu's cities would be 'radiant' because they would have space, light, air, and order. The Radiant City would be analogous to a Ford factory, technologically advanced employing rationalized, standardized methods of production and planning reorganization calling for [classless] housing."
While a true "Radiant City" was never built, Corbu's emphasis on pure, often featureless high-rise construction and the efficency of mass production and standardization had an important impact on urban architecture in the middle of the twentieth century. His architectural influence is seen in many projects undertaken in the decades following World War II, and his fusion of architectural function and social planning underpins many of the era's ambitious housing projects in both America and Europe. Many contemporary architecture critics and urban planners continue to blame him for the "ruin of the American city."
His ideas, however, were not initially absorbed by Americans-or so he thought. When he returned to France after his lecture tour, he wrote a book titled When the Cathedrals Were White: A Journey to the Country of Timid People, in which he criticized Americans for not having the courage to adopt his ideas.
In some regards, though, Corbu was a man ahead of his time. "Le Corbusier's visit to the United States represents an early initiative to work in a global culture and thus closely linked to the idea of the modern," Bacon said. "For, to be modern is not to work in an arena of pure culture but in a more globalized one. In his day no other European architect matched the breadth
of Le Corbusier's contributions to transatlantic exchange, both architectural and cultural."
Bowdoin Environmental Studies Professor Jill Pearlman, who is coordinating Bacon's visit, agrees. "For better or for worse, Le Corbusier's ideas for the 20th century city and for modern architecture changed the world," she said. "Even today, if you want to understand why the world we live in looks the way it does, you have to know something about Le Corbusier."
Professor Bacon's lecture offers an opportunity for the uninitiated to appreciate Corbu's output and influence. She will present "The Radiant City on Tour: Le Corbusier at Bowdoin" at 7:30 p.m. this Tuesday in Kresge Auditorium.
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