Resumen de Architecture and revolution: pavillon des temps nouveaux by le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret at the international exposition of 1937 in Paris
The Pavillon des Temps Nouveaux is a project by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, built for the International Exposition of 1937 in Paris. It was the result of many years of work by the architects and their CIAM colleagues who exposed their work to a larger public, to the professional community and government officials. The Pavilion was a machine for transforming the visitors by initiating them in the new doctrines of architecture and urbanism.
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret designed the Pavilion at a critical point in world history. The project was a response to both the economic difficulties of the 1930's and the turbulent political environment prevailing in Europe just prior to the Second World War. The project was influenced by its time and as such incorporates features that are essential to the understanding of modern architecture, culture, and society. It was politically and socially committed with its vision of the possible new times of peace and harmony in opposition to the imminent war.
The first part of the thesis examines and interprets the design process of the Pavilion. It went through many design changes, designed mostly between 20 October and 15 December 1936. After the determination of the overall design, the project underwent other phases including site design, interior exhibition design, construction drawings, and the construction itself. The delegates of the CIAM V Congress visited the Pavilion during its construction. The Pavilion was officially inaugurated on 17 July 1936. Le Corbusier tried to organize a conference on urbanism and other events. After the Exposition, he published a monographic book of the Pavilion and included it in others. This critical analysis of the history of the project gives a basis for understanding the pavilion, its purpose, and how the architects designed and built it.
The Pavilion was an important experiment not only for its design and exhibition, but also for the art techniques and teamwork developed in it. A team of more than 40 international artists and architects, guided by Le Corbusier, collaborated in elaborating the interiors. The pressures encountered during this project were one of the reasons for the subsequent split between Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and their associate Charlotte Perriand. Their rupture and the fact that the Pavilion was the last project built before the war, establishes the Pavilion as a crucial point in the work of the Atelier.
The thesis contains also a graphical reconstruction of the built project with diagrams, detailed plans, sections, and facades. The pavilion is rendered herein with the actual color of its canvas membrane, against which the images of the exhibition panels are superimposed. Here, the importance of the polychromy can be appreciated. The light filtered through the colored canvas created a unique atmosphere in the interior space.
The second part of the thesis is the interpretation of the architecture and the exhibition of Pavilion. It is made in two parts: contenant (building membrane), and contenu (interior exhibition). For this purpose, the Pavilion is compared to other projects, paintings, drawings, and books by Le Corbusier and others.
The canvas membrane of the Pavilion is related among others to the vacation culture of 1936, the primitive temple, and the suspension structures of canvas sustained by steel wire cables. The pavilion was an unprecedented project for the Atelier for its temporary, ephemeral, reusable, and transportable character. It is a moment of synthesis of earlier ideas and discovery of new ones that influenced many later projects of Le Corbusier.
Le Corbusier considered himself a poet-prophet of the new times. The Pavilion exhibition is the lesson that he had teach to the people. He and Pierre Jeanneret designed the interior space in relation to the exhibition content and the thirteen proposed topics. The variety of exhibition techniques and the diversity of the artistic team contributed in making the pavilion into what Le Corbusier would later define as the Synthesis of the Major Arts. They proposed projects that covered many aspects of modern life. Their exhibition, dedicated to urbanism, traced a plan for rebuilding the cities and countryside.
The conclusion provides a summary of the aspects and ideas essential to the understanding of the project and its purpose. It points the major topics of the work and ideas of Le Corbusier into the Pavilion and its exhibition. The thesis ends with a reflection on the importance of the project for architecture, and the modern civilization. The Pavillon des Temps Nouveaux is the built manifesto of Le Corbusier's plan for achieving the unity and harmony in the world through architecture and urbanism.
