URBANISM AND UTOPIA: LE CORBUSIER FROM REGIONAL SYNDICALISM TO VICHY. (VOLUMES I AND II) (SWITZERLAND).

摘要

This dissertation examines the political ideology of Le Corbusier's architecture and social thought during the interwar and Vichy periods in particular, it focuses on the urban plans that Le Corbusier developed from 1930 to 1942. Among the projects discussed in depth are the Ville Radieuse, the Ferme Radieuse, and the Algiers plans from 1931 to 1942.During the twenties, Le Corbusier looked to industrial and technocratic models as a means of social reform. After the American stock-market crash and ensuing depression in France, he turned to regional syndicalism and more generally the nonconformist doctrine called by historians l'esprit des annees trentes for an alternative to capitalism and parliamentary democracy from 1931 to 1936 he served as a contributor and editor of two syndicalist reviews, Plans and Prelude. Finally, from 1941 to 1942 he joined the Vichy government as an urban planner and theorist, completing under its auspices his final scheme for Algiers, the Plan Directeur.During this same period his formal vocabulary shifted from the white, planar surfaces and simple cubic forms of the International Style to what might be termed a more organic aesthetic involving texture, curvilinear forms, and a greater responsiveness to climate and geometry. His conception of urban planning also changed, from the projection of static, Cartesian images to notions of process accommodating growth and regional variation.The analysis of Le Corbusier's urban plans and journalistic activities explores the relation between the transformation in ideology and a transformation in formal order. The objective is not only to elucidate the nature of Le Corbusier's design and social thought but also to consider the more general problem of the relation between political ideology and cultural forms.Le Corbusier's contemporaries frequently viewed his work in political, if contradictory, terms: he was called a communist, a fascist, and a petit bourgeois. These appellations were largely ignored by the first generation of historians of the Modern Movement--Siegfried Giedion, Nikolaus Pevsner, and Alberto Sartoris--and almost completely disregarded by a second generation of historians, including Colin Rowe and Reyner Banham. This thesis is an attempt to re-establish Le Corbusier's links to an existing political and social context.