Le Corbusier - Villa Savoye, Poissy - 1928-31 - FAMU SOA Home

Le Corbusier - Villa Savoye, Poissy - 1928-31
Le Corbusier
Villa Savoye, Poissy - 1928-31
82 Chemin de Villiers - 78300 Poissy (Autoroute A13 depuis Paris)
The Villa Savoye marks the climax of
a sequence of villas Le Corbusier
designed and built including the La
Roche house of 1923 where he
previously introduced a internal ramp,
the Villa Stein at Garches of 1927, the
Quartiers Modernes Frugès at Pessac
and of course the two houses built for
the Weissenhof Exhibition, Stuttgart,
on behalf of the Deutsche Werkbund. This is the most famous of the villas built by
Le Corbusier. He wrote of it: 'The house must not have a facade. Situated at the
top of a dome-like hill, it must open on to all four directions. The living area with
its hanging garden will be raised above the columns so as to give views right to the
horizon.' He characterized the plan for the Villa Savoye as 'très généreux' since it
enable him to express his architectonic conception on the exterior as well as to
solve all the functional problems in the interior.
This is one of the most
famous houses of the
modern movement in
architecture. Based in
modulor design - the result
of Corbu's researches into
mathematics, architecture
(the golden section), and
human proportion. Here
there is the total application
of Le Corbusier's "five points
of a new architecture". All
five points are clearly
present in this house: 1.
"pilotis" (the house is raised
on stilts to separate it from
the earth to use the land efficiently) 2. A roof garden 3. A free floor plan 4. Ribbon
windows and 5. A free façade. The Villa Savoye is a masterpiece of Le Corbusier's
purist design. It is perhaps the best example of Le Corbusier's goal to create a
house which would be a "machine a habiter, " a machine for living (in). The house
is as beautiful and functional as a machine.
The first impression you get when
approaching the house is of a
horizontal white box appearing to
have landed on stilts, which are in
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Le Corbusier - Villa Savoye, Poissy - 1928-31
fact columns of reinforced concrete,
the Villa Savoye offers a truly revolutionary way of living. The plan of the building
is square, one of the ideal shapes which the architects so admired. Within this
strict geometry, dynamic curved forms are added, like the staircase and the
solarium on the roof screened by curved walls. Interlocking ribbon windows are
repeated on all sides of the building providing openness and light.
Visitors arriving by car from Paris parked out of sight
in a garage and service area which are visible among
the columns. The former being built on a curve to
permit easy manoeuvring of cars into the parking
space based on the turning radius of the 1927
Citroen. This ground floor area contains the entrance
and servants' quarters. Visitors entered the house
though a glass box beneath the main floor, washed
at a prominently located basin and then climbed the
sloping ramp or spiral stairs, to the main
living floor. This ramp begins at ground level
and swings upwards through the house, it is
the very spine of the plan, acting as a kind of
conductor wire for what the architect has
described as 'la promenade architecturale',
connecting the activities taking place inside
the house with those on the roof garden,
with its plantings and architectural
(sculptural) shapes.
The whole structure is painted in pure
color - white on the outside, a color
with associations of newness, purity,
simplicity, and health and planes of
subtle colour in the interior open living
areas. It also contains built-in furniture
something Le Corbusier has explored
in previous villas. One is never clear as
to what is outdoors and what is
indoors: the villa is a homage to light,
and air, as well as a complex geometry
and plan that can be quite baffling on first encounter. The Villa Savoye was the
culmination of many years of design, and the basis for much of Le Corbusier's later
architecture. Although it looks severe in
photographs, it is a complex and visually
stimulating structure. As with his church of
Notre Dame du Haute, Ronchamp, the
building looks different from every angle.
Although this villa was intended as a unique
model, Le Corbusier always looked upon
each one of his works as the prototype for a
series. In deference to the principle of
reproduction in series which was
fundamental to his way of thinking, he
proposed to use the Villa Savoye as the 'type' house for a building on a site on the
outskirts of Buenos Aires.
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Le Corbusier - Villa Savoye, Poissy - 1928-31
It is one of the cornerstones of modern architecture. Critics have stressed the
cubistic quality of its architecture, but it would seem more interesting to examine
how the general cubistic appearance of the house conceals, in its organization of
space and more especially in its unfolding of a sequence of abstract surfaces and
forms, an intention which can only derive from a rationalist (that is, geometrical
and abstract) interpretation of the experiences of Purist painting.
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