Le Modulor

LeCorbusier's LeModulor (ISBN 3764361875 ) contains fascinating biographical details concerning life during and after the occupation of France during WWII, it describes the birth-pains of a new artistic movement, and it provides a full description of Corb's theory of architectural proportion: Le Modulor.

Examples of Le Modulor in use (mainly the RadialCity?) are combined with the story of its theoretical development, and exercises for the reader intended to clarify common misconceptions.

It's a striking book. After reading it one never again looks at a concrete housing developments apparently based on models made out of Lego by a clumsy child in quite the same way. Not only are these monsters ugly, impractical, life destroying eyesores; they are also un-inspired, cut price, shoddy approximations to their own intended idiom.

See VersUneArchitecture.

Most striking to me, however, is the surface similarity between Le Modulor and the ideas of ChristopherAlexander as described at [1].

Le Modulor supposes that harmonious design can, must, proceed from a scale of proportions analogous to the scale of tones used in music.

This scale is derived from a sub-Vitruvius, sub-Leonardo analysis of a six-foot high person with one arm above their head, the other hand held at waist hight.

Underneath the surface, the contrast with Alexander is stark:

As I understand it, CA hopes to find out the orders of scale that naturally result in harmonious composition, and these may be different, but related, in different situations.
Corb has decided that he knows what those orders are, according to an aesthetic of his own, and is determined to apply them universally and rigidly.

Examples can be seen at [2]

-- KeithBraithwaite

[1] http://www.math.utsa.edu/sphere/salingar/NatureofOrder.html

[2] http://www.bk.tudelft.nl/d-arch/agram/corbu/INDEX.HTM

The comparison of Le Modulor and, say, A Pattern Language, is very apposite. Ever since the pyramids, architects have been concerned with proportion (and its relative, geometry) as a key ordering device in the world and therefore architecture.

Proportional/numerical systems were mentioned in Vitruvius (1st C AD) and had a real flowering in the Renaissance.

However, Le Modulor really had a lot of modern architects (including several very famous British ones) seeking the grail of ideal proportional systems, partly as the search for order and meaning in their work. 'The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa' by Colin Rowe is relevant here.

I would compare this with Alexander's writings on patterns and their recent effect on programmers, from what I've seen on Wiki.

-- MartinNoutch

Le Modulor supposes that harmonious design can, must, proceed from a scale of proportions analogous to the scale of tones used in music.

But isn't the 12-tone equal-tempered scale actually an artificial construct designed to facilitate transposition? Or was he referring to the "ideal" ratios found in "just-intoned" scales?

As JamesHowardKunstler points out in HomeFromNowhere,

: "Le Corbusier was well aware of GoldenSection? relationships in human anatomy, and worked out a rational proportioning system based on them that he called the 'Modulor.' It didn't make his buildings any more liveable. His atrocious Unite d'Habitation apartment block in Marseilles was based on thirteen Modulor dimensions. Its failures had at least as much to do with Corb's apparent ignorance about ordinary domestic concerns such as the desire for privacy, or the spatial needs of cooks.''

Give me a FrankLloydWright house any day. -- EarleMartin

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