Routes of Modernity or the Americas of Le Corbusier: Voyages, Affinities and Anthropophagy
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Date
2017
Publication Type
Doctoral Thesis
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Abstract
“Routes of Modernity or the Americas of Le Corbusier” investigates Le Corbusier's first trip to the American continent, yet with a particular focus on the interests, visions and expectations he developed before his corporeal displacement to the New World in September 1929. Our aim is to draw attention to the architect's experience in the Tropical Americas, as this was the place that saw significant changes not only in his practice of traveling but also in his ideas on Architecture and Urbanism. The impact of this trip on the writing of the book “Précisions” (published shortly thereafter) is also investigated; this work marked a shift in the course of the production of Le Corbusier's writings and reflections. In this book, he transformed the experience of a voyage and his travel narratives into a new architectural discourse altogether.
Our hypothesis is that the exchanges between Le Corbusier and a number of individuals from his wide network nurtured the architect's interest in the southern part of the Americas, Brazil in particular. These were figures that extended the so-called field of architecture, mainly from circles of artists, art collectors, writers, diplomats, businessmen and politicians as well. These actors, either through their literary and artistic production, or through the exchange of letters with Le Corbusier, played a key role in the construction of an altered vision of the New World in Le Corbusier’s eyes in those years. Some of them, such as poet Blaise Cendrars, businessman Paulo Prado, art critic Maurice Raynal and painter Di Cavalcanti, are revealed as crucial protagonists, and for the first time amply discussed through this approach to Le Corbusier and the American continent.
A second hypothesis is that not only did a group of intellectuals from France and mainly Brazil affect Le Corbusier, but also that a real affinity grew between them. For Le Corbusier and these individuals, the New World was located in the Tropics, which fostered hope and an alternative indication for a future way of living in cities. By insisting on the construction of a new narrative concerning Le Corbusier and the Americas, this dissertation intersects historical periods and enlarges the historiography of modern architecture. It presents materials and views that challenge the hegemonic narratives based on North-American and Western European perspectives. We maintain that an actor-network-based approach allows for the argument that the history of modern architecture can be read as a history of movements and encounters between people, ideas, buildings and landscapes. The incorporation of names, books and sites of the southern hemisphere and the ways these have been interconnected within the framework of North-South relations are argued as being fundamental for building more complex histories and narratives in our field of architecture.
This approach, then, suggests an investigation of multiple voyages, rather than a single one. Voyages that cross biographies, movements, discourses and practices which are attentive to a history embodied in its social actors, allowing for the study of new materials that transcend the so-called architectural field. Although it is possible to agree upon a certain common basis for the understanding and uses of the term voyage in the specific case of this dissertation, we cannot treat this term as neutral or in any way entirely homogeneous. The more the analysis of the voyage of 1929 progressed, the more we became aware that the use of this term was not a mere equivalent to travel, for example. The need to further investigate the meaning of the voyage became a major matter. This investigation has offered important tools to construct the argument that several voyages preceded the voyage, and to claim that the real voyage is an intellectual shift after all. We then work through the architectural discussions of that time, placing Le Corbusier in a wider web of reciprocal influences and circulation of ideas, so as to give meaning to the fragmented, or even silenced, discourses within the artistic and architectural debates of the late twenties.
The result of such an approach is the discovery of intersections between events, people, writings, correspondence, readings by Le Corbusier and his contacts and friends. It is, furthermore, a result of Le Corbusier's social practices and movements during the twenties (which culminated in the American experience of 1929) that we speak of a plurality of voyages and not a mere trip. The attempt to investigate not only documents produced and collected by Le Corbusier himself, but also materials produced by other individuals of the artistic milieu (including a set of texts and images published at that time in Brazil and francophone Europe), contributes to the re-drawing of Le Corbusier's trajectory at one of the most critical moments of rupture in the architect's written production.
Such a conception of voyage has not only been important in an analysis of Le Corbusier and the Americas, but it has also served as a key structural axis to this dissertation’s narrative, namely: Le Corbusier's “voyages immobiles”, the interest he developed in the southern part of the American continent, as well as his projected vision and expectations before the trip; his corporeal displacement to this continent; interpreting the voyage as an intellectual shift, in which Le Corbusier translated his travel narratives and experience into a new architectural discourse; and a series of mental, corporeal and topographical encounters. The major section of text is divided into five parts, which also includes an introduction (Chapter 1), and a chapter defining the concepts attached to the voyage and the Americas adopted in the dissertation (Chapter 2), and a conclusion (Chapter 10).
In “voyages immobiles” (Chapters 3, 4 and 5), we build an argument for Le Corbusier’s intellectual voyages concerning his own particular attitude towards, as well as his conceptual ideas of, the Americas in the twenties; and the construction of a conception of Brazil as the representative of the New World. These issues are the primary center of interest and examination when looking at Le Corbusier’s own readings and his relationships with the network of artists, writers, businessmen and politicians from France and overseas who were based in Paris. By framing these three chapters in a narrative focused on biographical cases of exemplary and influential figures, we draw attention to the fact that Le Corbusier's vision of the Americas was much more deeply affected by individuals from his social network than by the commonplace discourse produced in the US and France at that time. This approach also allows us to highlight Le Corbusier's fluctuating position and ultimate shift of stance on the image of the New World between 1928 and 1930.
The second type of voyage discussed in the dissertation (Chapters 6 and 7) is in fact his passage through Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. Since these chapters deal with a corporeal dislocation, it appeared proper to speak of “voyages mobiles”. In these chapters, we trace and re-draw Le Corbusier's activities, writing and agenda while he was traveling for the first time around the American Continent, with a focus on his experience of Brazil. This was the place where his practice of traveling dramatically changed. It is not only a description of places he went to, people he met and sketches he made, but also a comparison of Le Corbusier's discourse with those of his peers who welcomed him. We analyze this voyage by addressing the possible projections and notions constructed by Le Corbusier beforehand. While the first chapters mentioned above adopt a narrative which concentrates on individuals and biographies, Chapters 6 and 7 in effect establish a narrative based on places and sites, to which Le Corbusier was invited and which would prove fundamental for the development of his new projects and writings on Urbanism. The last part speaks of another intellectual voyage, which took place through the geographical encounters with Lake Geneva and the Alps, and Rio de Janeiro Bay and its surrounding tropical hills. Finally, Chapter 9 focuses on the modes of translating Le Corbusier’s readings of New World literature, as well as his practice of traveling in the Americas, into a narrative that claimed for a new attitude regarding Architecture and Urbanism.
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Examiner : Moravánszky, Ákos
Examiner : Ruegg, Arthur
Examiner : Stalder, Laurent
Examiner : Da Silva Pereira, Margareth
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ETH Zurich
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Subject
Modern architecture; Americas; Brazil; Le Corbusier; Brazilian Antropofagia; Blaise Cendrars; Rio de Janeiro; Questions of Travel; architectural history; Modern Art
Organisational unit
03715 - Stalder, Laurent / Stalder, Laurent
02601 - Inst. f. Geschichte u. Theorie der Arch. / Inst. History and Theory of Architecture
Notes
This doctoral dissertation is an outcome of a SNF-funded project.
Funding
143446 - Routes of Modernity. Le Corbusier and the Journey to Brazil in 1929: Voyages, Writing, Architecture and Networking (SNF)