Le Corbusier: The Five Points Of Architecture

Five Points of Architecture

Le Corbusier is one of the most significant architects from the 20th century. He is known as one of the pioneers of modern architecture due to many of his ideas and ‘recipes’ within architecture. One of his most famous was ‘The Five Point of a New Architecture’ that he had explained in ‘L'Esprit Nouveau’ and the book ‘Vers une architecture’, which he had been developing throughout the 1920s. Le Corbusier’ development of this idea altered the architectural promenade in a new way, which was presented in 1926. The five points are as follows: pilotis, the roof garden, free plan, free façade, and the horizontal window. Le Corbusier used these points as a structural basis for most of his architecture up until the 1950’s, which are evident in many of his designs.

The essay ‘Les Cinq points d'une architecture nouvelle’ by Le Corbusier focuses on questions that are raised within architectural design, proposing a foundation and arrangement within it. Similar texts for example the progress of ‘cellule’ and figures of the Maison Standardisee, lack relation to the design process peculiar to the five points. The Modulor, which is an anthropometric scale that is used as a system to plan a number of Le Corbusier’s buildings, is another theoretical attempt, which did not achieve a clear relation to the design process and also the architectural search for form, which personifies the five points. On the other hand, while Le Corbusier himself was of the opposed opinion, these ideas can be portrayed more freely as merely theoretical ideas. One exception is the concept of the tracis regulateurs (regulating lines), which uses proportions of geometry in buildings. It predicted certain ideas behind the five points in a nu...

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... open plan which had a parking space, entry, and a terrace. The roof was also used as a garden terrace. Le Corbusier wanted to show that the partitions of the rooms on each floor were independent of structural supports, thus the partitions were curved.

Due to the fact that all five points were illustrated in it, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye can be considered as a built plan of Le Corbusier’s five points. The idea of symmetry is maintained within the exterior, all four elevations are near identical, which consist of ribbon windows and openings running the width of the façade at the second floor level, supported by regularly spaced pilotis. Within the points, the free plan is the most important in the design, where the large wall curving freely between the pilotis on the ground floor reflects the idea of the ‘free plan’ the strongest.

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