Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye One Term Paper

One of the impressive features of the Villa Savoye is its transparency in design. You are able to observe multiple sides of the house from different positions. For instance, from the perspective of the sunroom, one gets a good view of the second story terrace and the ramp that leads out to the garden on the roof.

Overall, Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye is marked by its retro-futuristic design - a look that has become synonymous with modern architecture. Belonging neither to the future nor to the past, the Villa Savoye offers us a fascinating insight into one architect's dream of fusing top-notch aesthetic sophistication with the ultimate in functionality.

Part Two

Out of all of Le Corbusier's building, the Villa Savoye was the only building to have effectively captured the essence of the aesthetic the architect put forth in his famous work, Towards a New Architecture. As Le Corbusier famously wrote:

You employ stone, wood, and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces: that is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But you suddenly touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say: "This is beautiful. That is Architecture. Art enters in..."

For Le Corbusier, an architecture that was based solely on function would never succeed in touching the human heart.He felt that architecture was more than just an engineering feat - it was also an excursion into the realm of visual art, and one that, as such, should uphold the human spirit and the ideals of an era. At the same time, he was against the idea of pure ornamentation in architecture. If a building is merely beautiful and nothing else, chances are great that it will not be useful. To this degree, Le Corbusier emphasized functionality, as well. Both of these realms - functionality and aesthetic pleasure - come to the forefront in Villa Savoye.

While the Villa Savoye is an outstanding example of modern architecture, it should not be assumed that the building's modernity is at odds with historic precedents. I intend to research the historic precedents of the building in order to show how Villa Savoye in fact represents a successful fusion of modernist aesthetics with a historicist perspective. In doing so, I intend to utilize the work not only of Le Corbusier himself, but of architecture theorist and Anand Bhatt, who has written extensively on Le Corbusier's famous building.

Bibliography

Bhatt, Anand. "Villa Savoye." Available at http://www.ab-a.net/index.cgi-Villa_Savoye

Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture. New York: Dover Publications, 1985......