Chandigarh, Le Corbusier and the plasticity of the raw concrete : From the pilotis of the Swiss Pavillon to the Capitol of Chandigarh

LE CORBUSIER AND THE PLASTICITY OF RAW CONCRETE: From the Pilotis of the Swiss Pavilion to the Capitol of Chandigarh

Rémi Papillault

INTRODUCTION
Over and above the question of how to conserve the concrete buildings of Le Corbusier in Chandigarh, I would like, during this lecture, to shed light on the beginning of the architect’s use of this material in his work. Starting front the phrase by Siegfried Giedion, « The material will be the ornament of the 20th century, » I want to examine the work of Le Corbusier on the discovery of concrete as a plastic component.
Chandigarh is the cradle of this approach, and it can be perceived today as a classic feature of contemporary international architecture, used at all levels of construction — from the large scale to the small detail, from the basic inner structure to the outer layers.

It is, of course, with the Perret brothers that Le Corbusier was first confronted with the use of concrete in construction. It is a well-known fact that the garage in Rue de Ponthieu, built in 1905, is considered to be the first building in which concrete was displayed on the façade. However, I would like to put forth the theory that in the case of Le Corbusier, it all started with a philosophical opposition between mind and matter, between spiritual life and nature. He adopted this philosophy after reading three books that exerted a great influence on his youth. These have been identified by Paul Turner as « L’art de Demain » (1904) by Henri Provensal, « Zarathoustra » (1887) by Friedrich Nietzsche, and « Les Grands Initiés » (1889) by Edouard Schuré.¹
According to the propositions of H. Provensal, the goal of mankind is to achieve a synthesis between material and spiritual life. This synthesis leads to a harmony that can be expressed by art, and even more by architecture. In « Les Grands Initiés, » Edouard Schuré gives a more Platonist vision of this harmony. According to him, matter is a lover reflection of the spirit, and I quote, « The spirit is the only reality. Matter is but its lower, changeable and ephemeral reflection, its dynamism in space and time. »
In The Nietzschean analysis, this opposition takes on another dimension, a temporal one, in which matter refers to the past, and the spirit — The superhuman or superman — to the future. The theory I wish to submit is that Le Corbusier placed this opposition between mind and matter, between spirituality and nature, at the very centre of his way of conceiving architecture, and that he adopted this approach throughout his career, from the villas of Purism to the Capitol of Chandigarh.

This opposition can be seen in his pictorial work, in his town planning and also — and, this is of particular interest in the context of the present seminar on concrete — in the expression of the synthesis between mind and matter through the epidermis of architecture.

SYNTHESIS 1: ABSTRACTION AGAINST NATURE
Shortly after building the Villa La Roche in 1925, in the middle of the Purist Period, Le Corbusier laid down the « Ripolin law » (alter the name of well-known enamel paint) in his « The Decorative Arts of Today. » According to his law, « Every citizen must replace his wall hangings, damask fabric, wallpaper and stencils with a layer of white gloss paint. » By cleaning out the dark corners of the apartment, one achieves an inner cleansing; one becomes clean oneself. « After gloss painting your walls, you will acquire total self-control. »²

This Ripolin law, for which Le Corbusier was a staunch militant, follows the same spirit as the ancient law on whitewash that the architect was able to observe during his travels in the East. This whitewash « …is, in a way, The X-ray of beauty. It is a Crown Court in permanent session. It is the eve of truth « ³

Underneath the Ripolin paint, behind the architectural expression of houses of the twenties, hides reinforced concrete. This Ripolin paint permits the abstraction of the material, a de-naturalisation Chat neo-plasticism spread in France, following the De Stijl exhibition at the Galerie Léonce Rosenberg in 1923.⁴

Le Corbusier, who at that time was working on the design for the Villa La Roche, changed his approach, moving away from architecture based on mass to one based on the planes. Despite all their efforts, Piet Mondrian, the founder of the De Stijl movement, still accused architects of being too naturalistic. « Architecture is not a fertile ground for expressing a sentiment because it is linked in materials and techniques, to functionality and utility. It is, therefore, through the abstraction of these different constraints that architects can aspire to acquire the status of art. »⁵
The coating of white, the Ripolin that covered the concrete beams and clinker perpends of the villas of Purism, allowed Le Corbusier to achieve ‘absolute purity,’ an abstraction of matter that brings the spirit to the forefront.
Yet the synthesis between the spirit and matter, called for by Provensal, is to be found elsewhere in the Villa La Roche, in the opposition between the white abstraction and the big hollow spaces designed to preserve the pre-existing trees. Here it is nature that constrains architecture. The composition is coherent even without the tree because Le Corbusier incorporated the wells into the architecture itself. It is, therefore, difficult to tell whether the tree came before or after the house, for it was his way of inserting architecture in a long timeframe.

SYNTHESIS 2: MATTER VERSUS ABSTRACTION
The year 1925 was marked by the break with Ozenfant and the end of the publication of L’Esprit Nouveau. In the following years, the paintings of Le Corbusier were transformed by nature, through the themes of women and organic objects, known as « poetic reaction. »
A similar transformation can be detected in his architecture. Encouraged by the experience of Pessac, Le Corbusier included a wall he referred to as « diplomatic » in his plans for the Loucheur houses of 1929. A local mason built it in rubble stone, bricks and conglomerates, all the materials being available in the area. This made it possible to combine traditional savoir-faire with concrete construction. « In this way, the somber plot of the local entrepreneur will be thwarted and a useful alliance will be sealed. » Le Corbusier feared that the modern aspect of buildings in reinforced concrete would alarm the entrepreneurs who would consequently over-value their estimates. The « diplomatic » wall, therefore, made it possible to come as close as possible to local construction methods for the sake of economy.⁶

This fear was transformed in the plans for villas in the thirties into a « regionalism » centered on the skills of building companies and on traditional materials, with the aim of anchoring the buildings in the land, in a tradition.⁷ In this case, the synthesis between mind and matter is reflected in the contrast between concrete and local materials. Le Corbusier experimented with this contrast in his plans for holiday homes that were designed to fuse with nature. The Errazuris House (1930), the Villa Mandrot at Pradet (1930), the Weekend House at La Celle Saint Cloud (1935), and the Villa Le Sextant at Mathes (1935)⁸ are all illustrations of this experiment. This series of constructions led him to conclude that, « Rustic materials are in no way an obstacle to the manifestation of a clear plan and modern aesthetics. »⁹

By extension, the entire history of popular architecture is invited to nourish modernism: the lake house, the wooden Gothic house, the Swiss « chalet, » the Russian « isba, » the Indo-Chinese « straw hut, » the Japanese « tea pavilion » form the basic corpus of what Le Corbusier was to call the « efficient past. » In the M’Zab at Ghardaia, for instance, he noticed that despite the suffocating heat, it was possible to feel cool in the town and in houses « made of clays, shaped by hand and built according to efficient plans, and in deference to the stirring and sensitive functions of the soul. »¹⁰
One of the greatest difficulties, which still lingers to a certain extent, is to avoid mistaking pastiche for « regional character » while, at the same time, keeping a distance from internationalism, which I quote, « imposes a universal formula under the pretext that technical progress has eliminated distances and borders. »¹¹
It was on the occasion of a publication on the small weekend house at Le Celle Saint Cloud (1935) that Le Corbusier theorised for the first time on the composition of architecture, using basic materials such as plywood, brick and stone. According to him « A precise and original qualification can be given by the intrinsic virtue of the materials. « ¹²

The « intrinsic virtue of materials » is a value that touches the very essence of the material. This virtue refers to the notion of truth in architecture, as it was understood by the French rationalist movement of Viollet le Duc, Choisy, Perret. Le Corbusier, who places transgression at center of all systems, diverts the principle. For him it is possible to lie about what bears and what does not bear.¹³ Truth in architecture is, therefore, more an ideal, plastic truth than a structural one. It is a question of « seeking to give the materials used the shapes ordered by their nature. » This is one of the difficulties about concrete. Because of its nature, it has no link with shape other than fluidity, which opens the door to all expressions. Because of its plasticity, concrete tends to stifle style, whether it is neo-classicism, brutalism or modernism. It is less constraining for architectural expression than the stone or baked bricks of the past.¹⁴
In an article published in 1946 on « The plastic event, a synthesis of the major arts » (architecture, painting and sculpture), the three examples selected as illustrations were a view of the private apartment of Le Corbusier, the rear façade of the Swiss Pavilion, and a view of the interior of the house at La Celle Saint Cloud. Apart from the synthesis between the arts, there is also a synthesis between time and space: traditional and local materials in harmony with concrete as the material of modern times.¹⁵

The Swiss Pavilion of 1932 displays a contrast between its raw concrete piles, its panels of vibrated concrete and the wall in gritstone.¹⁶ A notable feature of the apartment at Rue Nungesser et Coli, built in 1933, is the contrast between the adjoining wall in gritstone left exposed, and the whiteness of the curved surface of the vault. The same idea is echoed in the bricks of the fireplace and the vaults in plywood in the villa at La Celle Saint Cloud, forming a contrast with the abstraction of concrete and glass.

SYNTHESIS 3: MODULOR AND RAW CONCRETE
After the war, Le Corbusier changed the direction of this synthesis. The contrast between material and abstraction disappeared to, make way exclusively for raw materials.¹⁷
At the same time, following the Pythagorean philosophy, as described by Schuré, the architect reflected on the introduction of a mathematical system for architectural composition. For Schuré, the contribution by Pythagoras to esotericism was his doctrine of numbers. The NUMBER was not considered as an abstract quantity but as the intrinsic and active virtue of the supreme ONE, of God, the source of universal harmony.¹⁸

As a result of the research carried out on zoning plans in the twenties, Le Corbusier, assisted by two members of his team, started to perfect the Modulor as of 1943.¹⁹ This system of harmonising mathematical proportions was designed to obtain the fourth dimension that Le Corbusier was looking for, that of the « indescribable space » he observed in the Parthenon and in the Indian temples. It was in keeping with the major principles of the rationalist movement defined by Perret who claimed that « architecture is not in the material but in the arrangement. » The synthesis between the material of raw concrete and the supreme mathematical spirituality of the Modulor was the harmony sought by Le Corbusier in the fifties, an approach that was already announced in 1923: « These prisms are such that light details them clearly…. They are the mathematical creations of your mind. They are the language of architecture. With materials in their natural state, and a more or less utilitarian programme that you extend, you have established relationships that have moved me. This is architecture. »²⁰

Another idea emerged during the same period. A building will never be as beautiful as when it comes out of its formwork. How can the beauty observed on the construction site be preserved in the finished building?
On the roof of the Unité d’Habitation, after noticing a defect in pouring of the cement on the ramp of the nursery school, Le Corbusier decided, « I will create beauty through a contrast, I will find the counterpoint, I will establish dialogue between the rough and the refined, between the drab and the intense, between precision and accident. »²¹

The splendour of concrete, therefore, derives its qualities and defects from the nature of the formwork, to which should be added the science of constructing iron frameworks. In order to harmonise these qualities and defects, Le Corbusier brought in a mason to finish certain parts, « …to attenuate on one side, to increase on the other… » so as to achieve equilibrium of what he calls « the splendour of rough concrete » or « the indescribable space.« ²²
Adopting a similar approach for the Maisons Jaoul in Neuilly, he decided to use bricks that were split, burnt, bought in heaps; the most ordinary kind put together with a thick, rough pointing. A different hand was needed to work on every three rows to avoid achieving a monotonous texture. « The bricks had to be crooked … and this is not easy when you have good masons, it was necessary ,for the reins of the vaults to be twisted, the joints to be a little different, for about thirty metres of the vault to take off like a wave. »²³
The construction flaws on the surface of the concrete or brick were perceived by Le Corbusier as plastic elements. After seeking to smooth and sand them, he concluded that they enhanced the plastic coherence of the work, like the flaws and the wear caused by time on the stone of ancient temples and cathedrals. These flaws and this erosion anchor a building in time so that « …on coming out of the construction site (it) will already have an honest patina. It is not a question of « making the old out of the new » but to give the impression, the sensation, of a rusticity that places the building in the continuity of the ^«eternal present. »
At Chandigarh, which Le Corbusier considered to be the synthesis of his work, this harmony between numbers and materials was to acquire a new dimension. At this point in his career, he would radicalise the brutality of his architectural expression. The intrinsic qualifies of the materials, as seen above, became a virtuous morality, the ethical code of the architect, a vow of poverty probably linked to the philosophy of the Lutherans and, further back in time, that of the Cathars, of which Le Corbusier believed he was a descendant. This ethic of poverty magnifies the idea of the truth of the material and its use. « Beauty thrives on the splendour of truth. »

At Chandigarh, Le Corbusier’s asceticism was in line with the political aspirations of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who discovered with the architect that this heroic poverty of architectural expression was, in fact, its real wealth. And this wealth was in tune with the Indian culture, both in terms of its monuments and the houses of the poorest. In parallel with the work of the leading French anthropologists of the period, Le Corbusier described the main arrangements of Indian country houses in his notebooks. « It is the human origins that dominate over everything. » The peasant’s house is adapted to prevailing weather conditions. available materials and local customs.²⁴ But in Le Corbusier’s view, if architects are to understand the essence of this architecture, they must also reject regional aesthetics. No ideas from folklore or art history can interfere in such an enterprise, in which buildings are constructed in raw concrete, sometimes linked by thin membranes of reinforcement. »²⁵ The challenge is to define new aesthetics, starting from basic local data, that are unrestrained by time. Another contribution of Chandigarh turned out to be a great revelation for Le Corbusier — an extremely modern architectural expression can be achieved through age-old means. The analogy between the Indian skills of constructing with clay and wood, and the concrete and formwork in Chandigarh can lead to this modernism. The absence of a crane, replaced by donkeys ambling up and down the ramps, and the water-wheel of wicker baskets bringing the cement to the forms, created a striking contrast with the modern architectural expression, placing the buildings of Chandigarh in the eternal present of Siegfried Giedion, that of the pyramids and temples of Antiquity. As soon as the construction site was finished, it was clear that Le Corbusier had succeeded in incorporating in it the plastic beauty that he had admired on the Acropolis of Athens when he was 20 years old.

Endnotes
¹ Paul V. Turner, The Training of Le Corbusier, Idealism and the Modern Movement, Macula, 1987 (The French version was translated by Praline Choay. This edition resumes the thesis of P.V. Turner, of 1970, published in English in 1977).
² Le Corbusier, The Decorative Arts of Today, ed. Crés, Paris, 1925, p. 191.
³ Le Corbusier, The Decorative Arts of Today, ed. Crés, Paris, 1925, p.193.
⁴ B. Reichlin, « Le Corbusier versus De Stijl, » in the catalogue of the exhibition on De Stijl and Architecture in France, Institut Français d’Architecture, Paris, 1985
⁵ Le Corbusier, Precisions, ed. Crés, Paris, 1930, p. 46.
⁶ This notion of economy was also applied to the plans for SPA Lannemezan 1940, a return to the principle of Loucheur and applied to the local materials and manpower. Following the first debacle of 1940, Le Corbusier imagined a reconstruction using the immediate resources of the northern forests: wooden logs for the structure, branches for the lathing, turf sods for the roof. This emergency also dictated the Peyrissac project in Alergia that made use of local stone, for the walls and bricks for the rider vaults.
⁷ « These materials are natural products (wood, shore or slate), or artificial products endowed with a regional character by custom (tiles or bricks). The daily spectacle has always been formed by family features uniting them in the depths of time; a practice that in some cases goes back to a thousand years to become the companions of our life. It is possible to take into account this friendly pact concluded with the vicinity. An example is the curved wall of the library in the Swiss Pavilion constructed in plain gritstone, as always, by a mason who loves his work. » Le Corbusier, Discussion with Students Architectural Schools, De Minuit, ed. Denoël, Paris, 1943.
⁸ The Impossibility of envisaging supervision of the construction site and the need to employ a small entrepreneur from the village led to the very concept of the plan: « The rubble stone wall with cement-sealed joints, the pillar in wood simply stripped of its bark. » Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète 1934-38, Verlag für Architektur, Artemis, Zurich, 1938, p. 135.
⁹Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète 1929-34, Verlag für Architektur, Artemis, Zurich, 1934, p. 48.
¹⁰ Le Corbusier, « The Plane Accuses, » Aircraft, New York: Universe Books, 1988 (reprint of a 1935 English edition), p. 12.
¹¹ Le Corbusier, « A House at Mathes. » L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, n°1, January 1936, p. 43.
¹² « Here can be found exposed stone masonry, natural on the outside, painted in white on the inside; the wood of the ceiling and walls; the rough bricks of the fireplace; the white ceramic of the floors; the glass masonry of Nevada bricks; and the onion marble of the table. One of the difficult problems of modern architecture is how to use materials wisely. In fact, besides the new architectural volumes that are determined by the resources of the new techniques of shapes, a precise and original qualification can be given by the intrinsic virtue of materials. » Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète 1934-38, Verlag für Architektur, Artemis, Zurich, 1938, p. 125.
¹³ For the influence of Perret on Le Corbusier, see Le Corbusier in Paris, published by La Manufacture, 1987. The garage in the Rue de Ponthieu of 1905 by the Perret brothers, is recognized by the moderns as the first building in which concrete was displayed.
¹⁴ This potentiality of concrete had been noted by F. Onderlonk in his « The Aesthetics of Potentialities in the Ferro Concrete Style, » 1928. A material comes close to perfection depending on the number of possibilities it offers. Thanks to the plasticity of concrete, it is possible to create any form. A distinction should be made between plasticity in the sense of fluidity and plasticity as the aptitude of a material to display specific aesthetics: the less transformation to give a finished aspect.
¹⁵ Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète 1938-46, Verlag für Architektur, Artemis, Zurich, 1946, p. 135.
¹⁶ « Perret, Le Corbusier and the French Tradition of Structure » in P. Joly, Le Corbusier à Paris, La Manufacture, Paris, 1987, p. 102.
¹⁷ After the war, most of his buildings were in raw concrete:
– Manufacture de St Dié, 1946, a play between the pink sandstone of the Vosges and rough concrete
– Ronchamp 1950-53; stone recovered from an old destroyed chapel covered by a shell of raw concrete.
– Jaoul: LC decided « …to go back to the most elementary and ordinary materials: bricks, flat tiles, so-called « catalan » vaults in exposed flat tiles (vaults built without formwork), roofs covered in grass. »
– Cabin at Cap Martin: 1952, plywood
– La Tourelle: 1957-60
– Visuel Arts Center, Cambridge: 1961-64
– Unité d’Habitation, Firminy Vert
¹⁸ E. Schuré, Les Grands Initiés, ed. Perrin, Paris, 1889, p. 316.
¹⁹ Perfected as of 1943, the Modulor was exhibited for the first time to the public in 1947, and in 1950 a work was published on the seven years of research by Le Corbusier: Le Corbusier, Le Modulor, Trial on a harmonious measure of human scale applicable to architecture and mechanics, published by L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Boulogne, 1950. This was followed by Modulor 2: Let the Users Speak, Boulogne, published by L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 1955. For information on these works, consult Matteoni Mario, « Le Modulor » in Le Corbusier, An Encyclopaedia, CCI, Paris, 1987. p. 259.
²⁰ Le Corbusier, Towards an Architecture, Crés, Paris, 1923, p. 165.
²¹ Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète 1946-52, Verlag für Architektur, Artemis, Zurich, 1953, p. 190.
²² The Building of L’Unité in Marseille has contributed to architecture the certainly of the possible splendour of reinforced concrete used as a raw material, on an equal footing with stone, wood or terracotta. « …it seems to be feasible to consider concrete as reconstituted stone, worthy of being shown in its natural state. » Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète 1946-52, Verlag für Architektur, Artemis, Zurich, 1953, p. 190.
²³ Maniaque in P. Joly, Le Corbusier à Paris, La Manufacture, Paris, 1987, p. 212.
²⁴ « We can find more information among, the primitives that academics have not touched, »
²⁵ « Here, everything is a problem of resistance, structure, wind-bracing. The aesthetics that will emerge will be a new kind of aesthetics. » Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète 1946-52, Verlag für Architektur, Artemis, Zurich, 1953, p. 113.