Le Corbusier and ‘Psychically Innovating Space’

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2009-02-01
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Naegele, Daniel
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Naegele, Daniel
Associate Professor Emeritus
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Architecture
Abstract

In France, in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century, ‘space’ and ‘psyche’ were uncommon concepts. Both originated in German thought, foreign to a French way of thinking. Still, in the early 1920’s, L’Esprit nouveau, a French review of contemporary visual phenomena co-edited by Charles Eduoard Jeanneret, featured articles on Freud, film, Picasso, Einstein and relativity. Yet implications of these novel perspectives to the formation of space were seldom considered in depth; nor did Jeanneret discuss the concepts in his books on urbanism, architecture, decorative art, and painting that followed. In the late 1930’s, and then immediately following World War II, all of this changed. Space and psyche became common currency in both French architectural and in its popular press, and the conjunction of psyche and space could be said to form the basis of Le Corbusier’s 1946 “Ineffable Space,” a theory of architecture that posits ‘space’ as venustus, delight, in Modern Architecture.

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This proceeding is from Le Corbusier: Architecture, Urbanism and Theory (Atlanta: Anthony Rizzuto, 2009): 45–53. Posted with permission.

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Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2009