Parthenon, Athens, Carnet du Voyage d’Orient, 1911 The sketch is unfinished, he designs the shadows of the scanalature and brings us in the space through the half-column on the right. It is not a mistake, it is on pupose to make us part of the representation.

The sketches are not aimed to the documentation of the reality but to represent the RELATIONSHIP landscape-architecture.

Peter Behrens

AEG - Turbinerifabrik

Behrens is an incredible influential architect, a kind of teacher of an entire generation of German architects belonging to the avant-gardes of these years. He is the architect of the German capitalism, dynamic, emerging later than the English and the French, transforming Germany in a rich and important European economy. He emerges as a protagonist of the reconfiguration culminating in the WWI.

He gives architectural image to the great companies leading the economy of Germany at the time. Among them, we have AEG and Siemens and Bayern.

This famous project involved also Van der Rohe. In 1909 it was realized. The factory is extremely important: it is a combination of different materials and techniques realizing a completely innovative thing: it is the IMAGE, not only urban, of the MODERN SOCIETY.

It had the logo designed by Behrens, who as Le Corbusier was educated in arts and craft school and then introduced to the world of architecture. He will be able to design the hexagonal logo and a series of different variations to it. It is placed on the front in an Antiqua style, eliminating the Serif characterizing the gothic fonts. It is a product entirely produced on the Behrens desks.

The wall is in concrete, the thin vertical elements employ steel and vary in section from the bottom to the top.

The combination of the two is realized at the level of the tympanum, with edges that are symmetrical, but in fact it is not an even number of sides. This kind of hexagon comes from the interpretation of the Romanic chapels in Tuscany.

There is an image that is simplified and interpreted from the TEMPLE (a very clean and austere one), it is a temple of industry. The part below the tympanum is a glass surface that stands out from the perimeter of the wall creating an interesting shadow with the tympanum. It is a curious relationship: the two elements are distinguished in a structure (steel) and non-structure (masonry) in a temple-like architecture.

Inside we can see that the covering is realized in iron with a light cover, and the sensation of the temple almost disappears. The structure is tridimensional and sustains enormous turbines. The foundations are in concrete and hinges connect the steel structure to it. The hinges are perfectly half visible on the outside.

DETAIL: this reminds of a detail in Galerie de Machines but was a solution at the end of the column produced by an engineer. This is the first time an architect employs a solution invented by an engineer. It expresses the brutalism and the sincerity of the behaviour of the structure. The solution is almost more interesting than the facade. The functional system becomes almost an aesthetical detail.

The lateral facades are designed by Mies, meaning the windows and the colossal steel fascia above.

Die Bauwelt - 1913 Urbanistic architecture using a neo classical style that characterizes the last years of the imperial Germany. It will inspire Mies.

The building opened in 1914 and was soon attacked by the Russian as the war started. What is interesting is the fact that the building is covered with the same kind of material, stone, without the rhetoric of ornament.

Artists and architects worked in parallel with the industrial production to rise the economy of the capitalistic Germany, reaching the highest levels internationally. The quality goes hand in hand with the design.

The Deutscher Werkbund is an association born in these years, promoting exhibitions, fairs... One of the main architects is Peter Behrens, he produced pavilions for the fairs and became the leader of the technical office of the AEG, producing electric tools and machines, and distributing electricity through the whole country. The image of this industry is classical, not in the heroic sense, but in the mathematic perfection and simple objects: hexagons, cylinders, all things that determine the elementary character of form.

Behrens also produces ventilators, lamps (light), tea pots, everything conceived in the key of the elimination of excesses, in the design and in the graphic adds. The corporate design has a communicative purpose having a central role in the economic development.

Le Corbusier understood the advanced potential of dealing with capitalism in Germany during this years.

To summarize…

The encounter with Behrens was fundamental for Le Corbusier to understand the potential of working in Germany in this period, even though Paris was the absolute capital of arts at the time.

Theodor Fischer

He is a less-known architect who refused Le Corbusier. In fact, Behrens was the second choice of Le Corbusier. Fischer produced advanced things for the period. For example this church in Ulm. It one the first examples of BIG church in reinforced concrete, entirely built with this material. There is an exposed skeleton in reinforced concrete; there is a call to primitive forms of Romanic tradition made in brick contrasting the reinforced concrete. Inside, large arches give space to a large hall that is a unique central space. What is interesting is the brutal exposure of the materials, without ornament, without filters between ornament and structural dimension. STRUCTURE BECOMES LANGUAGE.

More or less, this was a message taken from the engineers of the iron structure, but also a consequence of the invention of the reinforced concrete itself. The bars of iron are covered in malta cementizia that transforms them in elastic structures. Slowly, because of the reduced costs and better resistance to fire, concrete starts to defeat the trend of iron structures. This is an evolution in both engineering and architecture.

It is still a skeleton structure that invades whole Europe: Genova in Italy.

Auguste Perret

Perret was an engineer who became architect and employed Le Corbusier for a couple of years. Therefore, Le Corbusier had the chance of learning also the French lesson on what we saw with Fischer. Perret transforms the architectural language in the terms of the reinforced concrete.

Immeuble rue Franklin

The articulation is of a continuous facade interrupted by 6 windows moving it. The planimetry will be at the centre of one of the manifestoes of Le Corbusier. There are 4 columns and an hemicycle of columns, in pairs theyt have diverse geometries and embrace the central space. The basic idea of Perret is to give to the architecture FREE POSSIBILITY OF ORGANIZING THE INTERIOR, and the chance to close and open rooms with doors creating flexible and expandible spaces.

The facade is taken inside the building. It gives the possibility of creating one room more, because more light is brought in thanks to this step back of the entrance. It means more spaces and so more money.

The articulation of the facade is not only interesting for this step back and dynamic, but also for another aspect:

There are non-treated ceramic tiles separating plates with floral motives (non-bearing) and suggesting the presence of a BEARING STRUCTURE. It is again THE FORM OF THE STRUCTURE. It doesn't mean to copy thickness and dimensions of the beams and pillars but speaking about it and suggesting its presence between decorative elements on the perimetral walls and the windows.

Atelier Esders, Paris

It is a building that shows how the concrete structures are transformed into a sculptural design. The beams are supported by arched sustains, giving the quality of light and wide span to the central space, and being tangent to the lateral terraces defining the different floors.

LAST TRIP

The war has begun, Le Corbusier tries to reach Italy from France. Once he arrived, he walks around, again studying, as he wants to write and publishing books other than practicing the practical job of architect. The avant-gardes of cubism and post cubism will influence him later in the years, but it is still early for that. In this period, he is particularly interested in urban design. His goal is to write the book La costruction des villes, about construction of the city more than the discipline of urbanism.

Venice was particularly interesting for the spatial relationships in the urban composition. Also, in Piazza San Marco, the relationship between the monumental part and the city is particularly interesting.

In his sketches he also represents the pedestrian level. His representation is not volumetric, but more about spatial relationships, therefore buildings and inhabitants of the city are represented on the same level.

He also produces perspective views of the square, always showing the relationship between the bodies of the city in all the depths that constitute the perception one has walking the city - it is a PROMENADE ARCHITECTUREL, the perception of SPACE IN TIME.

The book is almost complete, entirely composed with the sketches and manually scaled depending on the dimension of the paper. Everything is inviewed in the idea of spatial relationships composing the urban ecosystem.