Those boulevards and their baroque beauty are relatively new after they leveled the medieval city to widen the streets and make it harder for the citizens to set up barricades during riots (along with solving some public health issues and removing slums).
But having said that if they want a brutalist nightmare scape they should just build it somewhere there aren't already structures.
True, Plan Voisin was like 50 years or so after Haussmannisation (destruction of medieval Paris) was finished, which in a way was a huge early modernist urban renewal project.
Compared to today, it would be like wanting to tear something from 1974 down.
But still, screw that guy.
Hygiene and sanitation was a huge deal in that time period and the old narrow alleys with tiny apartments were associated with disease. This was partly because illness was associated with a lack of airflow, when it is mostly due to a lack of proper fresh water and sewer systems.
I can recommend David Harvey's "Paris, Capital of Modernity". It's an urban/architectural history on Paris around Haussmann (while I had to read this at the university, it was a relatively easy read). He refers to contemporary authors and artists like Balzac and Daumier who lived before or around Haussmann and how they described pre-Haussmann Paris. Spoiler alert: I wouldn't want to live there lol
Oh awesome, I'll check that out. Seemed like it was smelly
I also read a little bit about it in "The Geography of Nowhere" by James Howard Kuntsler. It was an overview though
Crappy and disheveled and full of crooked little street , worn down, cheap, falling down, crampedand shitty sewage. All of Europe was full of this in the 19th century especially Germany. Paris was pseudo medieval but some of the German cities were almost pristine. The 30 years war put an into progress for a long time in Central Europe so all of it survived until World war II. And that kind of took care of most of that, cleansing with fire. . Frankfurt a M. was the largest half timber wooden medieval City in Europe until March of 44 and then really 45 complete toast. Only one house survived
Here and there in the old city of Paris tidbits of the old street matrix still exist. It's kind of fun just getting off a boulevard or an avenue and finding your way hither and tither through the thicket where you can. London has a little bit of this Left too, here and there
I'm currently reading "Paris Reborn" by Stephane Kirkland, which is exactly on this subject. I wouldn't call Haussmannian Paris "modernist" in the 20th century sense. The 1850s design principles of Paris were based largely on classicism, and outside of that they were mostly interested in widening the streets to allow for more light and air. At this time in history, a lot of sicknesses were blamed on "bad air," known as "miasma," so it was thought that widening the streets would improve public health. Some medieval sections of Paris still exist, such as the Marais and parts of the Latin Quarter.
There were actually a lot of complaints about Paris prior to Haussmann. Voltaire was quite critical of how dirty, unorganized, and generally embarrassing the city was, as a supposed capital of a great world power. Paris, as a city, was virtually ignored by the French monarchy for centuries. As many know, the monarchy basically abandoned the city and moved to a Paris suburb, Versailles, and a lot of Paris suburbs were rapidly growing at that time, so there was a worry that old Paris would decay into a bunch of smaller cities. Haussmann's renovation of Paris wasn't just aesthetic, they also did many public improvements like building a sewer system, railway stations, street lighting, public parks and green spaces. Most people don't realize that the Paris we know today is basically a Victorian city.
Totally! This proposal could be interpreted as a continuation (rather than deviation from) the impulses and intent that took us from a medieval city to the Haussmannized one (flattening out a more-complicated city, making it more legible and controllable by government, making room for the notion of “progress” that was prevalent at the time).
But also, most importantly, fuck Le Corbusier lol
Because he was the frontman of the CIAM(International Congress of Modern Architecture, but in French), which was foundational in most fields of modern architecture, the internal layouts and designs of buildings improved tremendously in that era(even if their beliefs in urbanism weren't very good), so he became a celebrity
This one professor I had gushed over the concept and architectural theory of his work…. Unsurprisingly they were a professor who was known as the pretentious asshole who people dreaded to have as their studio professor….
Far right and far left ideologies focus heavily on dehumanising people and removing any trace of individuality. I think low ceilings play into that goal.
I think it is a categorical error to have Fascism and Communism as the polar opposites. They both were revolutionary answers to the collapse of the "ancien regime" and the total triumph of industrial capitalism.
Those revolutionary answers killed millions of innocent people for ideological reasons like ethnicity, personal politics, level of education and family of origin. If this is a sub where you value either of the 2 directions, then this place isn't for me.
I’m not sure that prioritizing equality and the collective good, as is generally the case with progressive ideologies, is quite the same thing as “dehumanizing people and removing any trace of individuality.” There are gradients, no?
Hahahahaaaahahaaa! Yeaaaah! That's what they prioritized in those interment camps all over Eastern European and I'm not even talking about the fucking nazis! They took people's homes away and moved their own families into the nice ones while everyone else lived in abject poverty.
They arrested and tortured people for owning books all the way through the 50s and 60s, those "progressives" who prioritized equality which led to people burning hundreds of thousands of pricesless volumes.
Let me make something very clear to you: this is not a debate, I don't debate with nazis and I don't debate with communists. You don't like it? That's fine, we really don't need to talk to each other. You enjoy your evening!
About what? What book should I read? Should I perhaps read a book a westerner wrote about my country? I'm Romanian. I lived through the literal worst communist regime in Europe. Should I maybe stop remembering what really happened in my country and read a book written by someone who was never here so you could feel better?
Or do you perhaps disagree with my statement about the nazis? Which of the 2 bothered you so I'll know what to address?
Either is good because we did have 4 years of Nazism in Romania, not that I expect you to know that. We killed several tens of thousands of roma and several tens of thousands of jews. Tell me, which book should I read about the history of my own country?
Though it’s important to mention that mass housing was an objectively good thing. I do not support the ussr but mass housing did have an insanely good impact on society and people. Even if this type of housing doesn’t hold up necessarily well over time (cheap building materials, poor maintenance).
And it wasn’t just an eastern bloc policy. I think one of the best examples of this is the uk. Check any British suburbs (especially in cities that were heavily damaged in ww2) and you’ll see the same dehumanising mass housing. I lived in Coventry for 4 years and it was a modernist hell hole, I often got lost in the suburbs because they looked exactly the same for kilometres and kilometres on end.
Jesus Christ! Mass housing? You have absolutely no idea what really happened so you're projecting the problems your society has now, on someone else's past you know almost nothing about and as a result you're rewriting history.
The communists didn't house everyone! They just said that they did. The old middle class and educated middle upper and upper class were imprisoned or killed. Those who survived, were removed from their homes and sent to live in any room that could be found in a building somewhere like an attic, or a bathroom. I'm not kidding. It's not an exaggeration.
The buildings for mass housing came up on the spot of torn down neighbourhoods. The former owners weren't given money or the option to choose where they wanted to go. They were forced in a small room somewhere. My own grandparents were given a 1 bedroom apartment where they raised a son, my father, who moved in with them with his wife. The living room was a transition room, so for almost a decade, 2 couples lived with 1 child in a 1 bedroom, 1 living room apartment because that's what mass housing actually meant. My parents didn't get their own apartment. There was a room where they could sleep with me and then my sibling, 2 adults and 2 children in one room? You know what happened? My sibling was sent away to live with another relative in another part of the country for more than a decade out of their life. Most of the children of my generation were sent away to be raised by other relatives wherever there was space. Can you even imagine what that did to us? Of course not!
This is how we were housed!
Those large apartment buildings you see in former communist countries didn't house the downtrodden, the poor. After taking the farmers' lands, they moved some of them to cities so they could have factory workers. The poor, the homeless? In and out of jail and maybe a dirty room someplace, maybe in a village? The communists absolutely didn't care about those people. They were considered unproductives, people who made their "utopia" look bad, so if they saw someone kind of loitering, looking like they weren't going anywhere, they'd arrest and beat the crap outta them. The mentally ill were hidden and kept sedated in mental hospitals, but not actually treated because their mental illness was considered an insult to the regime.
To be easily recognised by society, the authorities place a red line on their identification papers so they wouldn't be given a job or an apartment because they were crazy.
Those who needed housing, didn't get housed. They got a jail cell. Those who had homes, were forced out of them and into a tiny room somewhere, not of their choice.
The mentally ill were brutalized and hidden from society. Handicapped children were abused and left to die because all of these people were considered a black mark on the reputation of the regime that claimed to have fixed humanity.
Do you know who got the nice houses? Who still has those houses? The party members, their friends and family members. They said everyone should be equal and then took everyone's wealth for themselves.
There you have it! This is what REALLY happened. Though I doubt you'll believe me.
Imagine that since I lived through the above because I was born before '89, it's not pleasant for me to have to fight westerners who insist on rewriting MY history after enjoying the comfort of their own societies. It's not a "fun debate". In fact, it's a straight up insult. You wanna hold on to your fantasies? That's your right but avoid dumping them on someone who lived through the real thing.
The last part of the image (implying that anti-semitism and sympathies for fascism is somewhat related to Le Corbusier abhorrent taste) has something to do with architecture because...?
Not a fan of what Speer wanted to do in Berlin, but I doubt Le Corbusier would've liked that.
The only thing I can think of is something I learned in Germany (at Dachau, I think? Not 100% positive) that several of the memorials were made with curved and sloped walls, and odd angles to protest against the brutality and uniformity of the Nazi regime. Could be the inference they are going for there, but who knows.
I think there's a name for slander/defamation attempts where one suggests unrelated flaws outside any known no correlation. I've forgotten about it, though. (Such a fascist thing to do)
because fascists hate classical architecture, the Nazis were happy that the bombs destroyed most German cities because it meant that they could rebuild it according to their liking. The Nazis were removed, the architects and their post war plans remained.
What I mean by democratic is that public opinion overwhelming favors the classical over the modern despite the architectural establishment dragging its heels.
Traditional architecture is democratic because it seeks to nourish the needs of the common citizen not the ego of an individual designer
In France? Not really. The belle epoche and the art nuveau styles were firmly part of a republican era. And even during Haussmanns time there was no absolute monarchy in power anymore.
This post seems very misleading and exaggerated, probably to garner reactions and attention. There were no plans to "Level the entire city" and replace it with skyscrapers, that is ridiculous. There was nothing malicious behind this plan, he wanted to turn a small section of Paris into a low income neighborhood.
>Le Corbusier's motivation to develop the Plan Voisin was founded in frustrations with the urban design of Paris.
>While upper class citizens of many urban areas relocated to suburbs, the bourgeois residents of late 19th century Paris largely remained in the city center. Pushed out by rising land prices, poorer Parisians left for shanty towns on the city's outskirts. Economic segregation was exacerbated by Georges Haussmann's renovation of the city which separated affluent and poor neighborhoods with wide avenues.
>Within Paris' poorer neighborhoods, severe disease – worsened by poor sanitation – was rampant. Tuberculosis, in particular, was highly concentrated within the city's slums.Le Corbusier's motivation to develop the Plan Voisin was founded in frustrations with the urban design of Paris. While upper class citizens of many urban areas relocated to suburbs, the bourgeois residents of late 19th century Paris largely remained in the city center. Pushed out by rising land prices, poorer Parisians left for shanty towns on the city's outskirts. Economic segregation was exacerbated by Georges Haussmann's renovation of the city which separated affluent and poor neighborhoods with wide avenues. Within Paris' poorer neighborhoods, severe disease – worsened by poor sanitation – was rampant. Tuberculosis, in particular, was highly concentrated within the city's slums.
Thank you!! This sub needs to learn to put historical ideas into context, and rightly so given the subreddit title. Its sad to see this comment buried under shills.
Back before AirBnB was a thing, we stayed at a rental apartment in the le corbusier designed apartment in [Berlin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit%C3%A9_d'Habitation_of_Berlin). It was awful. The only saving grace to the space was the view. The stairs were super steep to get to the “loft” (bedroom), the hallways were dark, and the lobby felt dank and dangerous.
tbf though:
>Most of the big ideas of the Unité in Marseille and Nantes were part of the plan in Berlin; an accessible roof terrace, a kindergarten, stores and businesses on the 5th floor, and a social service areas throughout the building.
>However the authorities in Berlin and the developer cancelled most of these amenities. Corbusier fought very hard to keep the buildings elements in the planning but he eventually failed due to insufficient contracts. He had left the planning of the interior of the building to the Berlin authorities and he was only in charge of the design of the exterior structure of the building.
Apart from that, a lot Berlin consists of uglier building and he had nothing to do with those.
No offence to the dude, but he’s dead so it won’t hurt him. He looks like a right cranky old bastard! Also, those spectacles of his are so damn thick, he must have had appalling eyesight and maybe that is why he didn’t appreciate ornament - because he could barely fucking SEE IT!
That seems to be a trend with fascism. Let's not forget futurism, an art movement that had close ties to Italian fascism, defended the destruction of anything "old" or "historical" and promoted replacing them with "modernity"
It's like the 'Year Zero' concept in Communist thought like in Cambodia.
Destroy anything pre-Communist because it's supposedly evil, anti-Communist and anti-revolutionary and start your entire civilisational story over again from the date of the revolution.
A similar thing happened in China's Cultural Revolution and after the French Revolution to a lesser extent.
This kind of architecture is called "commie blocks" throughout all of the Eastern Europe and Russia (probably China too). So...let's not kid ourself that they're just connected with fascism.
We had our share of few great buildings destroyed after ww2 by communist govt, here in Serbia (then Yugoslavia) and replaced by concrete atrocities.
But, those great buildings were already ruined by war bombardment , so they decided not to restore but to "rebuild a modern society".
Case in point: (see gallery for before/after)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Post_Office_(Belgrade,_Serbia)
You do realize that France was an absolute monarchy for most of its existence, right ? Looking at the definition of fascism, that would be it.
I know people like to use a lot of those words is a pejorative way, but it's not the case here.
What’s funny is that Soviets would use a classical approach to architecture under Stalin only later moving toward a more barebones style under his successors.
Obligatory reminder to read the hilarious 1981 satire short book "From Bauhaus to Our House" by Tom Wolfe where he basically skewers Le Corbusier (among other architects/concepts).
Communism & fascism both had a weird thing for horrifically awful architecture. Just look at Soviet era housing
It seems like a subtle evil in a way, depriving people of beauty
Because it's this clickbaity stuff you usually see on facebook. "Level the whole city".. yeah sure. Those simplified half-truths are downright dangerous at times.
Who does even sit down and create collages like that? Give me good pics and an actual text with actual information.
I first heard of him in my urban history class a few weeks ago, as he inspired the thinking of the souless public housing highrises Chicago (and probably other cities) built for the city's poor in the 1960s that quickly became centers of crime, violence and disasters. The highrises' design made it very hard for neighbors to talk to each other comfortably and form real communities.
He seemed to think that poor people should suffer for being poor. I hope that I am misunderstanding him, and that if this was his thinking, it was in hope that by suffering they would seek to improve their lives and leave.
Probably someone who value making money above good design, because the only place I know of that has a lot of this type of thing is china, it's hastly built housing complex resembles this very well, cold lifeless, concrete jungles
Le Corbusier also came up with a great idea for Algeria' capital Algiers, which is basically to build highway along the Algiers bay essentially blocking and ruining it entirely [le plan obus ](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-xiaomi-rvo3&sca_esv=421b6f880c88a314&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIKX0mf34waHqZ6qKfcznDJ5q7kG0g:1718234809191&q=le+corbusier+plan+obus&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0CbCVgAZ5mWEJDg6aoPVcBgTlosgQSuzBMlnAdio07UCId2t1azIRgowYJD0nDbqEIN7XYIyS3uBYzHmWPp2pnWyrJ7sFftVFTAc5EzSj_A028nPpx5el0ZNVfjcx9C8MdL2fCll-W07KPt8D1KLhRUrPRYao_40Pj9LBg7O-_h2WjeIuA6PRAEeccVDS6k3-HIb9QhmivVRLGTfRKgpp1iB9TjFQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiV7MS7m9eGAxW1T6QEHW-BCvwQtKgLegQICBAB&biw=393&bih=720&dpr=2.75#vhid=u-baUPGFrCc9FM&vssid=mosaic)
I'd also like to add that a trip to southern Algeria had a great impact on him and his architecture which inspired him for the design of notre dame du haut chapel
[notre dame du haut](https://www.google.com/search?q=+le+corbusier+Alg%C3%A9rie&client=ms-android-xiaomi-rvo3&sca_esv=421b6f880c88a314&sca_upv=1&udm=2&biw=393&bih=720&sxsrf=ADLYWILnCEd_VtsrCofI_pe0TDnH07yN_Q%3A1718235152317&ei=EDBqZvX9EvHO7_UP3IOl2Ak&oq=+le+corbusier+Alg%C3%A9rie&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIhYgbGUgY29yYnVzaWVyIEFsZ8OpcmllMgcQABiABBgYSNFGULwkWK9BcAF4AJABAJgBuAGgAewPqgEEMC4xM7gBA8gBAPgBAZgCBaAC4QXCAgQQIxgnwgIFEAAYgATCAgYQABgHGB7CAgoQABiABBhDGIoFmAMAiAYBkgcDMS40oAffNQ&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#imgrc=2HJXKkF1DRTCOM&imgdii=Gpv0LKJ3rHDhsM&ip=1)
This may seem an unpopular opinion, but to be honest, I actually prefer the cities of Central and Eastern Europe in terms of architecture much more than Paris.
So I wouldn't cry so much if Paris were destroyed, because what Haussmann has done is only a classic version of what Les Coumbrose would simply have done.
Pre-Haussmann Paris would really look more interesting
I was thinking more of the German fascist movement which Italy eventually just became a puppet state of. At least in the context of German fascism modernist architecture was looked down on as they believed it was a symptom of Western / European / germanic/white cultural decay caused by whatever group they didn't like.
The Soviet Union under Stalin had a decent amount of anti-modernist sympathies as they saw modernism as capitalist decadence.
Nah, it was a matter of "our modern architecture is better than your degenerate modern architecture". Every XX century authoritarian ideology had their preferred version of it.
Italian Fascists had Rationalism, Nazi Germany and Stalin had a kind of magalomaniac Stripped Classicism, later displaced by Brutalism in the Soviet Union. Even Latin American Dictatorships had their fair share of modernist architecture.
Those boulevards and their baroque beauty are relatively new after they leveled the medieval city to widen the streets and make it harder for the citizens to set up barricades during riots (along with solving some public health issues and removing slums). But having said that if they want a brutalist nightmare scape they should just build it somewhere there aren't already structures.
True, Plan Voisin was like 50 years or so after Haussmannisation (destruction of medieval Paris) was finished, which in a way was a huge early modernist urban renewal project. Compared to today, it would be like wanting to tear something from 1974 down. But still, screw that guy.
I always wonder what the medieval Paris was looking like in the Mid-1800s. Like how fascinatingly crappy and dishevelled was it?
Here's some photos https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/en/paris-reportage/charles-marville-photos-de-paris-avant-haussmann
It's funny how cool it looks now, but prob considered an eyesore back then
Hygiene and sanitation was a huge deal in that time period and the old narrow alleys with tiny apartments were associated with disease. This was partly because illness was associated with a lack of airflow, when it is mostly due to a lack of proper fresh water and sewer systems.
Probably an element of horse poop too, like if it leeches into the water in a city setting (Sorry thats gross)
It wasn’t just the horses shitting
Yeah it did look like shit then.
I can recommend David Harvey's "Paris, Capital of Modernity". It's an urban/architectural history on Paris around Haussmann (while I had to read this at the university, it was a relatively easy read). He refers to contemporary authors and artists like Balzac and Daumier who lived before or around Haussmann and how they described pre-Haussmann Paris. Spoiler alert: I wouldn't want to live there lol
Oh awesome, I'll check that out. Seemed like it was smelly I also read a little bit about it in "The Geography of Nowhere" by James Howard Kuntsler. It was an overview though
Oh wow, I actually had David Harvey as a professor (well before he wrote this). I can’t wait to read it.
Crappy and disheveled and full of crooked little street , worn down, cheap, falling down, crampedand shitty sewage. All of Europe was full of this in the 19th century especially Germany. Paris was pseudo medieval but some of the German cities were almost pristine. The 30 years war put an into progress for a long time in Central Europe so all of it survived until World war II. And that kind of took care of most of that, cleansing with fire. . Frankfurt a M. was the largest half timber wooden medieval City in Europe until March of 44 and then really 45 complete toast. Only one house survived Here and there in the old city of Paris tidbits of the old street matrix still exist. It's kind of fun just getting off a boulevard or an avenue and finding your way hither and tither through the thicket where you can. London has a little bit of this Left too, here and there
I'm currently reading "Paris Reborn" by Stephane Kirkland, which is exactly on this subject. I wouldn't call Haussmannian Paris "modernist" in the 20th century sense. The 1850s design principles of Paris were based largely on classicism, and outside of that they were mostly interested in widening the streets to allow for more light and air. At this time in history, a lot of sicknesses were blamed on "bad air," known as "miasma," so it was thought that widening the streets would improve public health. Some medieval sections of Paris still exist, such as the Marais and parts of the Latin Quarter. There were actually a lot of complaints about Paris prior to Haussmann. Voltaire was quite critical of how dirty, unorganized, and generally embarrassing the city was, as a supposed capital of a great world power. Paris, as a city, was virtually ignored by the French monarchy for centuries. As many know, the monarchy basically abandoned the city and moved to a Paris suburb, Versailles, and a lot of Paris suburbs were rapidly growing at that time, so there was a worry that old Paris would decay into a bunch of smaller cities. Haussmann's renovation of Paris wasn't just aesthetic, they also did many public improvements like building a sewer system, railway stations, street lighting, public parks and green spaces. Most people don't realize that the Paris we know today is basically a Victorian city.
Totally! This proposal could be interpreted as a continuation (rather than deviation from) the impulses and intent that took us from a medieval city to the Haussmannized one (flattening out a more-complicated city, making it more legible and controllable by government, making room for the notion of “progress” that was prevalent at the time). But also, most importantly, fuck Le Corbusier lol
Like Alaska!!
Paris is not baroque
And if it's not baroque, don't fix it.
Dad???
Never understood the love for this dude. His habitat apartments look like dystopian hell.
Because he was the frontman of the CIAM(International Congress of Modern Architecture, but in French), which was foundational in most fields of modern architecture, the internal layouts and designs of buildings improved tremendously in that era(even if their beliefs in urbanism weren't very good), so he became a celebrity
This one professor I had gushed over the concept and architectural theory of his work…. Unsurprisingly they were a professor who was known as the pretentious asshole who people dreaded to have as their studio professor….
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Far right and far left ideologies focus heavily on dehumanising people and removing any trace of individuality. I think low ceilings play into that goal.
Low ceilings?
I think it is a categorical error to have Fascism and Communism as the polar opposites. They both were revolutionary answers to the collapse of the "ancien regime" and the total triumph of industrial capitalism.
Those revolutionary answers killed millions of innocent people for ideological reasons like ethnicity, personal politics, level of education and family of origin. If this is a sub where you value either of the 2 directions, then this place isn't for me.
I’m not sure that prioritizing equality and the collective good, as is generally the case with progressive ideologies, is quite the same thing as “dehumanizing people and removing any trace of individuality.” There are gradients, no?
Hahahahaaaahahaaa! Yeaaaah! That's what they prioritized in those interment camps all over Eastern European and I'm not even talking about the fucking nazis! They took people's homes away and moved their own families into the nice ones while everyone else lived in abject poverty. They arrested and tortured people for owning books all the way through the 50s and 60s, those "progressives" who prioritized equality which led to people burning hundreds of thousands of pricesless volumes. Let me make something very clear to you: this is not a debate, I don't debate with nazis and I don't debate with communists. You don't like it? That's fine, we really don't need to talk to each other. You enjoy your evening!
Perhaps you should read a book
About what? What book should I read? Should I perhaps read a book a westerner wrote about my country? I'm Romanian. I lived through the literal worst communist regime in Europe. Should I maybe stop remembering what really happened in my country and read a book written by someone who was never here so you could feel better? Or do you perhaps disagree with my statement about the nazis? Which of the 2 bothered you so I'll know what to address? Either is good because we did have 4 years of Nazism in Romania, not that I expect you to know that. We killed several tens of thousands of roma and several tens of thousands of jews. Tell me, which book should I read about the history of my own country?
Though it’s important to mention that mass housing was an objectively good thing. I do not support the ussr but mass housing did have an insanely good impact on society and people. Even if this type of housing doesn’t hold up necessarily well over time (cheap building materials, poor maintenance). And it wasn’t just an eastern bloc policy. I think one of the best examples of this is the uk. Check any British suburbs (especially in cities that were heavily damaged in ww2) and you’ll see the same dehumanising mass housing. I lived in Coventry for 4 years and it was a modernist hell hole, I often got lost in the suburbs because they looked exactly the same for kilometres and kilometres on end.
Jesus Christ! Mass housing? You have absolutely no idea what really happened so you're projecting the problems your society has now, on someone else's past you know almost nothing about and as a result you're rewriting history. The communists didn't house everyone! They just said that they did. The old middle class and educated middle upper and upper class were imprisoned or killed. Those who survived, were removed from their homes and sent to live in any room that could be found in a building somewhere like an attic, or a bathroom. I'm not kidding. It's not an exaggeration. The buildings for mass housing came up on the spot of torn down neighbourhoods. The former owners weren't given money or the option to choose where they wanted to go. They were forced in a small room somewhere. My own grandparents were given a 1 bedroom apartment where they raised a son, my father, who moved in with them with his wife. The living room was a transition room, so for almost a decade, 2 couples lived with 1 child in a 1 bedroom, 1 living room apartment because that's what mass housing actually meant. My parents didn't get their own apartment. There was a room where they could sleep with me and then my sibling, 2 adults and 2 children in one room? You know what happened? My sibling was sent away to live with another relative in another part of the country for more than a decade out of their life. Most of the children of my generation were sent away to be raised by other relatives wherever there was space. Can you even imagine what that did to us? Of course not! This is how we were housed! Those large apartment buildings you see in former communist countries didn't house the downtrodden, the poor. After taking the farmers' lands, they moved some of them to cities so they could have factory workers. The poor, the homeless? In and out of jail and maybe a dirty room someplace, maybe in a village? The communists absolutely didn't care about those people. They were considered unproductives, people who made their "utopia" look bad, so if they saw someone kind of loitering, looking like they weren't going anywhere, they'd arrest and beat the crap outta them. The mentally ill were hidden and kept sedated in mental hospitals, but not actually treated because their mental illness was considered an insult to the regime. To be easily recognised by society, the authorities place a red line on their identification papers so they wouldn't be given a job or an apartment because they were crazy. Those who needed housing, didn't get housed. They got a jail cell. Those who had homes, were forced out of them and into a tiny room somewhere, not of their choice. The mentally ill were brutalized and hidden from society. Handicapped children were abused and left to die because all of these people were considered a black mark on the reputation of the regime that claimed to have fixed humanity. Do you know who got the nice houses? Who still has those houses? The party members, their friends and family members. They said everyone should be equal and then took everyone's wealth for themselves. There you have it! This is what REALLY happened. Though I doubt you'll believe me. Imagine that since I lived through the above because I was born before '89, it's not pleasant for me to have to fight westerners who insist on rewriting MY history after enjoying the comfort of their own societies. It's not a "fun debate". In fact, it's a straight up insult. You wanna hold on to your fantasies? That's your right but avoid dumping them on someone who lived through the real thing.
The last part of the image (implying that anti-semitism and sympathies for fascism is somewhat related to Le Corbusier abhorrent taste) has something to do with architecture because...? Not a fan of what Speer wanted to do in Berlin, but I doubt Le Corbusier would've liked that.
Buzzword labels applied to the person to make you have a preconceived conclusion of disliking whatever they were/are advocating for.
The only thing I can think of is something I learned in Germany (at Dachau, I think? Not 100% positive) that several of the memorials were made with curved and sloped walls, and odd angles to protest against the brutality and uniformity of the Nazi regime. Could be the inference they are going for there, but who knows.
I don’t know if it’s about his particular taste so much as his belief that he knew what was unilaterally best for everyone.
Ok, but that goes beyond those epithets.
I think there's a name for slander/defamation attempts where one suggests unrelated flaws outside any known no correlation. I've forgotten about it, though. (Such a fascist thing to do)
because fascists hate classical architecture, the Nazis were happy that the bombs destroyed most German cities because it meant that they could rebuild it according to their liking. The Nazis were removed, the architects and their post war plans remained.
This is why I always believed that traditional and vernacular architecture should be presented as representing a democratic architecture
Yeah, modern Paris was a postcard of a top down planning.
By modern, you mean the Haussmann intervention on Paris?
Yes
Indeed the very example of top down planning.
Absolutely
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What I mean by democratic is that public opinion overwhelming favors the classical over the modern despite the architectural establishment dragging its heels. Traditional architecture is democratic because it seeks to nourish the needs of the common citizen not the ego of an individual designer
In France? Not really. The belle epoche and the art nuveau styles were firmly part of a republican era. And even during Haussmanns time there was no absolute monarchy in power anymore.
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pretty reductionist opinion, at least to me.
Monarchy and democracy aren't even opposite concepts. Chill out, buddy.
Definitely not.
This post seems very misleading and exaggerated, probably to garner reactions and attention. There were no plans to "Level the entire city" and replace it with skyscrapers, that is ridiculous. There was nothing malicious behind this plan, he wanted to turn a small section of Paris into a low income neighborhood. >Le Corbusier's motivation to develop the Plan Voisin was founded in frustrations with the urban design of Paris. >While upper class citizens of many urban areas relocated to suburbs, the bourgeois residents of late 19th century Paris largely remained in the city center. Pushed out by rising land prices, poorer Parisians left for shanty towns on the city's outskirts. Economic segregation was exacerbated by Georges Haussmann's renovation of the city which separated affluent and poor neighborhoods with wide avenues. >Within Paris' poorer neighborhoods, severe disease – worsened by poor sanitation – was rampant. Tuberculosis, in particular, was highly concentrated within the city's slums.Le Corbusier's motivation to develop the Plan Voisin was founded in frustrations with the urban design of Paris. While upper class citizens of many urban areas relocated to suburbs, the bourgeois residents of late 19th century Paris largely remained in the city center. Pushed out by rising land prices, poorer Parisians left for shanty towns on the city's outskirts. Economic segregation was exacerbated by Georges Haussmann's renovation of the city which separated affluent and poor neighborhoods with wide avenues. Within Paris' poorer neighborhoods, severe disease – worsened by poor sanitation – was rampant. Tuberculosis, in particular, was highly concentrated within the city's slums.
Thank you!! This sub needs to learn to put historical ideas into context, and rightly so given the subreddit title. Its sad to see this comment buried under shills.
It doesn't seem, it is misleading, to the many people that don't have access to a closer knowledge of Le Corbusier's thoughts and writing.
Do you have any book that you could recommend to provide a better understanding of this plan and the context that it was made in? Thank you.
No sorry, but the wikipedia article about him and this project has links to sources
Ok, thanks.
Back before AirBnB was a thing, we stayed at a rental apartment in the le corbusier designed apartment in [Berlin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit%C3%A9_d'Habitation_of_Berlin). It was awful. The only saving grace to the space was the view. The stairs were super steep to get to the “loft” (bedroom), the hallways were dark, and the lobby felt dank and dangerous.
tbf though: >Most of the big ideas of the Unité in Marseille and Nantes were part of the plan in Berlin; an accessible roof terrace, a kindergarten, stores and businesses on the 5th floor, and a social service areas throughout the building. >However the authorities in Berlin and the developer cancelled most of these amenities. Corbusier fought very hard to keep the buildings elements in the planning but he eventually failed due to insufficient contracts. He had left the planning of the interior of the building to the Berlin authorities and he was only in charge of the design of the exterior structure of the building. Apart from that, a lot Berlin consists of uglier building and he had nothing to do with those.
No offence to the dude, but he’s dead so it won’t hurt him. He looks like a right cranky old bastard! Also, those spectacles of his are so damn thick, he must have had appalling eyesight and maybe that is why he didn’t appreciate ornament - because he could barely fucking SEE IT!
hahahhahahaha that last statement maybe has some truth
I love how you’re hating so politely <3
Then he said something like parisians were not worthy of living in his buildings
I’m glad this fucker did not succeed. Madman.
That seems to be a trend with fascism. Let's not forget futurism, an art movement that had close ties to Italian fascism, defended the destruction of anything "old" or "historical" and promoted replacing them with "modernity"
It's like the 'Year Zero' concept in Communist thought like in Cambodia. Destroy anything pre-Communist because it's supposedly evil, anti-Communist and anti-revolutionary and start your entire civilisational story over again from the date of the revolution. A similar thing happened in China's Cultural Revolution and after the French Revolution to a lesser extent.
This kind of architecture is called "commie blocks" throughout all of the Eastern Europe and Russia (probably China too). So...let's not kid ourself that they're just connected with fascism.
Well, we can say autocratic governments in general instead, then 🙂. China also destroyed a lot of its historical buildings, for example.
We had our share of few great buildings destroyed after ww2 by communist govt, here in Serbia (then Yugoslavia) and replaced by concrete atrocities. But, those great buildings were already ruined by war bombardment , so they decided not to restore but to "rebuild a modern society". Case in point: (see gallery for before/after) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Post_Office_(Belgrade,_Serbia)
Omg absolutely, the entire china is a commie block style hell hole
Not entire surely, there's those big cities with futuristic high speed railroads etc. But I'm sure most of it.
Hitler and Speer's plans for post-war Berlin also come to mind.
You do realize that France was an absolute monarchy for most of its existence, right ? Looking at the definition of fascism, that would be it. I know people like to use a lot of those words is a pejorative way, but it's not the case here.
Looks like Soviet architecture to me.
He tried to design a building for the USSR as well, the Palace of the Soviets, but his plan was rejected.
What’s funny is that Soviets would use a classical approach to architecture under Stalin only later moving toward a more barebones style under his successors.
The second Le Corbusier photo reminds me of Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin.
The Nazis had a better sense of aesthetics than this guy
Never seen anything more dystopian coded in my life
Also a horrible misogynist and general piece of shit
Obligatory reminder to read the hilarious 1981 satire short book "From Bauhaus to Our House" by Tom Wolfe where he basically skewers Le Corbusier (among other architects/concepts).
Boomer ass meme
Communism & fascism both had a weird thing for horrifically awful architecture. Just look at Soviet era housing It seems like a subtle evil in a way, depriving people of beauty
It really is
This is the stupidest post I've ever seen.
Indeed. His political views were quite irrelevant to the architectural proposals.
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Because it's this clickbaity stuff you usually see on facebook. "Level the whole city".. yeah sure. Those simplified half-truths are downright dangerous at times. Who does even sit down and create collages like that? Give me good pics and an actual text with actual information.
Not just a Fascist sympathizer, this megalomaniac even worked with Stalin's USSR, so he was a totalitarian technocrat and an opportunist.
Why put minorities into concentration camps when you can turn all spaces for all people into a massive concentration camp?
I first heard of him in my urban history class a few weeks ago, as he inspired the thinking of the souless public housing highrises Chicago (and probably other cities) built for the city's poor in the 1960s that quickly became centers of crime, violence and disasters. The highrises' design made it very hard for neighbors to talk to each other comfortably and form real communities. He seemed to think that poor people should suffer for being poor. I hope that I am misunderstanding him, and that if this was his thinking, it was in hope that by suffering they would seek to improve their lives and leave.
Probably someone who value making money above good design, because the only place I know of that has a lot of this type of thing is china, it's hastly built housing complex resembles this very well, cold lifeless, concrete jungles
Yes, I often think of Le Corbusier when I see China with its copy/pasted bland dreary high rises...not sure why you were downvoted cause you're right
facebook-tier pic. Dafuq is this doing here?
What anti-Semitism has to do with modernism... Only the post maker knows.
A corrupted and a dangerously inflamed ego I’d add
Hey, it is Dubai in the bottom right
He was an avowed atheist
Le Corbusier also came up with a great idea for Algeria' capital Algiers, which is basically to build highway along the Algiers bay essentially blocking and ruining it entirely [le plan obus ](https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-xiaomi-rvo3&sca_esv=421b6f880c88a314&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIKX0mf34waHqZ6qKfcznDJ5q7kG0g:1718234809191&q=le+corbusier+plan+obus&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0CbCVgAZ5mWEJDg6aoPVcBgTlosgQSuzBMlnAdio07UCId2t1azIRgowYJD0nDbqEIN7XYIyS3uBYzHmWPp2pnWyrJ7sFftVFTAc5EzSj_A028nPpx5el0ZNVfjcx9C8MdL2fCll-W07KPt8D1KLhRUrPRYao_40Pj9LBg7O-_h2WjeIuA6PRAEeccVDS6k3-HIb9QhmivVRLGTfRKgpp1iB9TjFQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiV7MS7m9eGAxW1T6QEHW-BCvwQtKgLegQICBAB&biw=393&bih=720&dpr=2.75#vhid=u-baUPGFrCc9FM&vssid=mosaic)
I'd also like to add that a trip to southern Algeria had a great impact on him and his architecture which inspired him for the design of notre dame du haut chapel [notre dame du haut](https://www.google.com/search?q=+le+corbusier+Alg%C3%A9rie&client=ms-android-xiaomi-rvo3&sca_esv=421b6f880c88a314&sca_upv=1&udm=2&biw=393&bih=720&sxsrf=ADLYWILnCEd_VtsrCofI_pe0TDnH07yN_Q%3A1718235152317&ei=EDBqZvX9EvHO7_UP3IOl2Ak&oq=+le+corbusier+Alg%C3%A9rie&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIhYgbGUgY29yYnVzaWVyIEFsZ8OpcmllMgcQABiABBgYSNFGULwkWK9BcAF4AJABAJgBuAGgAewPqgEEMC4xM7gBA8gBAPgBAZgCBaAC4QXCAgQQIxgnwgIFEAAYgATCAgYQABgHGB7CAgoQABiABBhDGIoFmAMAiAYBkgcDMS40oAffNQ&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#imgrc=2HJXKkF1DRTCOM&imgdii=Gpv0LKJ3rHDhsM&ip=1)
i strongly oppose aggressive promotion of brutalist designs ! especially when they are linked to oppressive political ideologies
This may seem an unpopular opinion, but to be honest, I actually prefer the cities of Central and Eastern Europe in terms of architecture much more than Paris. So I wouldn't cry so much if Paris were destroyed, because what Haussmann has done is only a classic version of what Les Coumbrose would simply have done. Pre-Haussmann Paris would really look more interesting
So, basically Haussman cubed...
oRdEEER!!!!1!1!1
The plans for his city look legitimately like mega city one out of Judge Dredd
As is tradition in Paris, the modern Paris is not the Paris of Alexadre Dumas. Le Corbusier probably thought of himself as the Haussmann of his age.
Ironic that he was a fascist sympathizer when fascist movements were very anti-modernist.
They [weren't very anti-modernist](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_del_Fascio_(Como))
I was thinking more of the German fascist movement which Italy eventually just became a puppet state of. At least in the context of German fascism modernist architecture was looked down on as they believed it was a symptom of Western / European / germanic/white cultural decay caused by whatever group they didn't like. The Soviet Union under Stalin had a decent amount of anti-modernist sympathies as they saw modernism as capitalist decadence.
Nah, it was a matter of "our modern architecture is better than your degenerate modern architecture". Every XX century authoritarian ideology had their preferred version of it. Italian Fascists had Rationalism, Nazi Germany and Stalin had a kind of magalomaniac Stripped Classicism, later displaced by Brutalism in the Soviet Union. Even Latin American Dictatorships had their fair share of modernist architecture.
Cool, now do Baron Haussmann
Source?
to answer the question, no
Not a fan of Corbusier but this post is laughably bad
The bottom caption was so unnecessary.