The Primitive Savoye

“The Primitive Savoye”
by
Diego Carbajal
Arch 422
April 12th, 2011

When we begin to discuss about the impact of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in architectural history we immediatelyacknowledge it as an icon of the modernist era. The direct association with the rejection of historical architectural types is one of the many intentions of Le Corbusier’s work, but the significance ofanalyzing the work emerges out of the need to identify architecture as a constantly evolving attempt to escape the conventionality of such canonic profession; if we are able to discover an architecture freefrom historic routes we will be able to declare the liberating and genuinely expressive characteristics of the practice. Then, architecture becomes art- beautiful. In the case of The Villa Savoye wefall short from this objective [Architecture is still stifled by costume], mostly because of its direct association to the Primitive Hut; the most classical instance of architectural historic tradition.In trying to systematically describe The Villa Savoye as the modern representation of the Primitive Hut we must first restate such status; the Villa Savoye is not only a representation of thePrimitive Hut; the Villa Savoye is the Primitive Hut! It is a direct modern result of its maturity. It is such classical structural order plus program. The only difference lies between the idea and thestandards of habitable space; the idea being the structure and the standards being Le Corbusier’s “Four Formal Principles” and his “Five Points of Architecture”.
The Villa Savoye is the honestcombination of the two; the clear prismatic inhabitable volume defined by the play of light on the flat surface generated by the geometric essence of the plan, which at the same time is ruled by themathematical perfection of the golden proportions. Then we jump into the five points of architecture and we recognize that such volume is held up by the supportive grid of the pilates which subsequently...