Are you familiar with Le Corbusier? He was a Swiss (later French) architect who was one of the originators of what we would now call modern architecture. Controversial and fascinating, a full discussion of Le Corbusier and his works is far beyond the scope of this installment of Cold Start, being written in a bed at 3 am, but that’s fine, because all I really want to talk about is how much the man loved his car, a 1927 Voisin C7 Lumineuse.
You can tell Le Corbusier was very into his car because he seemed to make sure it was included in as many pictures of his various architectural projects as possible, and in the photographs where you see him with the car, like the one above, his pride is quite obvious, and, to those of us also smitten with our cars, familiar.
I mean, look at him up there, in his funny sweater, standing proudly by the fender of his Voisin! Here’s another photo from what appears to be that same day, this time with LeC’s wife Yvonne:
The car itself is quite interesting; this was the small Voisin, with a 1.5-liter four making about 44 horsepower, and a very lightweight body made of aluminum. The car itself has a very architectural – even modern architectural – look to it, being quite boxy and featuring large expanses of glass.
It’s not exactly sleek, but it is clean and crisp and quite unadorned (save for the iconic winged hood ornament) and stands proudly bold and upright, that vertical windshield a defiant laugh in the face of the wind.
Le Corbusier parked the car in front of many of his famous buildings, as you can see here in front of the Villa Stein from around 1928, a house built for the sister-in-law of the famous writer Gertrude Stein. I like how the car always seems to look a bit dirty and well-used in these pictures.
Here it is peeking out of the garage of the Villa Stein, and here it is at the base of the famous Villa Savoy – wait, as a commenter pointed out, this is a different Voisin. Also, I’m told the radius of the cylindrical base and surrounding driveway were scaled based on the turning radius of a Citroën:
Le Corbusier really, really liked his car. He eventually got to know Gabriel Voisin, and Voisin sponsored Le Corbusier’s plan to rework central Paris to be a modernized, rational type of city, clever and clean and efficient while also somewhat cold, sterile, and (arguably) charmless. This was the Voisin Project:
Perhaps thankfully, it was never really taken seriously, but it gives a good insight into the kind of aesthetic and philosophy Le Corbusier brought to architecture, just on a really grand scale.
I think Le Corbusier genuinely believed such a city plan would bring the most benefits to the most people, and in some ways, he may not have been wrong. But it also shows an almost complete disinterest in the history and culture of a given city, and while this may work great for a place already lacking in charm and history like, say, Fresno (I kid, I kid, I’m sure it’s gotten better than when I was there and it was all muffler shops and sad-looking strip clubs) but this was never going to fly in Paris, of all places.
Remember, this was the guy who once said “a house is a machine for living,” and you know, he’s not really wrong.
Le Corbusier actually once designed a car on his own, too, a fascinating and clever little peoples’ car called the Voiture Minimum, designed in response to a contest run by the Société des Ingénieurs de l’Automobile (SIA) in 1936.
It’s a little rear-engined three-seat snail shell of a car, incredibly minimal and clever, and would likely have made a successful city car for anyone had it ever been actually built, which it hadn’t. I should cover this in more detail at some point, because I really do like the idea of this thing.
For now though, I just want all of us to feel a bit of kinship with this old architect, perhaps the one that first established the architects-wear-funny-statement-glasses archetype, and how much he really, really liked his car.
The car is still around, in a collection in Spain, which I suspect would make the old architect pretty happy to hear.
Not nearly as famous English Architects Alison and Peter Smithson (but still influential) were so enamoured by their Citroen DS that they wrote a book about it. As in Ds: An Eye on the Road – Alison Smithson
The Voisin Project looks a lot like Krypton. Foundation problems ruined everything.
Turns out however, that Le Corbusier actually designed homes as “Machines for constantly repairing”. I’m surprised he wasn’t fond of German luxury cars.
Based on their work, Im convinced architects are narcissists. They do not care about surroundings or clients but displaying themselves. You can take a modern building from Dubai and place it in Amsterdam or Phoenix and it would look just as boxy, charmless and out of place everywhere.
In a venn diagram with one circle “modern architecture” and the other “vehicle” you find the Cybertruck. It looks like a rolling Apple store.
Lots of them are narcissists for sure. The more academically minded the more narcissistic they tend to be. I wouldn’t call myself a narcissist despite being an architect, but I’m not your average joe architect either. I’ve considered leaving the profession more times that I can count on two hands.
oh, you’re looking to blame developers then, and maybe even capitalism..
I was a product designer for a couple of years, and out of maybe 50 things that went in to production two were interesting and one was attractive.
Most of the clients didn’t seem to care much about making anything attractive, even when it wouldn’t cost more. People like bland.
That sounds like a right description of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Perhaps Le Corbusier was an inspiration for the main character, Howard Roark.
Roark is said to be based on Frank Lloyd Wright, another egomaniacal architect who loved his car(s), especially his Packard.
That is true for quite a few of the modernists. Very few of them actually gave a shit about the surroundings and how the building would fit in. Many of them expected the building to cause a shift for the surroundings to fit the building instead. Following World War I Art Deco and Streamline Modern replaced so much of Europe’s destroyed architecture in the 1920s that it created an entire group of people detached from their architectural culture and they felt the need to impose that break from history on the rest of the world. Compare Le Corbusier to his contemporary Louis Sullivan (and Sullivan’s teacher Frank Furness) and see how one wanted to replace everything and the other wanted to add to what already existed.
I was led to believe all architects drove Saabs.
Most of them can’t afford to drive anything more exotic than a 5 year old Volvo these days.
I was helping hire an architect in 1984 to design some office space. We met for lunch and he was driving a 2002tii. I liked him immediately. That never changed. He made us a very functional, practical and efficient work space that really stood out.
Kinda like a 2002.
Had a similar experience, except mine drove an SSR. Not sure what that said.
My dad was a structural engineer, so I was brought up to believe that all architects were lazy egomaniacs who sketched out something they wanted regardless of the client, and then left it to the sharper minds of engineers not to let it fall over.
I’ve met quite a few architects since then and I’ve slowly come to realise exactly how right my dad was.
That’s fighting talk where I come from. Us Architects think that Structural Engineers are all imagination-less dullards who refuse to specify any structural member less than 16″ in height. 😎
That’s why I went for mechanical engineering.
Frank Lloyd Wright feels seen.
Egomaniacs, sometimes, but working architects are never lazy – the work load is super crazy, and most architects i know work 60hrs+ a week for considerably less money than you’d think…
Maybe lazy was the wrong word.
What’s the word for when you only do the pretty parts of a job?
I’m kidding. If I thought being an architect was actually easy I’d have tried it.
I suspect the worst of them sleep wearing a CPAP in which the air intake is plumbed into their own rectum.
The best Architects work hand in hand with a structural engineer. Check out the Sendai Mediatheque by Toyo Ito and Matsuro Sasaki. I visited just after the Tohuku earthquake in 2011 where it was ground zero. and it was incredible how well it held up. The books however all ended up on the floor.
I enrolled in an architecture elective when I was in college because I thought it would be interesting. I made it through two classes before dropping the class; the professor was unbearably pretentious, and his insistence that his views on architecture were the way we should see things made me realize that the class would be too stressful (and likely damaging to my GPA). I did manage to get a complete refund on the textbook, which was a nearly $150 pop-up book, because I was able to put the plastic wrapper back on neatly enough that it looked untouched.
Pictures of the Villa Savoye with that car are in every architectural history textbook, and I’ve always been struck by how anachronistic the car appears; a building that looks like it was built yesterday and this horseless-carriage which is so clearly from the distant past.
There are some weird anachronistic contrasts through the 1960s.
Like late-50s military aircraft compared to the cars of the day. Or architecture vs cars or clothing or home appliances.
Along the same lines, Frank Lloyd Wright was a bit of a car nut too.
In his early career, he could be seen tearing around Chicago in his yellow 1909 Stoddard-Dayton K5.
In later years, he ordered up a 1940 Lincoln Continental Coupe – He did not pay for this car. After a wreck in 1946, he had it rebuilt with a Sedanica de Ville open roof, a half-moon opera window, no rear window at all – painted in his signature “Cherokee Red”
https://mycarquest.com/2021/12/the-architects-choice-frank-lloyd-wrights-1940-lincoln-continental.html
Later on, when he did the Mercedes-Benz showroom for Max Hoffman in NYC, he took a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing as payment – after he had it painted “Cherokee Red” (Which was fairly similar to the later MB standard color “English Red”. He also had a Mercedes-Benz “Adenauer” 300S in that color.
https://petrolicious.com/articles/was-frank-lloyd-wright-the-architect-for-the-automotive-golden-age
Certainly glad that Corbusier didn’t get away with his grandiose city planning for Paris. The dude was infatuated with making cities work with the automobile, which was at the time this brand-spanking new thing that only rich people could buy. I saw an exhibition of his models and drawings at the Centre Pompidou probably 20 years ago and let me tell you, Paris would have been destroyed had his plans been executed.
Paris was mostly saved, but every other city in the world was pretty much destroyed by car-centric design from 1945 onwards.
his later plannings/buildings and drawings are much much better than his early stuff, fwiw !
Brutalist architecture for a brutal time.
The contrast between Le Courbusier’s rational modernist and largely monochromatic architecture and indeed his choice of car and his (presumably) brightly coloured and fussy Fairisle sweater is quite striking,also his wife’s floral print frock.
Is that body by Voisin or some coachbuilder? It looks a bit more agricultural than most other examples I’ve seen.
“[A]nd here it is at the base of the famous Villa Savoy – wait, as a commenter pointed out, this is a different Voisin.”
Yeah, that one looks quite similar to the utterly lovely example the Lane Motor Museum has: https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/voisin-c28-1936/
Gabriel Voisin was an aviation pioneer who turned to making cars partly due to his distaste for seeing his aeronautical products used in military applications; his cars were an odd mix of aeronautically inspired aerodynamics (such as the scalloped edges on the running boards of some of his cars which served as a slipstream aid, not unlike the dimpled surface of a golf ball) and “that vertical windshield a defiant laugh in the face of the wind.”
After his luxury car endeavors closed down due to the Depression Voisin then turned to producing economy cars for the people; these cars were called Biscuter or Biscooter (a humorous reference likening the cars to two scooters): https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/autonacional-biscuter-100-1956/ which actually echoes Le Corbusier’s Voiture Minimum.
“I should cover this in more detail at some point, because I really do like the idea of this thing.” Yes, please do!! The Voiture Minimum (and also Voisin’s Biscooter) would make for some mighty fascinating reading!!
The Biscuter didn’t do well in France – a Citroen 2CV was so much more car for not much more money – but it put Franco’s Spain on wheels before the SEAT 600 provided a “real-car” upgrade.
Never liked his buildings, too much grey concrete, and draughty windows. And just recently the extent of his collaboration with the Nazis during their occupation of France has come out.
I know architects are the most amoral of professionals but still. Turns out he joined very anti-semite groups in the 1930s too.
It is still a mystery how he was not arrested in the “purge” after De Gaulle took power, especially as some of his projects probably involved slave labour.
Others, post war, lasted all of 30 years before being pulled down as slums.
Wait, what do you mean “architects are the most amoral of professionals”? I’m an architect and take issue with that statement. Yeah, there are some pretty fucked up things that a small group of architects have done – i.e. collaborate with fascists – but have you looked at what a tech bro does these days? Can I introduce you to a guy named Elon? How about real estate developer? Lawyer? Amoral group of professionals? OK, yeah sure, everyone in the profession is amoral. The problem with our profession is that we are serially underpaid for the amount of education and training required, as well as the regulation and responsibility we take on for public safety.
Anyway, Le Corbusier was a dick, and so was Frank Lloyd Wright and pretty much every household-named architect you can think of. It’s an ego problem. The “Starchitect” mindset is one of deep narcissism and does show up in this field. But anyway, rant over.
In my experience, architects will switch positions and take commissions from anyone who is likely to pay them. One moment they are all pink spectacles and lefty trendy — next moment they shave their heads and wear Hugo Boss suits (same firm as designed for the SS) to get and keep a commission. That is what I meant.
There are far too many architects for the amount of work and to build your own cabinet and make a name means, in my experience of watching a few, is you do not worry where the money is coming from — you design for anyone.
Civil and chemical engineers are a close second — the only way they get work is to slot in to a large structured organisation — almost all of which represent the status quo, and often pay to try and keep the status quo in place, even if the people do not want it.
Would love to hear how ethical your profession is. No, nevermind. You’re perfect!
Better believe it.
You know doctors all swear an oath to work on lefties, righties, pretty much anyone.
Amoral bastards.
And they took it to extremes under the Nazis, twisting the oath so that experimenting on live patients was fine because it was for the greater good. You will find doctors as well as their oath, are now strictly boxed in by legal laws, about how and they treat. Again, within doctors, there are a significant majority of those who are in the “do not rock the boat ” get a job in a big hospital and close your eyes.
There are also enough cases of pharma bribes of doctors for them to probably do some soul searching. Except for the amoral bastards.
So all doctors are just the same as the few that were nazis?
Fun fact: every profession that existed in the early 1940s had some members working for the axis powers in WW2.
Yes, but in some cases it was noble. Like undertakers.
Who knew there was a flame thrower on this Autopian site that cared more about professional and moral purity more than automobiles! This guy John Patson is really something special.
Oh yeah – it’s the internet…
I’m an Architect and I endorse this statement.
I can’t think of any single big name current architectural firm that doesn’t enter competitions or accept commissions from despicable regimes like Saudi Arabia, much of the Gulf States, China and even Iran or Russia. It’s like they just have that gene switched off or something.
Working with any of those regimes is abhorrent for sure. But not every architect works on commercial buildings at large firms.
You think thats bad. Wait till you hear about tech, engineering, fossil fuel, mining and defence industries.
Voisins are very beautiful, interesting cars.
They made a documentary called “Dredd” about living in a Le Corbusier high rise, Karl Urban was the narrator. Interesting stuff.
“The Horror!, The Horror!”
The front of the car looks period pleasing enough, but the passenger compartment has all the grace of a concrete bunker, and unfortunately that is the aesthetic he went with.
Was the new Jaguar designer a fan?
This is really fascinating – excellent stuff, Jason! I had never thought of a house as “a machine for living” but now that might be unavoidable.
And holy cow…
“Giorgetto Giugiaro, founder of the Turin design house Italdesign and, as of this writing, 80 years old, could safely be called one of the most successful and prolific auto designers of all time. Giugiaro was impressed and intrigued enough with Le Corbusier’s Voiture Minimum that in 1987 he commissioned a full-scale studio model. After more than half a century of existence only on paper, Le Corbusier’s dream car had finally taken solid, three-dimensional form.”
https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/le-corbusiers-dream-car-the-1936-voiture-minimum/
My wife would be pretty pissed if I was writing on a computer, in bed, at 3am. But, then I remembered you are travelling, right??
Are you travelling for work or pleasure? Seems a bit close to the holiday season to travel for work.
Sorry, being nosey.
I’m back! And always in a bit of trouble.
She doesn’t get angry that you write in bed at 3am???
I’m guessing he was traveling to go to DT’s wedding…I hear they served shower spaghetti at the reception…
Shower Spaghetti day is Friday, funny enough. Yeah, that happened. I hope things went great!
L’Homer
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/cs_lecorb_vm1.jpg
Crazy how old fashioned that Voisin looks parked at Villa Stein!
“here it is at the base of the famous Villa Savoy” — I’m pretty sure it’s not the same car — it’s a Voisin, but clearly a different model.
Like seemingly anyone famous connected with cars, he’s a complex guy. It’s always amazing to me how revolutionary his ideas were at the time. To my eyes, a ’20s car looks out of place next to what’s actually contemporaneous but looks completely current architecture to us.
But at the same time, while he definitely meant well, his dictatorial manner and belief in his complete brilliance lead to some pretty enduring bad stuff…for those of us old enough to have witnessed it, the urban public housing fiasco of the late 20th century came about b/c of his influence and actual ideas.
Still, I’ve owned a chaise lounge for decades, and it’s a wonderful place to take a short nap on a weekend.
Best dog bed ever.
All day long on the chaise longue.
Wow, does that car match the guy’s aesthetic. Like Jason, I looked at it and thought “architectural.”
Also, wow, does Villa Stein look like any medical office building blending into the background on any exurban service road anywhere in America. And it was built in 1928! Thanks for nothing, buddy!
He’s not alone, sadly. Multifamily and mixed use projects look like stacks of shipping containers with a variety of veneers to hide the boxyness. It seems like architects no longer have any more imagination or sense of beauty than your average engineer. It really sucks, but I suppose it’s actually more driven by cost than anything else.
What’s intriguing to me is that the original modernist/internationalist stuff looked mass-produced, but was actually hand-made (design) or one-off (architecture). But the logic of it inexorably ends up where we are now I guess.
As an engineer I’m hugely offended to become somehow the benchmark of unimaginative ugliness.
I dare you to look at the coolant jacket of a cylinder head and not find it if not beautiful then at very least beguiling.
Sorry, I work in civil engineering. I have to constantly remind myself that without architects everything would look the same and without engineers everything would fall down. I definitely see beauty in mechanical things, especially steam engines.
It’s not lack of imagination, it’s lack of money for construction, particularly in any building led by developers for profit (which is basically all of them). It’s why I am in residential architecture – because clients actually care about the design of their houses.
but then, you are stuck with working only for the rich…
Yep… There’s no great way to practice architecture.
brother, i feel you.
im trying to get a job with a place that does a lot of quality low income housing- there;s a lot more firms that do it in Europe, but of course…
My lady friend (partner, whatever) started in architecture working for a mom-and-pop architecture firm. They were incredibly accommodating and cautioned their juniors not to overwork, keep to a 40-hour week, and remember to live first, work second.
After working for another firm that did NOT share those values, she realized that she liked building things more than designing them, so she added a Masters in project management. Now she works for a major school district, managing projects to build and renovate public schools that work better for the staff and more importantly, the kids.
I guess what I’m saying is that she learned the best way to work in architecture is to work with architects, but not to be one.
Yes, that is a good avenue for some architects. It’s a shame so many of us end up in bad firms that abuse their staff by overworking and underpaying them. I’ve been in those firms before – it’s inevitable in this profession. Sucks that you end up with a masters degree, tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and years of experience before you end up realizing this profession isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve managed to stay in it for over 20 years now, but only with careful boundary setting and choosing family over work.
Architects are no often used for these sort of projects.
I was hoping that the Voiture Minimum would be standing on pilotis on which it would runs down the roads (and across rutted fields cradling a fat load of eggs, so take that, Andre Citröen), but I guess that would be unrealistic for the base model.