Le Corbusier called a house a 'machine for living in'. His masterpiece leaked so badly its owners left.
In 1927 Le Corbusier set out five rules for modern architecture made possible by reinforced concrete: stilts, roof gardens, open plans, ribbon windows and free facades. The Villa Savoye embodied all five. It was also plagued by leaks and flooding, and the family abandoned it around 1939.
Le Corbusier's 'Five Points of a New Architecture' was first given as a lecture in 1927 and published in 1929. He insisted they were not aesthetic fantasies but architectural facts implied by reinforced concrete. First, pilotis: a grid of slim concrete columns lifting the house off the damp ground. Second, a roof garden on the flat concrete roof. Third, a free plan, since columns rather than load-bearing walls carry the weight, so interior walls can go anywhere.
Fourth, horizontal ribbon windows running between the columns, which he argued lit rooms better than tall narrow ones. Fifth, a free facade: with floors cantilevered beyond the columns, the outer wall no longer holds anything up and can be designed independently of the structure. Standardised, industrially made components, he argued, would free architects to concentrate on the real problem of how people would use a building.
The Villa Savoye at Poissy, built from 1928 to 1931, is the classic demonstration. The house floats on pilotis, with the ground floor curving at the radius a car needs to turn; ramps and stairs carry you up to a roof terrace in a scripted 'architectural promenade'. It became a landmark of modernism and, in 2016, part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing.
It was also barely habitable. The Savoyes' complaints of pervasive leaks and flooding went largely unaddressed, and they abandoned the house around 1939. Wraparound glass tends to overheat in summer and lose heat in winter. After the war the villa lay derelict until a campaign, backed by Le Corbusier himself, saved it from demolition. By the mid-1930s he had already softened his rules and was drawing on vernacular building and nature.
Source: Wikipedia — "Five Points of a New Architecture" · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
