IngentaConnect The godless temple, `organon of the infinite'

Author: Carl, Peter¹

Source: The Journal of Architecture, Volume 10, Number 1, February 2005 , pp. 63-90(28)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

Abstract:

This essay seeks to illuminate our understanding of ‘space' by showing how Le Corbusier's concept of dwelling draws upon the notion of the secular sacred. The vehicle of analysis is the close correlation between the disposition of his own apartment, at 24 Rue Nugesser et Coli, Paris (1933), and a critical sequence of his Le poème de l'angle droit , published 22 years later. The correlation gives substance and structure to his repeated declaration to ‘make the house a temple', in turn part of the universal claims of his concept of unité and therefore a significant element of his cultural aspirations regarding housing. The terms of reference for such a reformulation have their source in Romantic thought, with which this essay begins. However, the particular configuration of themes on which Le Corbusier's domestic symbolism depends—a primordial room oriented to the horizon, the contemplation of a paradigmatic woman by a creative male, a representational regime oriented to controlling the cultural background—is already present in certain Marian paintings of the fifteenth century. The configuration seeks to ensure a form of salvation re-interpreted by Le Corbusier in the light of artistic poésie and philosophical reflection. At the same date, Paul Valéry argues for the paradox of painting as a pure noumenal philosophy. This suggests that the long history of the secular sacred depends upon requiring the transcendent to be also transparent to thought, an ambiguity that lies at the heart of the universality claimed for ‘space' by Sigfried Giedion.

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The godless temple, ‘organon of the infinite'