Le Corbusier, Archtecture and Technique: Moscow Centrosoyus, Le Corbusier, Arquitectura y Técnica: El Centrosoyus de Moscú, 1928-1936

Abstract

Le Corbusier’s references to the idea of the machine as the emblem of a new era and an architecture that should be modern are well known. The relationship between the car and architecture suggested the axiom of architecture as la machine à habiter.But in the 1930’s, the idea of technique became an obsession that was to be expressed in areas such as movement and circulation and new building technologies in steel and glass that allow large transparent surfaces, and finally, in innovative air conditioning systems, which should engender an international architecture. These new principles of a highly technical and objective nature were accompanied by an unmistakeable desire for aesthetic and space, an essential objective for Le Corbusier. At the Moscow Centrosoyus all these issues are raised for the first time with absolute forcefulness, even technical principles on artistic prevail, because they represent the essence of modernity as the guarantors of precision, economy, and universality. In this project, despite the failure of its full realization, after a hectic design process begun in 1928, is presented as a direct correlation of the aphorism: " Techniques are the very basis of poetry: they open a new cycle in architecture”. Indeed, thereafter, for Le Corbusier, architecture and technology are identified as the image, symbol and instrument of the new society.