After reading the latest Le Corbusier reading, I realized that the question “What should I draw” does not linger in my own thoughts alone. While in Florence, Jeanneret wrote a letter to his mentor, L’Eplattenier, expressing his disappointment with the architecture he was observing in that city. He writes, “I am here in Florence; I have now visited everything. The town seems to me poorly endowed where architecture is concerned… The Old Palace is a great marvel, but it is difficult to make a study of it.”
Allan Brooks states, “The fact that he [Le Corbusier] usually provided an ‘inventory’ of all the items on a façade may have been because he felt it necessary to list everything as a kind of safeguard because he was unsure which were important.” In other words, Corb sometimes “over sketched” and included things that he might not need.
I personally find myself in that situation frequently. When sketching “on the go”, I often tend to note down various things of what I am drawing instead of focusing on what I truly am after. A big part of it is that I sometimes do not really know what I am after in the first place.
When visiting the Biltmore hotel a week ago, I ended up producing four different drawings, all of which relate to the courtyard. At the time, my reasoning was that I simply enjoyed being in the space. Now, I honestly think I was taking the “easy way out” with that reason because I could not come up with a better one. “I enjoyed being in the space” is too general. I believe the drawings I ended up with are ones a painter would produce, not those of an architect.
A few days later I was in the Miami Tower. When first stepping out to the outdoors of the sky lobby, I gazed at the pergola in amazement. It was beautiful. However, I really wanted to narrow my sketches down from a “nice view” to something “architectural”. I ended up with a perspective, plan, detail, and a section of the place. I also included some notes. I think Allan Brooks would label that an inventory as well.
It would be ridiculous to compare myself to Jeanneret. Nevertheless, I somehow find comfort in the fact that what I am going through currently is not unprecedented. Le Corbusier went through the same “search” in his early days of sketching, and obviously things ended up well for him, as he became one of the most successful architects in the history of the profession.
The reading and ticket for this week are based on the comparison of what Le Corbusier saw and drew during his travels through Italy while he was around the age of 20. The reason for reviewing the works from this part of his life is to see and understand what he was thinking and relate it back to our drawings. This is very important to me because I believe that learning something outside of your generation is harder to comprehend then if you were studying something within your generation.
Le Corbusier traveled through Italy jotting down notes and drawing sketches, but there was nothing random about what he did, when he did it, and how he did it. It is interesting to see the evolution of his drawings from beginning to the end. While flipping through the reading, I realized a very important aspect of Le Corbusier’s travel drawings. He did not stick to one medium throughout his trip. He used every different type of material that he could use to establish what that specific drawing was to be about. For example, Fig. 3.37 on page 92 is full of sketches of the tower of the Badia in Florence, done with pencil on yellow paper. I believe, whether true or not, that he used such a flexible material such as graphite to establish the hard verticality of the towers. I could be wrong and he could have only had a pencil on the day that he drew the tower, but knowing the history and tendencies of the great artists and architects, nothing is happenstance. Everything Le Corbusier did had purpose, which leads me to believe that the type of material he used for a specific drawing held information about a moment then the drawing itself. This is intriguing to me because, going back to the pervious reading about Peter Eiseman’s travels, we need to learn how to read/see the implied characteristics of a moment in order to truly understand where you are and what you see. Another example of what I believe is no coincidence, is in Fig. 3.46 the interior of the Spanish Chapel Santa Maria Novella, Florence. This is a more clear drawing because of what he used to draw it. The drawing is pencil and watercolor (red, blue, white, yellow, burnt sienna, and green) on tan paper. The watercolor drawing further intensifies the romanticism of Spanish architecture by giving a rigid gated doorway a gentle and delicate look through a medium. Even the palette he chose has some underlining idea behind it. His warm color palette with splashes of blues and yellows again enhance the romantic nature of this doorway.
What Le Corbusier did during his travels is fantastic, but it will mean absolutely nothing to me if I cannot relate it back to the way I do my travel drawings. So far I have only worked in pencil and only intended to do so. However, after reading about the way Le Corbusier conducted his travel regimen, I believe I can slowly start making my way to pen. Eventually I will be able to express a moment of a place by what I draw, how I draw it, and what I draw it with. The latter is a question that I can add to the previous four that I should contemplate when producing a good set of travel drawings.
Elizabeth Fleischhauer When we discuss architects in our history classes, we usually only learn about their most famous works, which rarely occur early in their career. It’s difficult to imagine any architect as a young adult, and even more difficult to picture them attempting to learn about architecture without any guidance. Yet this exactly the situation Le Corbusier, at that point still known as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, found himself in when he was only 19. I knew from architectural history courses that Le Corbusier was first and foremost a painter, that he became an architect later and lacked any formal architectural training. I did not realize that, in the beginning, he too had “eyes that do not see,” at least where architecture was concerned. On his travels through Italy, his sketches were mainly of paintings, and few were of architecture. The architectural drawings he did make were mainly of ornament; he completely ignored concepts like volume, massing, and spatial articulation that are crucial to the proper study of architecture. It was almost shocking to read about Le Corbusier’s naiveté when first encountering architecture. He preferred to visit Gothic buildings and completely ignored the Renaissance and Baroque architecture in the cities he visited. Having been to several of the cities and buildings mentioned in the reading during my semester abroad, I can’t believe that someone supposedly interested in architecture would not visit the works of Palladio and Bramante. Even today, one hundred years later, architects still go out of their way to see and study important buildings by the Renaissance and Baroque masters. One of the more enlightening points of the reading for me was that Le Corbusier at first detested the avant-garde architecture of the Vienna Secession. Le Corbusier was one of the great 20th century modernists, and the fact that he used to be so interested in studying ornament and Gothic styles is overlooked in discussions of his work. Clearly he eventually had a change of heart, but was he still able to incorporate any of the lessons learned from his studies into his architecture? Did he reject those styles completely? How did he eventually discover how to properly see and view architecture? I’m sure these questions will be answered later in the semester.
Le Corbusier’s Formative Years in Creative Search is very inspiring his work is beautiful and creatively done. The journey that he took in his younger years is absolutely amazing. It is unfortunate that in the current curriculum of becoming an architect that traveling the world and seeing the classic buildings is not required. The idea that an architect can potential not have the real life experience and opportunity is unimaginable. Le Corbusier tour of the world of architecture is like no other. Traveling around Europe with no teacher and no guidance is unheard of. However, while he was is in Italy he was able to see, adventure out, and obtain very valuable information in becoming successful. I did not realize that before Corbusier became an architect that he was only just a painter. His intense studies of areas are like the brief chance we get to explore the surroundings around us. Last week when our class we went to the 100 Miami Towers this was a fun field study of the city. The view from the 20th floor was breath taking as you could see the high skylines and the hustle bustle of the city going on right underneath you. When drawing there and seeing the world in a slightly higher perspective it was a fun challenge to draw exactly what I could see. The other pedestal style buildings surrounding the tower were so haphazardly placed I wonder if that was on purpose or did anyone consider the views that it would create from the other buildings. Unlike Corbusier’s in his travels who was able to spend the entire day in one particular location we got the chance to get a taste of this experience. I enjoyed taking the time viewing the buildings as they literally towered over everything. The scale in which these buildings are at is just plain enormous. One thing I liked most about the Miami tower is the concept of the pedestal style building. The parking garage on the first seven floors and then all the public spaces and commercial interaction up on the top floors. It allows for a downtown to utilize valuable land and make the most of every building. It mentions in the book that it was upon their own interest to see the sculpture and art instead of architecture. The root of their fascination being in art and paintings he did not always enjoy looking at the very architecture we marvel at in Italy. His use of many mediums in his drawings is encouraging seeing as though I have only used pencil. I am often hesitant to try these other useful tools. After looking at his paintings it has caused me to consider widening my horizon and exploring these other helpful mediums. The way that Corbusier is able to express the feeling and capture the surroundings with the use of paint and pen I too would want to try it. Having these drawings will only help when I fully understand how to use them in the future but the practice to get there is just as important. I hope to one day be able to reflect on these current drawings and put them into serious use.
When I first thought of the ticket question “What did Corb do in Italy and what am I doing here,” the first thought that came to my mind was “probably a whole lot of wrong.” To compare myself to Le Corbusier seemed very ambitious. However, this reading showed me that everything I’ve been learning and attempting to do follows many of the same actions that Le Corbusier follows and shows me how to improve on them.
Through his travels, Le Corbusier finds a system of his own that works to his benefit. His technique of documenting through sketches not only improves his hand, but he does it in a way that allows his travel sketches to improve his skills as an architect. What I found most interesting was when the author noted “his [Corbusier’s] constant interest in the way a corner may be handled.” Part of Le Corbusier’s technique is to study the same type of design, in different places. This allows him to understand the basic strategies that are behind similar design issues, learn the many styles used to solve the design issue, and allows him to compare the differences between different designs. The best way to compare two places is to understand them in the same character: plan to plan, section to section, etc.
This approach reminded me of the all too important question, “Why are you drawing what you’re drawing,” and I realized that this is something that I’ve done. My sketches may not have been purposeful, but due to my interest I always seek out the same type of drawings at different sites. At Lincoln Road I explored the view from 1111 because I was interested in seeing the use of nature within the pedestrian mall; at the Miami Tower I drew a view from the sky lobby that showed the abundance of potted plants and trees against a backdrop of skyscrapers. I studied the same idea and how it is executed within different spaces and at different sites. This small sketch can help me learn even more about the individual places. In Lincoln Road my sketch is made from a bird’s eye view and shows the trees shading the pedestrians and rising high above their heads, on the other hand, at the Miami Tower the trees are shown in an eye level view and are small in comparison to the skyscrapers that tower behind them. A section of these two places would also have worked very well in showing the different characters.
I think that Le Corbusier’s technique is something I stumbled upon unknowingly. However, now that I realize what he did and what I’ve been doing, it will help me execute it better in the future. Something else that I found very interesting is Le Corbusier’s return to Italy a few years later. It made me wonder how I would see things differently if I returned to the same site in a few years at the end of my architecture education. Would I still find the same characteristics and view interesting, or would something else catch my eye?
To me, most of Le Corbusier’s Italy drawings are not highly successful. It can be noticed that these drawings took him little time to finish. They are generally of a “low resolution”. Lines were drawn without much care or technical treatment, and they are often too thick. Details are often drawn inaccurately. Water colors are not always carefully applied. They are often of large droplets without a proper value system. In these respects, the drawings do not resemble qualities of a highly successful artistic production. They can be only regarded as Le Corbusier’s travel study drawings that for his own cataloguing and analysis.
However, these drawings are still decent. With so much training in drawing, Le Corbusier was able to pull the drawings together with an accurate proportion system at the large scale. The light-to-dark value system is also generally accomplished to help give to viewers a holistic understanding of the image of an object or space. The drawings represent an ambience but not the object or space itself. In another words, Le Corbusier drew not the physical object or space, but his own emotional apprehension of and reaction to it.
In turn, the inaccurate details that have been drawn do not really hinder such apprehension. With minimal graphical representations and suggestion, viewers would be able to complete an image of the details in their mind based on their past experience. For example, in the drawing of the middle tower on Page 92, the rose window on top, the vertical windows, and even the parapet are drawn without accurate line work and perspective. But viewers would still understand them with the assumption that the windows would have to be symmetrical and the parapet would have a repetitive pattern, despite the fact Le Corbusier did not put everything accurately in the paper space.
Among these Italy travel drawings, only a few drawings are highly successful to me, including the tower top on Page 77, the left-most tower on Page 92, the statue to the left on Page 94, the façade drawing on Page 95, the statue on Page 99, the colonnade on Page 102, and the façade detail on Page 106.
In these drawings, it can be seen that in addition to the ambience explained previously, lines are drawn with greater care; values are applied to a great extent and throughout. Resolution of these drawings is higher with details taken more care of. Viewers not only can appreciate the drawings from afar but can also zoom into them and really study how every component of the object works together. For example, in the drawing of a façade on Page 95, emphasis of the drawing is very clear marked with darker values. Form is apparent with shadows. Meticulously drawn details on the façade make the drawing both artistically beautiful and technically worthwhile.
After reading the latest Le Corbusier reading, I realized that the question “What should I draw” does not linger in my own thoughts alone. While in Florence, Jeanneret wrote a letter to his mentor, L’Eplattenier, expressing his disappointment with the architecture he was observing in that city. He writes, “I am here in Florence; I have now visited everything. The town seems to me poorly endowed where architecture is concerned… The Old Palace is a great marvel, but it is difficult to make a study of it.”
ReplyDeleteAllan Brooks states, “The fact that he [Le Corbusier] usually provided an ‘inventory’ of all the items on a façade may have been because he felt it necessary to list everything as a kind of safeguard because he was unsure which were important.” In other words, Corb sometimes “over sketched” and included things that he might not need.
I personally find myself in that situation frequently. When sketching “on the go”, I often tend to note down various things of what I am drawing instead of focusing on what I truly am after. A big part of it is that I sometimes do not really know what I am after in the first place.
When visiting the Biltmore hotel a week ago, I ended up producing four different drawings, all of which relate to the courtyard. At the time, my reasoning was that I simply enjoyed being in the space. Now, I honestly think I was taking the “easy way out” with that reason because I could not come up with a better one. “I enjoyed being in the space” is too general. I believe the drawings I ended up with are ones a painter would produce, not those of an architect.
A few days later I was in the Miami Tower. When first stepping out to the outdoors of the sky lobby, I gazed at the pergola in amazement. It was beautiful. However, I really wanted to narrow my sketches down from a “nice view” to something “architectural”. I ended up with a perspective, plan, detail, and a section of the place. I also included some notes. I think Allan Brooks would label that an inventory as well.
It would be ridiculous to compare myself to Jeanneret. Nevertheless, I somehow find comfort in the fact that what I am going through currently is not unprecedented. Le Corbusier went through the same “search” in his early days of sketching, and obviously things ended up well for him, as he became one of the most successful architects in the history of the profession.
The reading and ticket for this week are based on the comparison of what Le Corbusier saw and drew during his travels through Italy while he was around the age of 20. The reason for reviewing the works from this part of his life is to see and understand what he was thinking and relate it back to our drawings. This is very important to me because I believe that learning something outside of your generation is harder to comprehend then if you were studying something within your generation.
ReplyDeleteLe Corbusier traveled through Italy jotting down notes and drawing sketches, but there was nothing random about what he did, when he did it, and how he did it. It is interesting to see the evolution of his drawings from beginning to the end. While flipping through the reading, I realized a very important aspect of Le Corbusier’s travel drawings. He did not stick to one medium throughout his trip. He used every different type of material that he could use to establish what that specific drawing was to be about. For example, Fig. 3.37 on page 92 is full of sketches of the tower of the Badia in Florence, done with pencil on yellow paper. I believe, whether true or not, that he used such a flexible material such as graphite to establish the hard verticality of the towers. I could be wrong and he could have only had a pencil on the day that he drew the tower, but knowing the history and tendencies of the great artists and architects, nothing is happenstance. Everything Le Corbusier did had purpose, which leads me to believe that the type of material he used for a specific drawing held information about a moment then the drawing itself. This is intriguing to me because, going back to the pervious reading about Peter Eiseman’s travels, we need to learn how to read/see the implied characteristics of a moment in order to truly understand where you are and what you see. Another example of what I believe is no coincidence, is in Fig. 3.46 the interior of the Spanish Chapel Santa Maria Novella, Florence. This is a more clear drawing because of what he used to draw it. The drawing is pencil and watercolor (red, blue, white, yellow, burnt sienna, and green) on tan paper. The watercolor drawing further intensifies the romanticism of Spanish architecture by giving a rigid gated doorway a gentle and delicate look through a medium. Even the palette he chose has some underlining idea behind it. His warm color palette with splashes of blues and yellows again enhance the romantic nature of this doorway.
What Le Corbusier did during his travels is fantastic, but it will mean absolutely nothing to me if I cannot relate it back to the way I do my travel drawings. So far I have only worked in pencil and only intended to do so. However, after reading about the way Le Corbusier conducted his travel regimen, I believe I can slowly start making my way to pen. Eventually I will be able to express a moment of a place by what I draw, how I draw it, and what I draw it with. The latter is a question that I can add to the previous four that I should contemplate when producing a good set of travel drawings.
Elizabeth Fleischhauer
ReplyDeleteWhen we discuss architects in our history classes, we usually only learn about their most famous works, which rarely occur early in their career. It’s difficult to imagine any architect as a young adult, and even more difficult to picture them attempting to learn about architecture without any guidance. Yet this exactly the situation Le Corbusier, at that point still known as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, found himself in when he was only 19.
I knew from architectural history courses that Le Corbusier was first and foremost a painter, that he became an architect later and lacked any formal architectural training. I did not realize that, in the beginning, he too had “eyes that do not see,” at least where architecture was concerned. On his travels through Italy, his sketches were mainly of paintings, and few were of architecture. The architectural drawings he did make were mainly of ornament; he completely ignored concepts like volume, massing, and spatial articulation that are crucial to the proper study of architecture.
It was almost shocking to read about Le Corbusier’s naiveté when first encountering architecture. He preferred to visit Gothic buildings and completely ignored the Renaissance and Baroque architecture in the cities he visited. Having been to several of the cities and buildings mentioned in the reading during my semester abroad, I can’t believe that someone supposedly interested in architecture would not visit the works of Palladio and Bramante. Even today, one hundred years later, architects still go out of their way to see and study important buildings by the Renaissance and Baroque masters.
One of the more enlightening points of the reading for me was that Le Corbusier at first detested the avant-garde architecture of the Vienna Secession. Le Corbusier was one of the great 20th century modernists, and the fact that he used to be so interested in studying ornament and Gothic styles is overlooked in discussions of his work. Clearly he eventually had a change of heart, but was he still able to incorporate any of the lessons learned from his studies into his architecture? Did he reject those styles completely? How did he eventually discover how to properly see and view architecture? I’m sure these questions will be answered later in the semester.
Le Corbusier’s Formative Years in Creative Search is very inspiring his work is beautiful and creatively done. The journey that he took in his younger years is absolutely amazing. It is unfortunate that in the current curriculum of becoming an architect that traveling the world and seeing the classic buildings is not required. The idea that an architect can potential not have the real life experience and opportunity is unimaginable. Le Corbusier tour of the world of architecture is like no other. Traveling around Europe with no teacher and no guidance is unheard of. However, while he was is in Italy he was able to see, adventure out, and obtain very valuable information in becoming successful. I did not realize that before Corbusier became an architect that he was only just a painter. His intense studies of areas are like the brief chance we get to explore the surroundings around us.
ReplyDeleteLast week when our class we went to the 100 Miami Towers this was a fun field study of the city. The view from the 20th floor was breath taking as you could see the high skylines and the hustle bustle of the city going on right underneath you. When drawing there and seeing the world in a slightly higher perspective it was a fun challenge to draw exactly what I could see. The other pedestal style buildings surrounding the tower were so haphazardly placed I wonder if that was on purpose or did anyone consider the views that it would create from the other buildings. Unlike Corbusier’s in his travels who was able to spend the entire day in one particular location we got the chance to get a taste of this experience. I enjoyed taking the time viewing the buildings as they literally towered over everything. The scale in which these buildings are at is just plain enormous. One thing I liked most about the Miami tower is the concept of the pedestal style building. The parking garage on the first seven floors and then all the public spaces and commercial interaction up on the top floors. It allows for a downtown to utilize valuable land and make the most of every building.
It mentions in the book that it was upon their own interest to see the sculpture and art instead of architecture. The root of their fascination being in art and paintings he did not always enjoy looking at the very architecture we marvel at in Italy. His use of many mediums in his drawings is encouraging seeing as though I have only used pencil. I am often hesitant to try these other useful tools. After looking at his paintings it has caused me to consider widening my horizon and exploring these other helpful mediums. The way that Corbusier is able to express the feeling and capture the surroundings with the use of paint and pen I too would want to try it. Having these drawings will only help when I fully understand how to use them in the future but the practice to get there is just as important. I hope to one day be able to reflect on these current drawings and put them into serious use.
When I first thought of the ticket question “What did Corb do in Italy and what am I doing here,” the first thought that came to my mind was “probably a whole lot of wrong.” To compare myself to Le Corbusier seemed very ambitious. However, this reading showed me that everything I’ve been learning and attempting to do follows many of the same actions that Le Corbusier follows and shows me how to improve on them.
ReplyDeleteThrough his travels, Le Corbusier finds a system of his own that works to his benefit. His technique of documenting through sketches not only improves his hand, but he does it in a way that allows his travel sketches to improve his skills as an architect. What I found most interesting was when the author noted “his [Corbusier’s] constant interest in the way a corner may be handled.” Part of Le Corbusier’s technique is to study the same type of design, in different places. This allows him to understand the basic strategies that are behind similar design issues, learn the many styles used to solve the design issue, and allows him to compare the differences between different designs. The best way to compare two places is to understand them in the same character: plan to plan, section to section, etc.
This approach reminded me of the all too important question, “Why are you drawing what you’re drawing,” and I realized that this is something that I’ve done. My sketches may not have been purposeful, but due to my interest I always seek out the same type of drawings at different sites. At Lincoln Road I explored the view from 1111 because I was interested in seeing the use of nature within the pedestrian mall; at the Miami Tower I drew a view from the sky lobby that showed the abundance of potted plants and trees against a backdrop of skyscrapers. I studied the same idea and how it is executed within different spaces and at different sites. This small sketch can help me learn even more about the individual places. In Lincoln Road my sketch is made from a bird’s eye view and shows the trees shading the pedestrians and rising high above their heads, on the other hand, at the Miami Tower the trees are shown in an eye level view and are small in comparison to the skyscrapers that tower behind them. A section of these two places would also have worked very well in showing the different characters.
I think that Le Corbusier’s technique is something I stumbled upon unknowingly. However, now that I realize what he did and what I’ve been doing, it will help me execute it better in the future. Something else that I found very interesting is Le Corbusier’s return to Italy a few years later. It made me wonder how I would see things differently if I returned to the same site in a few years at the end of my architecture education. Would I still find the same characteristics and view interesting, or would something else catch my eye?
To me, most of Le Corbusier’s Italy drawings are not highly successful. It can be noticed that these drawings took him little time to finish. They are generally of a “low resolution”. Lines were drawn without much care or technical treatment, and they are often too thick. Details are often drawn inaccurately. Water colors are not always carefully applied. They are often of large droplets without a proper value system. In these respects, the drawings do not resemble qualities of a highly successful artistic production. They can be only regarded as Le Corbusier’s travel study drawings that for his own cataloguing and analysis.
ReplyDeleteHowever, these drawings are still decent. With so much training in drawing, Le Corbusier was able to pull the drawings together with an accurate proportion system at the large scale. The light-to-dark value system is also generally accomplished to help give to viewers a holistic understanding of the image of an object or space. The drawings represent an ambience but not the object or space itself. In another words, Le Corbusier drew not the physical object or space, but his own emotional apprehension of and reaction to it.
In turn, the inaccurate details that have been drawn do not really hinder such apprehension. With minimal graphical representations and suggestion, viewers would be able to complete an image of the details in their mind based on their past experience. For example, in the drawing of the middle tower on Page 92, the rose window on top, the vertical windows, and even the parapet are drawn without accurate line work and perspective. But viewers would still understand them with the assumption that the windows would have to be symmetrical and the parapet would have a repetitive pattern, despite the fact Le Corbusier did not put everything accurately in the paper space.
Among these Italy travel drawings, only a few drawings are highly successful to me, including the tower top on Page 77, the left-most tower on Page 92, the statue to the left on Page 94, the façade drawing on Page 95, the statue on Page 99, the colonnade on Page 102, and the façade detail on Page 106.
In these drawings, it can be seen that in addition to the ambience explained previously, lines are drawn with greater care; values are applied to a great extent and throughout. Resolution of these drawings is higher with details taken more care of. Viewers not only can appreciate the drawings from afar but can also zoom into them and really study how every component of the object works together. For example, in the drawing of a façade on Page 95, emphasis of the drawing is very clear marked with darker values. Form is apparent with shadows. Meticulously drawn details on the façade make the drawing both artistically beautiful and technically worthwhile.