The following analysis is based on no more than a
hunch… but if we superimpose the geometric framework of
the Modulor – the Golden Section rectangle and the double
square, circumscribing the figure of the Corbusian man – onto
the middle floor of the Maison à Bordeaux (15), we see that
a number of significant parts of the building fit. This works
particularly if we invert the figure in the double square of
the living accommodation. In the courtyard the curve of
the driveway fits neatly into the part of the Golden Section
rectangle left once half the original square is taken away. The
‘navel’ line seems to determine the position of the stair up
from the ‘grotto’ and the ‘chasm’ between the parents’ and
children’s zones on the uppermost floor. The dimension of the
‘upstretched hand’, if rotated through ninety degrees, gives
the width of the housekeeper’s flat and guest room.
In the double square, the console against the glass wall
between the living space and the terrace (between the ‘winter’
and ‘summer’ dining rooms) is positioned on the mid line.
The head of ‘Modulor man’, perhaps significantly, occurs on
the moving platform. And even the up-stretched hand seems
to push the office’s movable wall outwards.
Projecting a square from the combined bases of the
double square and the Golden Section rectangle (16) gives
the overhang of the uppermost floor (17). And the positions
of the L-shaped structure and the large I-beam across the roof
seem determined by centrelines between significant lines in
the Modulor diagram. One suspects that other major elements
in the design are also determined by the underlying geometric
framework provided by Koolhaas’s super-human enlargement
of Le Corbusier’s system of proportions.