4 - Regulating Lines
The second reminder to architects in Vers une architecture was that of surface. In the words of Le Corbusier:
To leave a mass intact in the splendour of its form in light, but, on the other hand, to appropriate its surface for needs which are often utilitarian, is to force oneself to discover in this unavoidable dividing up of the surface the accusing and generating lines of the form.9
Included in Vers une architecture are a number of examples of classical buildings with regulating lines. Figs. 4.08 and 4.03 show Notre Dame and Michaelangelo’s Capitiol. The idea of regulating lines was not original to Le Corbusier. The principle of an ordering geometry had been in use since before antiquity. Renaissance architects onwards used ratios as a means of constructing an ordered geometry in a building, most visibly in elevation, but also in plan and section.
Fig. 4.02 looks at the proportions of Palladio’s canonical Villa Rotunda. A classical proportion of 1:2 is used in plan, and proportions of 3:4:5 appear in the elevation. In my eyes, this is a far more rigourous composition than the Villa Savoye. An interesting observation between these two buildings can be made in the differences in plan and elevation. The Villa Rotunda seems to apply the ordering geometry more starkly in plan than in elevation, whereas the Villa Savoye seems to apply the ordering geometry more in elevation than in plan.
Fig. 4.04 shows regulating lines applied to the south elevation of Villa Savoye. Vertical proportions of the main elements are loosely in proportion of 3:4:5. Other elements of the façade can be placed by diagonal regulating lines as shown in the diagram. However, an number of other elements of the façade can not be explained by regulating lines - - for example the roof level elements and the window mullions in the long strip window, have no apparent generation by regulating lines.
The writings of Le Corbusier, particularly the later Modulor, implies a fixed order against which a design can be constructed. It would appear to me however, that the application of these rules was selective by Le Corbusier. For example, the proportional system used in Villa Savoye is an ordering device towards a belief of absolute order - in other words, the proportioning system is a means towards an end, but not the end in itself. In Vers une architecture and later writings it is not clear to me what Le Corbusier means by the Absolute. This is reflected in turn in the buildings where the design methods are a search towards an glimpsed subconscious conception.
Regulating lines do not appear to be the sole means of providing order in the Villa Savoye, but one of the ordering ‘tools’ used in the composition, ie, structure, composition of masses, etc. Underlying all of these efforts is the assumption that striving towards and achieving order is the essence of architecture. For example, if ones view of architecture were phenomenological, then the use of regulating lines and other ordering systems would have little bearing, in themselves, on the architecture.