Towards a New Architecture

Our world, like a charnel-house, is strewn with the detritus of dead epochs.

The house is a machine for living in.

A house is a machine for living in. Baths, sun, hot-water, cold-water, warmth at will, conservation of food, hygiene, beauty in the sense of good proportion. An armchair is a machine for sitting in and so on. Our

Truth to tell, the modern man is bored to tears in his home; so he goes to his club. The modern woman is bored outside her boudoir; she goes to tea-parties. The modern man and woman are bored at home; they go to night-clubs. But lesser folk who have no clubs gather together in the evening under the chandelier and hardly dare to walk through the labyrinth of their furniture which takes up the whole room and is all their fortune and their pride.

A ceux qui, absorbés maintenant dans le problème de "la machine à habiter", déclaraient que "l'architecture c'est servir", nous avons répondu: "L'architecture c'est émouvoir". Et nous avons été taxé de "poète", avec dédain

An object placed in the center of a room often spoils the room, for it hinders you from standing in the middle

The problem of the house is a problem of the epoch. The equilibrium of society today depends upon it. Architecture has for its first duty, in this period of renewal, that of bringing about a revision of values, a revision of the constituent elements of the house.

The primordial instinct of every human being is to assure himself of a shelter. The various classes of workers in society to-day no long have dwellings adapted to their needs; neither the artizan nor the intellectual. It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of to-day: architecture or revolution.

Contour and profile ['modinature'] are the touchstone of the architect. Here he reveals himself as artist or mere engineer. Contour is free of all restraint.

Now, the plan is the generator, “the plan is the determination of everything; it is an austere abstraction, an algebrization, and cold of aspect.” It is a plan of battle. The battle follows and that is the great moment.

ROME AND OURSELVES Rome is a bazaar in full swing, and a picturesque one. There you find every sort of horror (see the four reproductions here given) and the bad taste of the Roman Renaissance. We have to judge this Renaissance by our modern taste, which separates us from it by four great centuries of effort, the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th. We reap the benefit of this endeavour; we judge hardly, but with a warrantable severity. These four centuries are lacking at Rome, which fell asleep after Michael Angelo. Setting foot once again in Paris, we recover our ability to judge. The lesson of Rome is for wise men, for those who know and can appreciate, who can resist and can verify. Rome is the damnation of the half-educated. To send architectural students to Rome is to cripple them for life. The Grand Prix de Rome and the Villa Medici are the cancer of French architecture.