Ville Contemporaine
Encyclopedia
The Ville Contemporaine was an unrealised project to house three million inhabitants designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier
in 1922.
The centerpiece of this plan was a group of sixty-story cruciform skyscrapers built on steel frames and encased in curtain walls of glass. The skyscrapers housed both offices and the flats of the most wealthy inhabitants. These skyscrapers were set within large, rectangular park-like green spaces.
At the center of the planned city was a transportation center which housed depots for buses and trains as well as highway intersections and at the top, an airport.
Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways, and glorified the use of the automobile as a means of transportation. As one moved out from the central skyscrapers, smaller multi-story zigzag blocks set in green space and set far back from the street housed the proletarian workers.
spoke of Le Corbusier's city planning in his series The Shock of the New:
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
in 1922.
The centerpiece of this plan was a group of sixty-story cruciform skyscrapers built on steel frames and encased in curtain walls of glass. The skyscrapers housed both offices and the flats of the most wealthy inhabitants. These skyscrapers were set within large, rectangular park-like green spaces.
At the center of the planned city was a transportation center which housed depots for buses and trains as well as highway intersections and at the top, an airport.
Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways, and glorified the use of the automobile as a means of transportation. As one moved out from the central skyscrapers, smaller multi-story zigzag blocks set in green space and set far back from the street housed the proletarian workers.
Critics
Robert HughesRobert Hughes (critic)
Robert Studley Forrest Hughes, AO is an Australian-born art critic, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970.-Early life:...
spoke of Le Corbusier's city planning in his series The Shock of the New:
"...the car would abolish the human street, and possibly the human foot. Some people would have airplanes too. The one thing no one would have is a place to bump into each other, walk the dog, strut, one of the hundred random things that people do ... being random was loathed by Le Corbusier ... its inhabitants surrender their freedom of movement to the omnipresent architect."
See also
- Ville RadieuseVille RadieuseVille Radieuse was an unrealised project designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1924.Although Le Corbusier had exhibited his ideas for the ideal city, the Ville Contemporaine in the 1920s, during the early 1930s, after contact with international planners he began work on the Ville...
- Plan Voisin
- Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (concept)Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (concept)The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was a concept developed by Walt Disney near the end of his lifetime. This planned city was his intended purpose for the property purchased near Orlando, Florida, that eventually became the Walt Disney World Resort...