Le Corbusier – Plan Voisin
Le Corbusier is an architect that has inspired me greatly. If I wouldn’t have dedicated Hipcescu Tower to myself, he would have been a likely candidate. Here is one of my favorite quotes from his book Towards a New Architecture (1924).
“We must create a mass-production state of mind:
A state of mind for building mass-production housing.
A state of mind for living in mass-production housing.
A state of mind for conceiving mass-production housing.”
Le Corbusier didn’t just talk the talk, he was ready to walk the walk. And so, in 1925, he presented his Plan Voisin.
It entailed bulldozing most of central Paris north of the Seine, and replacing it with sixty-story cruciform towers, the shape of which derived from radiator elements. In the end, the plan was never carried out.
“We must find and apply new methods, clear methods allowing us to work out useful plans for the home, lending themselves naturally to standardization, industrialization, Taylorization”, he wrote. “The plan must rule. . . . The street must disappear.” Clearly, this is highly efficient thinking.
In this video, we see the master explaining his Plan Voisin.
At one point in the video, Le Corbusier’s envisioned towers are inserted into contemporary Paris. And then you realize just how beautiful it could have been…
