A Pilgrimage To The Past

"You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: This is beautiful. That is Architecture. Art enters in."
​- Le Corbusier

Notre Dame Du Haut. Photo Credit to Jason Buss.

​Our class went on a six-day epic journey to France to learn from the master Le Corbusier and many other masterpieces. Simply put, this school field trip is the 'ultimate architecture lesson'. It is combining all the architecture courses together with history, designing, structure, and theory - all taught by our very special guest Professor William J. R. Curtis, who is an architectural historian that focuses on 20th century architecture. 

Students sketching on the roof-top terrace of Unité d'habitation. Photo Credit to Kalin Ngo.

​The coolest part of the trip is we can actually LIVE in those architecture masterpieces for a night. Most of the visits we've done in class are during daytime so we only experienced architecture in a small time frame. Yet, architecture doesn't just exist in the morning! To fully examine a building one has to spend at least a day in the building to be able to access all its functions for human being. An architecture student staying in a Le Corbusier building is like an athlete participating Olympics game in Greece (does that make sense...?).
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"A house is a machine for living in." - Le Corbusier

The materials of city planning are: sky, space, trees, steel and cement; in that order and that hierarchy.  ​- Le Corbusier

​We jump-started the trip by going to one of Le Corbusier's most famous works, the ​Unité d'habitation in Marseille. The post-war opportunity allowed Le Corbusier to fulfill his ideal theory of Cité radieuse (Radiant City). In this project, we get to see Le Corbusier's five elements of modern architecture along with the modulor human-scale method.  One of the most influential gestures he made was the roof-top terrace that embraces the horizon and the sky. Instead of having functional programs at the bottom of the building, he carefully placed them on the roof.
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Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light: light and shade reveal these forms.
​-Le Corbusier

​The next Le Corbusier's masterpiece we visited was the Notre Dame Du Haut, which brought inspirations to many international known architects such as Tadao Ando. We could see how Le Corbusier played with light and texture on the church along with the sculptural form. 
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Light creates ambience and feel of a place, as well as the expression of a structure.
​- Le Corbusier

​The last Le Corbusier's building we visited was Sainte Marie de La Tourette.  Many aspects of Corbusier's developed architectural elements are visible in this project: the vertical brise-soleils (sun shadings) used with effect in India, light-cannons piercing solid masonry walls, and window-openings separated by Modulor-controlled vertical divisions. In contrast with Ronchamp, the building does not complement the site, but instead dominates the landscape composition.
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1. Having dinner at La Tourette. 2. Playing 'mafia' game on the bus.

​Special shoutout to Jason Buss and Kalin Ngo for the awesome pictures!