Economy, efficiency and the promenade deck

Abstract

This chapter discusses efficiency as an operative factor in architectural design, setting out from the premise that ships have functioned as emblematic mediums of form-making that uniquely combine questions of aesthetic and functional nature. In Vers une Architecture (1923), shipbuilding registers one of the special foci of Le Corbusier’s investigations into optimal performance. In the first section of this paper, his explorations of architectural modernity inform the discussion on design optimisation as an experimental and evolutionary process towards perfected products. Establishing standards and design standardisation are discussed in the second section of this chapter as practical applications of logical reasoning and Le Corbusier’s laws of ‘penetration’ and ‘selection.’ RMS Aquitania functions here as an instance of the rhetorical use of the machine metaphor and its highly selective application to functional design. The ocean liner, as a metaphor for practicality and elegance, becomes the initiator of such prominent traits of the modernist architectural vocabulary as the elongated window or the linear corridor. The apparent inconsistencies of this metaphor are mitigated in the third section, where proto-modern conceptions of functionalism, that involve both the machine and nature in the construction of a model for efficiency, describe distinct but compatible instances of an evolutionary progress towards optimal design. This investigation into functional and efficient design foregrounds the simplicity, frugality and prudence of asceticism, described by Thoreau as the essential facets of economy. Thoreau, drawing upon his experiences with life in nature, calls attention to the ethical underpinnings of modern functional minimalism or a lack thereof, as Maciunas appears to suggest in his critical response to modernity.