Abstract
Finally codified in 1945 after several years of research, Le Corbusier’s Modulor is probably the most comprehensive proportional system imagined during the 20th century. Developed through contacts with consultants such as art historian Elisa Maillard, and referring to statistical measurements of the human body, the Modulor concluded decades of discourse on proportions, a theme that preoccupied Le Corbusier ever since his sojourn in Germany in 1910. Matila Ghyka’s work on the golden section was one of the sources for the Modulor, but his work in general was used by other architects, such as Le Corbusier’s rival Andre Lurcat, who proposed his own range of proportions related to the work of builders as much as to that of designers. Proportions thus became a central issue in the postwar French reconstruction, as architects struggled to maintain their status amid changing procedures in building production.
Highlights
His position at the Milan event was far from modest, as he was the only contributor to have arrived armed with an analytical theory, and with a structured attempt at proposing a comprehensive proportional system, which was ready for implementation at all the scales of architectural design
The term Modulor was composed by the fusion of the notion of module with the notion of the golden section
He commented on the widely disseminated theoretical writings of the Paris-based Serbian architect Miloutine Borissavliévitch (1926) dealing with the perception of proportion, and declared to be looking for the ‘canons of a Mediterranean architecture’. His hostility to the new architecture appears when he criticizes as ‘Baukasten’ — the German term for building blocks — the houses built in the suburbs of Paris by Le Corbusier. He calls the Parisian architect to the witness stand: Regarding the rest, as it often happens in architecture today, the only criterion used is adaptation to the goal (‘fitness’), including strength and economy, and, the idea of the engineer winning, we find unity
Summary
On Friday, September 28, 1951, Le Corbusier addressed the First International Conference on Proportion in the Arts at the Milan Triennale, introducing, with affirmed modesty, the system of proportional measurements he had invented in the preceding years as if it were an elementary, prosaic tool: ‘The Modulor, which I have described to you, is a simple work tool, a tool such as aviation, such as many other improvements created by men’1 (Fig. 1).But his position at the Milan event was far from modest, as he was the only contributor to have arrived armed with an analytical theory, and with a structured attempt at proposing a comprehensive proportional system, which was ready for implementation at all the scales of architectural design.One year earlier, the Paris-based architect had published a compact square volume, entitled Le Modulor, essai sur une mesure harmonique à l’échelle humaine, applicable universellement à l’architecture et à la mécanique (The Modulor: A Harmonious Measure to the Human Scale Universally Applicable to Architecture and Mechanics). The preoccupation of Le Corbusier with proportions predated by more than thirty years the publication of Le Modulor, and could be traced back to his formative journeys throughout Europe, from his contacts with German architects to his long investigation of ancient buildings.
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