The Floating Box and Beyond:
Le Corbusier’s Modernism as my Ideal Campus Master Plan
By
Elizabeth Wong
The
dramatic planes of the building, pure and white, rise out above the ground like
a floating castle. Underneath the raised building, there is well-manicured
landscaping tucked around a leisurely pedestrian walkway. Suddenly, students
come down the long outdoor staircase in a flood; some chatting happily, others
moving determinedly towards their next class. Upstairs in the building, a
professor slides open a wall of glass, and his students file out to the rooftop
terrace to hold class under the open sky. In the other classrooms, the warm
natural light of the sun filters in through large windows, lighting the
professor and students. These images are from my ideal campus, inspired by the
sleek and daring buildings of Le Corbusier. When my campus master plan is
accepted, the
The campus is the outward face of the University, the first thing the public sees, so our master plan should present buildings that share traits with our university: dignified, while still being modern and forward-thinking. The great architect Le Corbusier's style fits our University perfectly; it is beautiful in both its apparent simplicity and its functionality. The primary focus of our University is to promote learning. Towards this end, Modernistic buildings present a special opportunity to experience a learning atmosphere as never before.
For the purpose of illustrating my ideas, I have created a virtual campus in the 3D game of Second Life. Images from this virtual campus as scattered throughout the paper. My goal in doing this was to illustrate all of my points very literally. By showing a screenshot of exactly what I am talking about, I hope to reinforce my points and give a clear sense of my vision. The virtual buildings give viewers a feel for the functionality and the sense of place present in my campus master plan.
It seems logical that, “good architects begin
by asking who will use a building and what they will use it for.”[1] Though
this is 
not
always the case, it will be in my campus. The buildings that will compose my
new campus will first and foremost serve the people who will use them: the
students. The university grounds will become an academic environment, its own
microcosm of learning. Modernist buildings allow incredible ease in 
planning
and exhibit great functionality. Though not all of the buildings on campus will
be the “floating box” style traditionally associated with Corbusier, many of
them will. The modern style of building is especially conducive to classrooms, laboratories,
and lecture halls as it allows for relative freedom in planning the rooms – without
thought of a complicated Gothic façade. The shape of the building will result “from
the activities performed inside,”[2]
allowing function to supersede design. Though educational buildings work well
with the “floating box,” auditoriums, churches, and museum spaces could be
realized in the spiritual and curving heights of Corbusier’s Philips Pavilion,
seen above, or his
One aspect of my master plan that sets it apart from any other plan is its subtle reflection of nature. Corbusier listed an integral “Cinq Points” of his architecture that will be reflected in all academic buildings in my master plan. These were:
the use of pilotis as structural elements, lifting the building and leaving a space under it; columnar-and-slab construction enabling floor plans to be left as free and adaptable as possible, partitions (if required) not being structural; the creation of a roof-garden at the top, affording better light and air than on the ground; the mode of construction facilitating long continuous strips of windows; and complete freedom of façade-design.[4]
These five
elements each reflect a unique harmony with nature and should be displayed in
every building on the new UT 
campus,
with the exception of the aforementioned fine arts and religious buildings. The
pilotis lifting up the bulk of the
building are reminiscent of tree trunks, holding up their heavy foliage,
leaving shade and space underneath for others to enjoy. The roof-garden at the
top would allow for studying and class discussions under the open sky, or even
science experiments and art 
classes.
This garden can be seen illustrated in my virtual campus, Image D, or in
Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, Image E. Most importantly, the long windows wrapping
around the building and open-air atriums would allow natural light to penetrate
into each classroom and even the center of the building, a much better option
than fluorescent lighting. In Image F, from my virtual campus, a student stands
in a classroom, looking through the long windows at the campus around her. As
you can see in the image below right, Corbusier’s style left buildings open to
natural light from all angles. Even in the arts buildings that are in not the
“floating box” style, natural light will remain the most important feature. Le
Corbusier himself defined architecture as “the masterly, correct and
magnificent play of volumes brought together in light,”[5]
and the buildings on our campus would be just that, with an abundance of light
as their unifying and central feature.
Another facet of Le Corbusier’s buildings inspired by nature is the use of the Golden Ratio to determine the proportions of a building. The Golden Ratio, roughly defined as 1.618, is found frequently in nature and life in many varied forms: in the proportions of the human body, as seen in Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”; in the length of sides of a pentagram; to the size of a modern credit card. It is characterized by a rectangle whose long side is 1.618 times the length of the shorter side; this ratio is traditionally thought to be aesthetically pleasing, inspiring works of art and mathematics from the Renaissance to the present. Because this ratio is found in nature and the human body, it is a subtle and academic way to reflect nature in a building that is, at first glance, not very natural at all. In Image A, you can see that I constructed the building on the left to form a perfect Golden Rectangle. This also echoes Robert Berdahl’s master plan for campus buildings that use “a visual language that has its roots in the human proportion of feet, body, and head,”[6] though perhaps not in the exact way he intended it. The use of this mathematical concept gives the buildings a feeling of natural balance in their shapes of right angles and straight lines.
My campus master plan will
contribute radically to the University by creating a truly pedestrian campus.
The buildings raised on pilotis will
allow for paths and walkways underneath them. In the image to the right, you
can see the space under my virtual building where walkways are placed, linking the
two buildings. This lends the campus convenience, making it much easier to
travel between one building and the next without having to walk around
buildings. The areas under the buildings will be landscaped to include ponds
and flowers, and benches will be installed to make the pedestrian walkways more
pleasant for the busy students of the university. Driving roads will be pushed
to the outside edges of the campus, so that students will be free to walk
around campus without fear of vehicular interference. Faculty parking, however,
could be conveniently located right underneath some of the outside buildings
that are less often used. The raised buildings also emulate porches, by
providing shade from the intense
This master plan also adds to the
university by creating an academic atmosphere with its clean look and design. Corbusier’s
buildings have a beautifully pure and calming quality that will aid in the
students’ inner peace. When 
he
designed them, they sought a “return to order undertaken during the war;” they
utilized “a purified, refined language, like that of the Cubists.”[7]
Indeed, his buildings do have a purist quality about them that will prove
advantageous to the scholastic environment of our campus. The white walls will
aid in concentration during class, emitting a sense of peace and
clear-headedness. An occasional surprising splash of color will catch the eye
of work-weary students, helping to relieve the tension of a long day. This is
seen in the red ramp uniting the floors of my virtual building, Image I. The
graceful curve of a spiral staircase indoors, like the one in Image J, is a
surprising contrast to the right angles of the buildings, and is almost
sculptural in its effect, providing another element of beauty to refresh the
mind of the student.
The
elegant right angles and pleasing proportions of Corbusier’s modern buildings
elicit feelings of serenity, which are fitting to a university dedicated to
becoming “a place where young people prepare themselves intellectually and
socially to enter the world.”[8] Though
the campus life a student enters is seldom serene, the beautiful and calm
buildings around them will help them to focus on thought and learning. My
master plan creates a clear sense of a “campus” with a common idea governing
all of the buildings. This “common theme” does not mean that all of the
buildings on campus are to follow the floating box style, nor are curves and
spirals to be abolished. The buildings will simply be true to Corbusier’s
spirit and style, and the majority will exemplify his traditional cinq points. The architecture will represent a progression from the past, but
not a total break from it. Elements of historical architecture will always be present
in the use of space, and even in the representation of Ruskin’s traditional
elements of Gothic architecture: modern buildings routinely illustrate
redundancy, as in the repeated pilotis
or the bands of black and white around a building; love of nature, as seen in
their subtle reflection of the world around us; and “the tendency to delight in
fantastic and ludicrous, as well as in sublime, images,” as seen primarily in
the sweeping, sublime heights of the Philip’s Pavilion and similar buildings.[9] Le
Corbusier revered and appreciated the past, but found it was time for him to
create a new style of building for our generation. Corbusier himself was averse
to the melding of styles that is commonplace today. Late in his life, he “would
refer to the ‘lesson of
This master plan contains many
elements which will benefit the
1809 words without quotes
(After deleting at least 90 from the
previous draft)
My SL project is FINISHED and can be found
in second life in the corner behind the tower, next to the sign reading “Liz
Wong’s Ideal Campus.”
Images
A, D, F, H, and I:
Image from Second Life, created by Elizabeth Wong.
B:
Image from http://www.lib.umd.edu/ARCH/exhibition/galleries/1958bru/philips2.html.
C:
Image from http://www.nga.gov/education/classroom/new_angles/img/img_corbusier2_lg.jpg.
E, G, and J:
Cohen,
Jean-Louis. Le Corbusier, 1887-1965: The Lyricism of Architecture in the
Machine Age.
K:
Image from http://www.austinmuseums.org/images/members/harry_1.jpg.