Monday, June 18, 2007

Le Corbusier and leaks

There was a program on TV on Luco Vijier.

Who?

A French architect.

You mean Le Corbusier. Houses like this one?

That's it. That's the one. You're reading this book now?

Mm.

Uncanny. I see a TV program on him and you are reading a book on the same person. The TV showed him painting pictures in the mornings and designing beauthful houses in the afternoons.

They were often starkly beautiful, he scorned ornamentation, hated Classical form, loved engineers, said houses should be machines for living, protecting their inhabitants against heat, cold, rain, thieves and the inquisitive. But his houses didn't even do that sometimes. The Savoye boy got pneumonia when his bedroom flooded.

The TV program didn't go into details. The presenter just talked enthusiastically about how beautful his houses were.

Le Corbusier wasn't the only prima donna architect who was dismissive about details like leaky roofs. Story goes Frank Lloyd Wright got a call from a client about a ceiling leak one night, he just told them to put a bucket under it.
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