Cité radieuse de Rezé
Dalrymple writes that the modernists were adept at claiming that their architecture was both
- a logical development to and æsthetic successor of classical Greek architecture; and
- utterly new and unprecedented
The latter, he points out, was nearer the mark. They created buildings that,
not only in theory but in practice, were incompatible with all that had gone before, and intentionally so. Any one of their buildings could, and often did, lay waste a townscape, with devastating consequences. What had previously been a source of pride for inhabitants became a source of impotent despair.
Le Corbusier’s books
are littered with references to the Parthenon and other great monuments of architectural genius: but how anybody can see anything in common between the Parthenon and the Unité d’habitation (an appellation that surely by itself ought to tell us everything we need to know about Corbusier), other than that both are the product of human labour, defeats me.
Cité radieuse de Marseille
