The Architectonic Colour - 010 Publishers

The Architectonic Colour
Polychromy in the Purist architecture of Le Corbusier
Jan de Heer
oıo Publishers, Rotterdam 2009

Contents
Preface 6
1. Introduction 8
The review of the architectonic polychromy of Le Corbusier 9
Issue 16
2. Disegno and experimental aesthetics 20
Disegno 20
L’Esprit Nouveau 25
Dead painters 26
Living painters 28
Undesirable painters 29
Experimental aesthetics 33
Fechner 34
Lalo 36
Henry 37
Sound box 39
Sensation et énergie 41
Conclusion 42
3. Purism: form, beauty and colour 44
Form 44
Beauty 47
Le Purisme 48
Ozenfant and Jeanneret 52
Gamma 61
Ton local 62
Variant paintings 63
Impressionism 66
Conclusion 69
4. L’Esprit Nouveau and De Stijl 71
L’Esprit Nouveau and architecture 71
De Stijl stuttering 73
Piano 77
Wall 78
Geometry 79
Léger and Ozenfant 82
Conclusion 84
5. Purist architecture and colour 87
Realized projects 87
Recipe 89

Exterior and interior 94
The associative factor in architectonic polychromy 99
Conclusion 103
6. Polychromy and the promenade architecturale 105
Promenade architecturale 105
Appia 108
Maison Guiette 115
Conclusion 120
7. Post-Purist architecture and colour 122
Lyricism 122
La peinture moderne 124
Five points and four compositions 126
Villa Baizeau 132
Maison Loucheur 135
Conclusion 140
8. Polychromy architecturale 142
‘Salubra’ and ‘Polychromy architecturale’ 142
Architectonic colour 144
Smooth and sculptured 149
Sentiment 151
Salubra keyboard 1931 153
Pavillon Suisse 1933 157
Conclusion 163
9. L’espace indicible 165
Synthèse des arts 165
Modulor 171
Unité 173
Pavillon Suisse 1957 180
Types couleurs and Salubra 1959 184
Conclusion 188
Appendices 191
I. Publication dates of L'Esprit Nouveau 192
II. List of pseudonyms of Ozenfant and Jeanneret 193
III. List Variant paintings 194
IV. Realized projects and references with regard to polychromy 199
V. Texts by Le Corbusier on polychromy 207
Bibliography 240
Index 244
Credits 246

Preface
Polychromy is an essential ornamental component of architecture. Polychromy
is concerned with neither the choice of structural system nor the ordering of
spaces, but involves the treatment of the surfaces that are exposed to everyday
use. In present-day architecture, this often relates to the choice and ordering of
the materials.
The origin of the debate on modern architectonic polychromy lies in the nineteenth
century, and the true centre of gravity lies in post-Revolution France.
The idea of polychromous architecture arose at the moment that the classical
ideal of architecture, the Greek temple and the accompanying architectonic
orders became hackneyed. Opposing this universal, eternal monolithic model of
architecture, archaeological research had indicated that a constructive skeleton
had been coated with a layer of stucco bearing expressive ornamentation and
decorations. It had not been a monolithic structure but a polylithic one, and not
a radiant monochrome architecture but one rich in polychromy. The term ‘polychromy’
acquired a polemical charge.
The architects involved in this concept-forming included Henri Labrouste, Léon
Vaudoyer, Félix Duban, Jacques Ignace Hittorff, and Gottfried Semper. On the
basis of this division into construction and cladding, the last-mentioned architect
developed an architectural theory in which cladding fulfilled a dominant
role. At the opposite extremity, there arose the idea of an evolution of architecture
which took the history of building techniques as its starting point, the
work of Auguste Choisy being a classic example in this context.
The discovery of traces of paint on the walls of the construction elements of the
antique temples induced Labrouste and his fellows to draw far-reaching conclusions.
Their reconstructions of the antique temples were equipped with richly
painted polychromous decoration. The work of these architects also often displayed
coloured use of materials and also painted polychromous decorations.
The work of Le Corbusier also conforms to this tradition, from his earliest work
right down to his last. The polychromy of his Purist architecture, dating approximately
from 1922 to 1927, represents an exceptional period in his oeuvre. From
1918 onward, Le Corbusier worked as a painter and the experiences he thus
gained led him to formulate a radical change in his notions of polychromy. His
buildings were painted in their entirety in various colours, comparable to the
way in which he assigned colour to the forms in his paintings. The polychromy
of his architecture in this stage of his work can be regarded as a play of colours.
The effect of this painting was one of total dematerialization, of pure reduction
to architectonic form and colour.
Hittorff thought that a polychromous system had existed for the Greek temples
just as it had done for architecture. Much of the literature on the polychromy of
Le Corbusier’s Purist architecture assumed a similar system. In his post-war
work in particular, a certain systematic use of colour is immediately conspicuous.
However, this book presents the view indicate that the system of poly-
6

chromy in Purist architecture only referred to the palette of colours.
In the thirties, this extraordinary position was abandoned and his architectonic
polychromy acquired a more regular character; in other words, he devoted
attention not only to painted polychromy but also to the natural polychromy of
the materials.
The extent to which Le Corbusier was acquainted with this (ancient) history is
not known. But he was deeply aware of the fact that polychromy is an aspect of
architecture, even in its purely painted form.
This book is not a historical study of the relationship between colour and architecture
in general nor is it a historical study of architectonic polychromy. Rather,
it represents a reconstruction of a working method and of the considerations
that led to this working method. It is the reconstruction of the architectonic
polychromy that Le Corbusier developed for his Purist architecture. This reconstruction
investigates the relationship between Purist painting and Purist architecture,
with the emphasis on the relationship between form and colour.
Research into the origins of the various constituent components of Purist polychromy
has given this book a certain kaleidoscopic character.
As far as possible, an analysis is performed on the polychromy of Le Corbusier’s
projects from the twenties. Much attention is paid to the way in which he
applied the colours in his architecture during a ‘promenade architecturale’. A
critical analysis of Le Corbusier’s article entitled ‘Polychromy architecturale’
forms a concluding evaluation of the study. Finally, as a contrast to the ‘unsystematic’
polychromy from the twenties, a chapter on the systematic use of
colour in his architecture from the fifties has been added.
This book was originally published in Dutch. The English edition contains several
small improvements.
7

‘The architectonic revolution is complete...’
‘Space’, Salubra wallpaper collection, 1931
8

1 Introduction
The review of the architectonic polychromy of Le Corbusier
The first part of Le Corbusier’s Oeuvre complète was published at the end of 1929,
immediately after his return from South America. The book is a summary of a
decade of modern architecture, the conclusion of a period. In the introduction
to the second part of this Oeuvre complète, which embraces the period from 1929
to 1934, he wrote: ‘It was by chance that the first volume came out in 1929. This
year meant to me, to a certain extent, the end of the first period of investigations.
1930 opened a period of new tasks; it relates to important works, great
events in architecture and town construction, to the marvellous epoch of evolving
a new machine civilization.’¹ Le Corbusier regarded his architectonic revolution
as complete.
It is interesting to know that, of the realized works, only three were allocated
any elucidatory words on the subject of colour use: the La Roche-Jeanneret villas,
the housing project in Pessac, and the Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau.² Altogether,
Le Corbusier expended no more than nine hundred words on this topic.
In comparison to the enormous quantity of his other writings, it comes off
rather poorly.³ The text on Pessac appeared in L’Architecture Vivante and later in
Oeuvre complète I; the Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau was a little more expansively
treated in Le Corbusier’s Almanach d’architecture moderne and also returned in an
abbreviated version in Oeuvre complète; the colour of the La Roche-Jeanneret
villas was only discussed in Oeuvre complète. These articles, plus a text in Cahiers
d’art, are the meagre textual remains of reflections on colour from the period of
Le Corbusier’s architectonic revolution. For coloured pictures, one had to rely
upon L’Architecture Vivante, in which seven different projects were presented.⁴
In the context of historiography, the wallpaper samples book he compiled for
the Salubra company forms a rich supplement, giving greater insight into the
polychromy experiments he had undertaken in previous years. The samples
themselves consisted mainly of plain colours that corresponded to the previously
painted colours. A colour keyboard was supplied along with the samples
book, providing the opportunity to make colour choices. This offers insight into
the combination patterns that he used in various buildings. What he had used as
experiments in his houses in the twenties was commercialized with the wallpaper
and made suitable for large-scale application.
The actual accompanying text of the Salubra collection was never published by
Le Corbusier himself. Although the samples book itself came with a short explanation,
the text entitled ‘Polychromy architecturale’, which was first made public
in the eighties, contained a comprehensive explanation of the wallpaper collection
in addition to an equally extensive outline of the polychromy in his
architecture.⁵ In conjunction with the samples book, this text provides the most
9
1 Le Corbusier, Oeuvre complète
II 1929-1934, 15.
2 For all Le Corbusier’s texts
on colour, see Appendix V.
3 See Appendix V.
4 For all coloured drawings
and coloured-in photos in
publications from the twenties,
see Appendix IV

5 Le Corbusier, ‘Veelkleurigheid
in architectuur’,
in Jan de Heer, Kleur en
architectuur (Rotterdam,
1986). For an extensive
review of this subject and a
pubication of the text
‘Polychromie architecturale’
in three languages (French,
German, and English), see
Rüegg, A., Le Corbusier -
Polychromie architecturale
(Basle, 1997). A (slightly
improved) translation into
English of Le Corbusier’s
article, taken from Rüegg’s
book, has been included in
Appendix V.
6 Hitchcock, H.R. and
Philip Johnson, The International
Style (New York,
1960), 75.
7 Léger, F., ‘Mauern,
Architekten und Maler’ in
Mensch. Machine. Malerei
(Bern, 1971), 140; originally
published as Fonctions de la
peinture (Paris, 1965).
complete picture of Le Corbusier’s ambitions in this field. Arthur Rüegg regards
the set-up of the samples book as the testament of the Purist colour theory and,
in doing so, implies that this also marked the conclusion of a certain period with
regard to colour.
In the same year that the Salubra collection appeared, 1931, an exhibition on
modern architecture was held in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The
book covering the exhibition, The International Style by Hitchcock and Johnson,
appeared a year later. Le Corbusier’s villas were allocated a particularly conspicuous
place among the modern architecture of the twenties. In the book, the
painted polychromy in modern architecture was reduced to two positions: ‘In
Holland and Germany small areas of bright elementary colors were used; in
France large areas of more neutral color. The two practices were in large part
due to the influence of two different schools of abstract painting, as represented
on the one hand by Mondriaan and the other by Ozenfant. In both cases colors
were artificially applied and the majority of wall surfaces remained white.’⁶ And
the treatise continues with the remark that colour is currently (1932) used to a
much lesser extent. ‘It ceased to startle and began to bore.’ Neither Le Corbusier
nor Theo van Doesburg, who had died just previously, in March 1931, received
the honour that was due to him. After all, although Le Corbusier and Ozenfant
severed relations with one another as far back as 1925, Purist painting was their
joint progeny, and the ‘polychromie architecturale’ was exclusively Le Corbusier’s
work. And although Mondriaan had written a great deal on the absorption
of painting in architecture and the layout of his own studio was a mixed
metaphor of this notion, Theo van Doesburg was actually the driving force
behind the various colour experiments in the architecture of De Stijl. Nevertheless,
The International Style had introduced a simple reduction and dichotomy in
ideas into general circulation.
In May 1933, the painter Fernand Léger gave a lecture in Zurich entitled ‘Les
rapports de l’architecture et de la peinture’, which was also referred to as ‘Le
mur, l’architecte, le peintre’ in its written form. The lecture was presented on
the occasion of an exhibition of his work being shown there. In some of Léger’s
previous articles on the same theme, he had manoeuvred close to the position
adopted by Le Corbusier. But as the twenties progressed, he began to experience
increasing scepticism with regard to painting in architecture. Half of the
lecture in Zurich was expressly directed over the heads of the audience toward
architects in general. He did not talk about colour but rather about the blank
wall, about the division of labour, and about the social implications of modern
architecture. Léger wondered why architecture, painting and sculpture were no
longer interconnected, as they had been in the past, and he gave architects the
blame for this. He observed that modern architecture had expanded to cover the
field of urban planning. In doing so, he pointed to the schism between modern
architecture and the lifestyle of the common man who was consigned, helplessly,
to an empty space with blank walls within modern architecture. Painters
were needed to fill this void, claimed Léger. In his opinion, based on the principle
of specialization, it was not ideal to have the architect determine the
colours. ‘The painter is the arch-enemy of all dead surfaces and is still awaiting
your assignment.’⁷ Do architects actually know what it means to create build-
10

11
Fernand Léger, Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier near Carcassonne FLC L4-14-16-001
Alfred Roth, Der Ton, 1933
Alfred Roth, Der Farbton, 1933
Alfred Roth, Die Farbe, 1933

8 Ibid. 142
9 Roth, A., Begegnung mit
Pionieren (Stuttgart, 1973),
170.
10 It is striking that the
schematic division of the
colours that Roth used was
borrowed from the scheme
that Theo van Doesburg
had presented in ‘De
beteekenis van de kleur in
binnen- en buiten-architectuur’.
Le Corbusier had
refused to publish this article
in L’Esprit Nouveau,
which Roth probably did
not know at that time; see
also p. 85, 86 of this book.
ings for the people? Architects ought to tackle this problem in conjunction with
sculptors and painters. He described the speciality of the painter as follows:
‘Colour is one of the elements of life, no less so than water or fire, a raw material
just as useful as grain.’⁸ You have brought movement to your walls by means
of colours, he said to the architects, but the painter is the one who truly activates
them. Colour is not something superficial, but rather something that is
vital.
The lecture was undoubtedly a response to Le Corbusier’s Salubra collection. Le
Corbusier had made use of the phrase ‘Colour is one of the elements of life, not
less so than water or fire’, countersigned with the name Fernand Léger, as a slogan
in the elucidation of his wallpaper collection. Léger apparently was
unhappy with the association of his slogan and his name with a project in which
colour was applied to an architectural project without a painter being involved.
In his view, the significance that colour gained from the hand of the painter
extended further than the colour keyboards of the Salubra collection.
Among Léger’s audience in Zurich that day was Alfred Roth, a former member
of staff of Le Corbusier, who did not agree with various standpoints of the
speaker.⁹ Roth had special interest in the topic, partly due to his contact with Le
Corbusier and Mondriaan. Stimulated by this lecture, he produced his own epistle
entitled ‘Architektur und Malerei, Analyse der farbigen Oberflächengestaltung
von Raum und Volumen’ (Architecture and Painting. Analysis of coloured
surfaces of space and volumes). He was concerned with the optical effects of
colour, divided into three levels of intensity: the Tone, the Colour Tone, and the
Colour. To the lowest intensity level, the Tone, Roth attached the specific attention
that Léger had directed toward mass-produced housing. The Tone had to be
used in neutral colours to ameliorate the proportions in housing construction
and workplaces. Subsequently, the Colour Tone had explicit optical properties
and was capable of changing spatial proportions, particularly in combination
with white and grey. According to Roth, the most important example of this
could be found in the work of Le Corbusier. Finally, he regarded the three primary
colours, along with white, black and grey, as used in De Stijl, as being the
Colour. He referred explicitly to Mondriaan’s studio as an example of this. Roth
presented his study at the fourth CIAM congress in the presence of Le Corbusier
and Léger. At the same congress, in the lion’s den one might say, Léger held the
same lecture as in Zurich, but now entitled ‘Discours aux architectes’. Roth had
sent his text to Mondriaan for comment prior to the lecture. They spoke about it
comprehensively, on several occasions. Roth never mentioned any communication
with Le Corbusier on the text. The latter, who could be regarded as the
tutor of Roth in modern architecture to a certain extent, must have seen this as
betrayal by Roth.¹⁰
The end of 1934 witnessed the publication of the second part of Le Corbusier’s
Oeuvre complète with a foreword by Sigfried Giedion. He argued that the architecture
of Le Corbusier was based on the ‘Five points’, and regarded Villa
Savoye (1929) as the highlight of this theory. With regard to the villas, this was
also the end point, as none of the six dwelling houses that Le Corbusier built in
the thirties was designed with reference to these ‘Five points’. And only one of
these bore polychrome painting, namely, his own house on the rue Nungesser-
12

et-Coli. However, much use was made of the expressive character of natural
materials. We also know with certainty that colour was applied in three largescale
buildings that were constructed at the same time: the Clarté building in
Zurich, Pavillon Suisse and the Cité de Refuge, both in Paris. In this context, one
must realize that, after 1933 to 1946, Le Corbusier only realized one single building.
With the exception of the relentless flow of projects and publications, his
architectural practice had come almost to a halt.
In a discussion with Léger and Aragon on ‘Peinture et réalité’ in 1936, Le Corbusier
formulated a response to both Roth and Léger.¹¹ He was scathing about
Roth’s preference for Mondriaan. ‘Perhaps the northern races – the Anglo-Saxons
or the Germanic peoples – take the liberty to indulge in abstractions’, he
wrote.¹² In contrast, French art is essentially concrete and realistic and forms
the basis of international art. He endorsed Léger’s claim that the arts had
entered a collective period, with architecture at the fore. Architecture had to be
accompanied by painting and sculpture, but he assumed the primacy of architecture.
It had to make demands on the other art forms so that they could be
adopted into architecture in a harmonious manner. Architecture could not
progress further without these, but if they wished to accompany architecture
they had to take proportion, the basis of architecture, as the starting point.
None the less, he was also afraid that inappropriate art would spoil the walls
and, for that reason too, the artist had to follow the train of thought of the
architect. He distinguished two methods of applying painting. The first was
polychromy. In his view, architectural polychromy could curb confusion, create
lyrical spaces, bring order, enlarge dimensions. ‘This is not yet painting. That is
not necessary. This is architectonic polychromy. If a wall or part of a wall has an
oppressive effect, I can break it open with a suitable colour. But, if there is
scope for it, I can also ask a painter to shape his imaginative thoughts on this
topic and to open the doors to the distant land of dreams in one fell swoop –
and especially at those places where there is no real depth.’¹³ The second
method could be applied when the architect prepared a place for the artist to
introduce a lyrical touch in the whole of his architecture. With this, the possibility
of deep harmony was generated, but the danger of dualism loomed. To Le
Corbusier, the integration of modern architecture in large urban projects and the
aim to ensure the applicability of polychromy in wallpaper for the common man
were part and parcel of the same ideal. He wished to extract the relationship
with painting from this process and to integrate it in a new ‘synthèse des arts’.
The same book that contains the above-mentioned text by Le Corbusier also
includes a text by Alberto Sartoris, ‘Colour in interior architecture’.¹⁴ Sartoris
had been a member of the Movimento Italiano per l’architettura razionale since
1929, and Le Corbusier knew him from the first CIAM congress in 1928. In this
text, Sartoris treated ‘colour as a vital complement of architecture; it is one of
its logical and indispensable elements.’ He distinguished between a dynamic and
a neo-plastic method, both of which are firmly linked to theories of architectonic
functionalism. According to the dynamic method, walls that do not receive
direct light ought to be painted white or given a very light colour. Walls that are
half-illuminated or fully lit can be given gradually brighter colours. But every
colour has to respect the wall, its form, volume and purpose. In the neo-plastic
13
11 Le Corbusier, ‘Destin de
la peinture’ in La querelle
de réalisme (Paris, 1936), 80
ff. Published in English as
Le Corbusier, ‘The quarrel
with realism, the destiny of
painting’ in J.L. Martin et
al., Circle, International Survey
of Constructive Art
(London, 1937), 67 ff. See
also Le Corbusier, ‘Les tendances
de l’architecture
rationaliste en rapport avec
la collaboration de la peinture
et de la sculpture’ in
L’Architecture Vivante. Le
Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret,
septième série, Paris
1937, a lecture held in Rome
in 1936.
12 Ibid. 70.
13 Ibid. 72-3.
14 Sartoris, A., ‘Colour in
interior architecture’ in J.L.
Martin et al., Circle, International
Survey of Constructive
Art (London, 1937), 212
ff.

Alberto Sartoris, Casa Morand-Pasteur, axonometry of interior, 1933 Alberto Sartoris, Casa Morand-Pasteur, axonometry of interior, 1933
15 Braham, W., Modern
Color / Modern Architecture
(Burlington, 2002); this
book’s sketch of the colour
theory of Purism is rather
inadequate.
method, every wall is painted in the primary colours of red, yellow or blue,
along with white, grey and black. In contrast to this restriction of the palette,
the dynamic method makes use of all colours. Sartoris believed that, to generate
harmony, it was best to make use of dissonance and contrast, thus creating an
animated unity, a vital harmony. With this, he took a stand against the monochrome
interior and the monochordal composition of the interior, and saw his
idea of harmony as the normal link in attuning architecture and divergent furnishings.
In a recent study, William Braham has dealt with Ozenfant’s ideas on polychromy
in the thirties.¹⁵ In 1937, Ozenfant published several articles on colour in
relation to architecture, and these formed the basis of Braham’s study. The articles
showed that Ozenfant had definitively abandoned his Purist standpoint,
and that he had not followed Le Corbusier’s transformation of this standpoint to
architecture. His ideas were a complete repudiation of a position that he had
first advanced in 1918, in conjunction with Le Corbusier, and which Le Corbusier
still appeared to advocate. Ozenfant adopted an almost scientific approach, as
had been elaborated by Signac at the end of the nineteenth century. Colour was
treated as an autonomous phenomenon, subject to its own laws. In architecture,
colour was not directly connected to form and proportion, but rather to ambience,
use, the furnishings, and the entire upholstery of the interior.
One can conclude that, in the early thirties, a picture arose of the architectonic
14

15
Amédée Ozenfant, colour scheme of interior of own studio in London, 1937