"Architecture or Revolution": Taylorism, Technocracy, and Social ...

'Architecture
or Revolution":
Taylorism, Technocracy, and
Social Change
By Mary McLeod
Le Corbusier's social and political
position continues to be one of the
most controversial dimensions of his career.
On the one hand, Post-Modernist
critics and architects denounce his messianic
social vision: his belief that architecture
is a tool for social redemption. Charles
Jencks, for instance, sarcastically describes
Le Corbusier's "heroic object of every
day use" as the "new, revolutionary detergent";
the editors of Harvard Architecture
Review condemn his utopianism with their
assertion that "architecture can profit more
by working with what 'is' rather than what
'should be.' "' On the other hand, historians
have often been skeptical of the claim
that politics played a significant role in the
formulation of Le Corbusier's work.
Reyner Banham and Colin Rowe call
attention to the academic strains in Le
Corbusier's thinking; more recently, William
Curtis dismisses politics as irrelevant Fig. 1 "If Paris becomes Americanized." Le Corbusier published this newspaper
to the generation of Le Corbusier's forms.2 clipping discussing Plan Voisin (1925) in L'Almanach d'architecture moderne (1925).
In contrast to the position of current architectural
polemics, the standard biograph- Le Corbusier himself would have gladly the Third International. It is a techical
interpretation maintains that he was an endorsed this assessment-at least until nical work....
essentially apolitical man, governed by 1930. Throughout the twenties he veheaesthetic
considerations and an all- mently denied any party affiliations; he Things are not revolutionized by
embracing humanism.3 Peter Blake's The frequently cited the various political epi- making revolutions. The real revo-
Master Builders makes explicit this inter- thets given to him-Bolshevist, Fascist, lution lies in the solution of existing
pretation:
petit bourgeois-as proof of his own neu- problems.5
The facts are that Corbu is totally
trality. He was, he declared, strictly a pro-
His
fessional man. At the conclusion of
task, like that of the "healthy and
disinterested in politics; that he finds
virile"
it necessary, at times, to deal with
Urbanisme, he states:
engineer, was to measure, analyze,
and propose solutions-a role, Le Corbupoliticians
in order to achieve certain I am an architect; no one is going to sier believed, removed from the vagaries
important objectives of planning and make a politician of me. Everyone, and fluctuations of parliamentary politics.
redevelopment; and that his own in his own domain where he is an Yet this purported neutrality, as Post-
"political" philosophy has to do with expert, can apply his special knowl- Modernists have intuitively understood, did
such issues as the continuity of civi- edge and carry his solutions to their not imply isolation or detachment from
lization on earth and the need for logical conclusion ....
society. Le Corbusier was deeply engaged
assuring such continuity-concerns
in social issues, although his involvement
that are not easily labeled in terms of [Ville Contemporaine] has no label, generally defies party labels. Words like
today's political pressure groups.4 it is not dedicated to our existing "technical," "logical," "solution," and
Bourgeois-Capitalist Society nor to "expert" all associate him with a general
132 Art Journal