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

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techniques, Le Corbusier believed, could and architecture be produced cheaply, and thus square-built and no longer a disan isolated discipline. In contrast to the mal become available to all. congeries; they will Beaux-Arts incorporate practioners who rarely conthe This argument becomes one of the principle of mass-production and sidered in the prewar period the issue of predominant themes in his famous large-scale industrialization.27 housing or new materials, Le Corbusier polemic was arguing for an expansion of the very Vers une architecture. As Reyner Banham This vision of the future models housing conception of the architect's role to emhas demonstrated, the text, composed production on airplane and automobile brace the consideration of social problems. largely of a series of articles published in manufacture. Just as Henry Ford's assem- Taylorism and new industrial methods were L'Esprit Nouveau, can be interpreted as a bly line was to result in lower-priced goods the only way the architect could continue dialectic between old and new, classical and more available commodities for the to be relevant in a society threatened with and mechanical, architecture and engi- worker, so, too, industrialized building potential destruction. neering, which concludes that architecture processes were to reduce housing costs Le Corbusier stated this with greater must incorporate the lessons of mass pro- and provide a "maximum dwelling" for zeal and to a larger lay audience than did duction or perish.25 Although its links with all. Even the relationship between tenant any of his French contemporaries, but he the past are deep and explicit, the book and landlord was to be changed in the was hardly alone in his perception of housstrongly proclaims a commitment to an "inevitable social evolution." Lower costs ing as "the problem of the epoch" and "at industrial future. It is, in fact, in a passage would permit a system of rent purchase in the root of social unrest."32 With the exfollowing his nostalgic tribute to the Acrop- which tenants would take shares in the ception of the Communists, all sides of the olis that Le Corbusier introduces his most enterprise.28 Similarly, a more efficient political spectrum-republican, socialist, significant and original argument, "Mass- urbanism, including rational transportation clerical-were in accord. In Paris, about Production Houses". Here he specifically systems and an increased density of ser- two fifths of the population were said to be advocates Taylorism and modem industrial vices, would lead to greater economies dangerously housed; serious overcrowding methods, and at the same time illustrates and increased land values. One need not and general deterioration of living condihis own studies for low-cost prefabricated worry about sacrificing the rich to solve tions were common. Some 16,000 deaths, housing: Dom-ino, Monol, Citrohan, and the social problems of the poor. The sur- in the 1920s alone, were attributed to these the Immeuble-Villas. pluses, as Le Corbusier was later to explain, conditions. The severity of the housing The section opens with the assertion that would be sufficiently large to compensate crisis threatened to drive traditionally stable Bonnevay and Loucheur's reconstruction the owners "up to the present value of middle-class supporters of the Third Replan for 500,000 low-cost dwellings is an their property.' '29 Additional funds would public into a precarious financial position "exceptional event," and continues with still remain for greater public services. Le as housing costs soared while income stagthe statement that the building industry is Corbusier's "technical solution," like nated.33 It was not illogical to see these completely unequipped to meet such a Taylor's "mental revolution," offered an conditions as leading to social unrest. Like program.26 The only solution, Le Corbu- improved environment for all. Le Corbusier, Loucheur saw large-scale sier asserts, is the abandonment of hand- The social urgency of implementation construction of low-cost housing as one of crafted production and the widespread becomes the focus of the last chapter of the only means of preserving the weak and adoption of modem industrial techniques Vers une architecture, written specifically tottering Republic.34 Nor were other archi- -technical specialists, workshops, stan- for the book's publication. Le Corbusier's tects completely unaware of the necessity dardization, mass production; the innova- analysis was based upon the assumption of coping with this immense problem. Long tions of war manufacturing must be applied that the physical environment-namely, before the war ended, as Kenneth Silver to housing. housing-was the major social ill facing has shown, architects argued for an ex- The war has shaken us all up. One France. "The balance of society comes panded conception of the profession's sotalked of Taylorism. It was done. down to a question of building."30 Both cial role.35 The architect Adolphe Dervaux, Contractors have bought new workers and intellectuals (such plants appeals to for instance, claimed: -ingenious, patient and rapid. Will a professional elite were common to both Now to create or reconstruct a the yard soon be a factory? There is Le Corbusier and Taylorist advocates) sufcity, is talk of houses made in a mould fered by seriously from the lack of assuredly an issue of national appropriate pouring in liquid concrete from dwellings: tuberculosis, mental demoraleconomy, but it's also architecture! To sanitize a above, completed in one day as ization, and the destruction of the tightly populated you family would fill a bottle were .... among the dire consequences; social region, to join a river's banks with a upheaval was imminent in postwar France. bridge, that's architecture. To Nothing is ready, but everything can The book concludes with his famous rhetplan conveniently a locale, to be done. In the next orical twenty years, plea for reform: study the inhabitant's social customs and needs to ease their labor, their big industry will have co-ordinated Society is filled with a violent de- education, their rest-that is, to its standardized materials, compara- sire for something which it may ob- involve onself with individual and ble with those of metallurgy; tech- tain or may not. Everything lies in collective psychology-that's still nical achievement will have carried that: everything depends on the effort architecture.36 heating and lighting and methods of made and the attention paid to these And the rational construction far beyond anylarge exhibition La Cite Reconstialarming symptoms. thing we are acquainted with. Con- Architecture or Revolution. tuee, held in the Tuileries gardens in 1916 and tractors' yards will no longer be Revolution can be avoided.3' organized by such prominent practitioners as sporadic dumps in which Agache, Jaussely, Jourdain, and everything breathes confusion; financial and This statement of strong protest was still Plumet, focused on the problem of resocial organization, using concerted far less radical than the conclusions of the construction and the use of new industrial and forceful methods, will be able to growing Communist Party. But although building methods "to spread the fruitful solve the housing question and the Vers une architecture was a call for reform principles of association, cooperation, reyards will be on a huge scale, run and not violent revolution, for working within grouping, which will conspicuously faciliexploited like government offices. existing political and economic structures tate the realization of plans of developrather than Dwellings . . . will be enormous overthrowing them, it was ment .. 37 hardly a retrenchment into architecture as Although culturally, conservative fac- 136 ArtJournal
tions seem to have dominatd in the postwar actual understanding of the economic vari- modern technology and an accompanying period-regionalism was particularly ables of the construction industry may have social change. In the elections of 1919, the strong in the early twenties38-Le Corbu- been. Among the French architects of the parties of the right, grouped in the Bloc sier's endorsement of scientific manage- early twenties only Perret and Gamier, National, won 433 seats in the Chamber, ment was in fact echoed throughout large both illustrated in L'Esprit Nouveau, shared against a mere 86 for the Radicals and 104 segments of the Parisian town-planning his interest in new industrial methods.44 for the Socialists; for the first time since movement. Leftists such as Henri Sellier, Yet, in other respects Le Corbusier's the 1890s, clerical and reactionary seg- Maxime Leroy, and Georges Benoit-Levy, approach to social change resembled that ments dominated. Particularly disturbing as well as more conservative spokesmen of the more official town-planning reform- to this conservative public, yearning for such as Louis Renault, Pierre Lhande, and ers. Economic rather than political mea- stability after the wartime upheaval, was Louis Loucheur, all advocated some form sures were the means to social reform. Big L'Esprit Nouveau's internationalist orienof "municipal Taylorism."39 They be- business-"a healthy and moral organ- tation and its commitment to land reform. lieved that a more efficient organization of ism"-more than parliament, was likely Although for some French industrialists transportation and services would produce to be the generator of reform. the advocacy of new, productive methods less fatigued workers and thus prevent the Business has modified its habits and was a protectionist call, a means to insure "degradation and disintegration of human customs. . ... capital."40 For most of these Industry has created France's industrial preeminence, for Le reformers, new tools. . . . Such tools are Corbusier, as for the technocrats involved garden city towns, located close to induscapain the ble of try, were the most rational solution. Benoitadding to human welfare and Pan-Europe movement, it was intrinof Levy, for instance, whose work La Citelightening human toil. If these sically tied to a broader world vision.49 new conditions are set jardin (1904) Le Corbusier had studied against the Taylor's orderly factory creating orderly men was closely, carried the notion of efficient past, you have Revolution.45 eventually to lead to a more orderly world. Le Corbusier's future, like functional segregation (somewhat analo- In short, Le Corbusier envisioned the that of the earlier Saint-Simonians, was gous to Taylor's division of labor) to an "Revolution" of Fordism and Taylorism one of order on a series of ever grander extreme. He divided each new town into as an improved corporate capitalism, prem- scales; rationalization would spread in even "hamlets," with every hamlet representing ised on efficiency and econony. For the wider spheres, resulting eventually in the a different specialty: there was to a hamlet advocates of Taylorism, social justice was attainment of universal harmony. Internafor ironworkers, for carpenters, and for a product of technical rationalization, not tional cooperation and reduced trade remen of letters.41 Also popular was the of material equality. strictions were essential components of this notion of the home as a model of manage- The specific political and social impli- projection. Just as traditional class strucrial efficiency, an idea anticipated by Alfred cations of this technological vision become tures had little relation to appropriate mande Foville and others of the Musee Social. more evident if one considers Le Corbu- agerial hierarchies in Scientific Manage- The Scientific Management advocate Fayol sier's writings in the context of L'Esprit ment, so, too, national boundaries had only explained: Nouveau as a whole. Although the review marginal connection to issues of industrial Like any other enterprise, the home dealt predominantly with the arts, it also production and economic exchange. The has to be managed, i.e., it needs examined science, industry, economics, architect's endorsement of an international foresight, organization, command, sociology, and foreign affairs as topics of stylistic vocabulary related directly to his co-ordination, and control.... important concern. By the fourth issue, conception of industrial efficiency and a Then only will the home play the January 1921, the subtitle changed from network of rationally unified enterprises. part which befits it in the Revue internationale managed'esthetique to Revue A standardization of architectural element training of internationale illustree de l'activite con- ments, Le Corbusier stated in his article youth.42 temporaine; later, in fact, L'Esprit Nou- "Nos moyens," would not only result in But for most architects and urbanists the veau was to publish a L'Esprit Nouveau, greater formal unity, but also lead to "uniapplication of industrial models to urban revue internationale hebdomadaire d'econ- versal collaboration" and "universal planning and house design was limited to omique.46 As the editors explained in the methods."50 The larger-scale production studies of efficient organization and man- preface to an article "Wilson et l'human- and wider access to technological innovaagement of the physical plan. Mass-pro- isme frangais," tions resulting from a broader market would duction procedures were largely ignored. lower costs and benefit all. Le A Corbusier few of our readers were Their interests in Taylorism, like those of surprised cited the that most French industrialists, were more l'Esprit Nouveau showed interest Barrage de Barberine, with parts psy- in economic and coming from Germany, Switzerland, and chological then technical, more concerned sociological questhe United tions. with theory than substance. Dubreuil, an L'Esprit Nouveau wants to be States, as an example of the kind of the eyewitness to both French and American great Review of connection for "great work" emerging from international experiments, observed that Taylorism had people who think, . . . who can not cooperation; it embodied "the sum of man's but realize that in this not fully penetrated even American factoday and age all knowledge." Subsequently, he ries and was no more than a subjects are more than ever of suggested in Urbanisme that Paris should great superficial be rebuilt with relevance and that intellectual and foreign capital; German, gloss on the operations of most French enterprises.43 Loucheur and Renault, for spiritual questions are closely related American, Japanese, and English investment would to insure the the social situation.47 city against future instance, despite certain innovations in war attack.51 In short, rational business pracand automobile production, made no effort In the spectrum of well-known French tices meant world peace. Camille Mauclair, to propose prefabrication in the housing cultural reviews of the epoch, L'Esprit the art critic of Figaro, was particularly industry itself. Nouveau appears as one of the most aes- sardonic about this suggestion for "the Le Corbusier's technocratic stance was thetically and politically progressive. Only internationalization of the center of Paris": more radical than that of most architects Clarte and the later Revolution Surrealiste This immense value of the built cenand town planners in its endorsement of were further to the left. At a time when ter of Paris-it would be goodfor one not only efficiency but also mass produc- many artistic publications were calling for section of it to belong to foreigners. tion. Ford as much as Taylor was his model; a resurgence of regional styles and a return If, of the numerous billions of giganstandardization and prefabrication were to la tradition latine,48 L'Esprit Nouveau tic glass towers to be raised, a predominant concerns, however naive his was large unequivocal in its endorsement of Summer 1983 137
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