Subject: help with le corbusier

From: [email-masked] (Riccardo Sabbatini)
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 1996 21:05:17 GMT

italy, 23/03/96

i need the * exact* english version of the Le Corbusier phrase that
sound like this "the plan is the architecture generator" (in the
original french version you can find the phrase at page XXXVIII of
"Vers une architecture")

please reply to [email-masked]

thanks in advance
Riccardo Sabbatini

---

From: Christopher Egan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 1996 18:35:46 -0600

> Riccardo Sabbatini

Luckily you caught me inthe office wiht my books all around me.  The 
quote you want appears in several locations in the English translation, 
which is called "Towards a New Architecture" published by Dover 
Publications, Mineola, New York, 1986.  It is a facsimile of the 1931 
English version by John Rodker of London, which was a translation of the 
thirteenth French edition.

The references are as follows:

page 2 and 3: (in the section called "Argument" under the heading "Three 
Reminders to Architects" the third reminder is headed "Plan". The 
complete text is:

"The Plan is the generator.

Without a plan, you have lack of order, and wilfulness.
The Plan holds in itself the essence of sensation.
The great problems of to-morrow, dictated by collective necessities, put 
the question of 'plan' in a new form.
Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the 
house and the city."

This exact text is re-printed by itself on page 45, as the introduction 
to the chapter, 

"Three Reminders to Architects
	III
	Plan"

Just to be disgustingly thorough, this quote appears again twice on page 
47 in the following form:

	"...Mass and surface are the elements by which architecture manifests
	itself.  Mass and surface are determined by the plan.  The plan 
	is the generator.  So much worse for those who lackimagination."

	Third Reminder : The Plan

	The plan is the generator.
	The eye of the spectator finds itself looking at a site composed of
	streets and houses.  It receives the impact of the masses which 
	rise up around it.  If these masses are of a formal kind and have
	not been spoilt by unseemly variations, if the disposition of their
	grouping expresses a clean rhythm and not an incoherent agglomeration,
	if the relationship of mass to space is in just proportion, the 
	eye transmits to the brain co-ordinated sensations and the mind
	derives from these satisfactions of a high order : this is
	architecture."

I hope this helps...you can credit me if you publish.

By the way...where in Italy are you?  I have visited Roma, Firenze, 
Venezia, Verona, Mantova and a little in the mountains around Asolo, 
while driving to Milano.  Although everything was wonderful, I was 
particularly delighted by Verona and Asolo, and the area around Riva del 
Garda. My one visit was to see the exhibit of Scarpa's drawings at the 
Accademia in Venezia in 1984, and to follow up on some research I had 
done regarding Scarpa's Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona.  Obviously I 
fell in love with Venezia, but I was there in October, when the canals 
were not warm. One of my most vivid memories was the smell of grapes in 
the afternoon sun.

I can hardly wait to go back.  My sister's son will be studying 
art in Firenze this summer.

Buona fortuna!

Christopher Egan
Assistant Professor of Architecture
The University of Texas at San Antonio

---

From: [email-masked] (smith)
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 16:08:00 GMT

>Riccardo Sabbatini

Well according to my english version of "Towards a New
Architecture"(translated by Frederick Etchells) 1960, The phrase is
"The Plan is the generator."  (page 45).  Now wasnt that easy.

jlsmith

---

From: [email-masked] (Serge D. Lederman)
Date: 8 Apr 1996 15:58:54 GMT

As a native french reader, I would like to emphasize the meaning that the word *generator* in LC's original writing is to be understood in its double sense of *engine* a well as *gender*. This corroborates the fascination of LC for mass-production and mechanical finishes of details, as you can figure that in his first writing.
As an 14-years architect, altough I am a admirer of LC -who had the genious of not puttings his own theoreticals writings in practice- I summon you not to take these writing to litteraly in practice, the goal of an architect is to create beauty and comfort, not to demonstrate the powers of industrialization or even the cleverness of oneself's plan. I prefer to meditate on this old chinese sentence saying  *if the building belongs to its occupants, the facade belongs to the spectator in the streets*

Serge Lederman
Email<captain@netvision,net.il>