Sunday, March 14, 2010

a dwelling is no machine for living in


Le Corbusier saw houses as 'machines for living in'. An example is his design of Villa Savoye, in Poissy, which is nearby Paris (soon after the construction was finished the roof started to leak and the Savoye family sued Le Corbusier). The metaphor shows his anti-humanism clearly, Theodore Dalrymple calls Le Corbusier therefore totalitarian. The Dutch architect Ruurd Roorda of Kingma Roorda Architects claims on a related note that architects have an obsession for the outside, and he gives Frank Gehry's 1997 Guggenheim museum in Bilbao as an example. Architects want to draw attention to their extravagant designs. However, a ciy full of 'icons' as in Dubai is not a pleasant city to live in, because there is no connection whatsoever between these so-called icons.

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