Monday 29 April 2013

Was Le Corbusier a Fascist?


In short, not really, but his mum strongly supported the Vichy government Corbusier spent the war years rather pathetically hovering around, one day in, the next out, severely testing that boundary between co-existence and collaboration and escaping the latter by a whisker, and he did admire Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. But neither of these really count, even if it sounds like you can't really be a real Nazi if you are not good at it, for he certainly had no time for Hitler or what he termed 'the Fritz' in general (despite the fact that La Chaux de Fonds has as much in common with Germany and France as it is Swiss and he was devoted to his mother and her opinion of him). He had also visited Mussolini, but he visited the USSR too. He got disappointed by everybody. His opinions on what is natural and human and pure and harmonious and the biology of urbanism could put him in trouble, especially considering he was in, and then out, with some of the more nasty Vichy French working towards a French master race.
However, having achieved next to nothing but starve through the war he would be re-energized by De Gaulle to build the magnificent Unite d'Habitation, the twentieth century's village, and certainly an object that defies any crass politicization. If there is a system of order there, it's cosmic, it's the modulor.
Photo Paul Davies 1983

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