Le Corbusier e a Janela. Do Vão Tradicional ao Brise-Soleil

Abstract

The aim of this investigation is to comprehend the relation between Le Corbusier and the window, by interpreting the role and evolution of this essential element in its architecture, having by main base for the study, his built work. For this purpose, apart from his works, we also analyzed drawings, writings, conferences and books authored by Le Corbusier, as well as studies and analyzes already performed related to this same theme in the architecture of the author. In the first chapter, the analysis begins with a brief approach to the early years of his training that corresponded essentially to his homeland, Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, and to the realized travels by Le Corbusier. It sets out some personalities who influenced him directly, in order to understand how they altered his way of thinking and, we also analyze the two works that best characterize that time, the Maison Blanche, 1912 and the Villa Schwob, 1916. In the second chapter we seek to follow the natural process of the evolution of his thinking and its practical application. For this purpose, we analyze the short window story described by Le Corbusier both in Almanach d'architecture Moderne and the conferences in Buenos Aires. We also analyze one of his first inventions, which formed the basis of all its architecture, the Dom-ino system, responsible for the discovery of the fenêtre en longueur, theorized as one of five points for a new architecture and exemplified in the Villa Savoye, 1928. The third chapter, chronologically coincident with the second, is based on a different type of opening, the pan de verre, highlighted as one of the most extremist and revolutionary and, at the same time, unsuccessful moments of Le Corbusier, the pan de verre hermétiquement mastiqué of the Cité de Refuge, 1929. Finally, the fourth chapter focuses on the dissociation of the functions of the window, while Le Corbusier's solution to the problems of pan de verre. Thus, Le Corbusier develops a new type of window in three essential ways: the Quatrième Mur represented by the Immeuble Molitor, 1931 and the Maisons Jaoul, 1951; Brise-Soleil in the Unité d'habitacion de Marseille, 1947 and the Convent de la Tourette, 1952; And finally, the recapture of the concept of the traditional window in the Petit Cabanon, 1952.