"Architecture or Revolution": Taylorism, Technocracy, and Social Change Author(s): Mary McLeod Source: Art Journal, Vol.

43, No. 2, Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s (Summer, 1983), pp. 132-147 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776649 . Accessed: 26/01/2011 15:41
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Revolution": SArchitecture and Technocracy, Taylorism, Social Change

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By Mary McLeod

Corbusier'ssocial and political " - - ** - --:----? --position continues to be one of the most controversialdimensions of his ca) aux Arts d6coratif, reer. On the one hand, Post-Modernist iLe r4vet ci 1 - Eprit-Nouveau critics and architectsdenouncehis messianic social vision: his belief that architecU11 tureis a tool for social redemption. Charles describes Jencks, for instance,sarcastically Le Corbusier's "heroic object of every deterday use" as the "new, revolutionary gent"; the editorsof HarvardArchitecture Review condemnhis utopianismwith their assertionthat "architecture profitmore can with what 'is' rather thanwhat des by working 'should be.' "1 On the otherhand,historians have often been skepticalof the claim thatpolitics played a significantrole in the I flail, formulation of Le Corbusier's work. TAix" ItA4A AA Banham and Colin Rowe call Reyner attention to the academic strains in Le Corbusier'sthinking;more recently, Wilthis published newspaper liam Curtisdismisses politics as irrelevant Fig. 1 "If Parisbecomes Americanized."Le Corbusier d'architecture moderne (1925). clipping discussing PlanVoisin (1925) in L'Almanach to the generation Le Corbusier's of forms.2 In contrastto the position of currentarchiIt the ThirdInternational. is a techtectural polemics, the standardbiograph- Le Corbusierhimself wouldhave gladly nical work.... ical interpretation maintainsthathe was an endorsed this assessment-at least until essentially apolitical man, governed by 1930. Throughoutthe twenties he veheaesthetic considerations and an all- mently denied any party affiliations; he Things are not revolutionized by PeterBlake's The frequently cited the various political epimaking revolutions. The real revoembracinghumanism.3 lution lies in the solution of existing Master Builders makes explicit this inter- thets given to him-Bolshevist, Fascist, problems.5 petit bourgeois-as proof of his own neupretation: trality. He was, he declared,strictlya pro- His task, like that of the "healthy and The facts are that Corbu is totally fessional man. At the conclusion of disinterestedin politics;thathe finds virile" engineer, was to measure,analyze, Urbanisme,he states: and propose solutions-a role, Le Corbuit necessary, at times, to deal with I am an architect;no one is going to in orderto achievecertain sier believed, removed from the vagaries politicians make a politician of me. Everyone, and fluctuationsof parliamentary politics. important objectivesof planningand in his own domain where he is an Yet this purportedneutrality,as Postredevelopment; and that his own did haveintuitively understood, Modernists expert, can apply his special knowl"political" philosophyhasto do with not imply isolation or detachmentfrom such issues as the continuityof civiedge and carryhis solutionsto their was deeply engaged lization on earth and the need for logical conclusion. .... society. Le Corbusier in social issues, althoughhis involvement assuring such continuity--concerns has thatare not easily labeledin termsof [Ville Contemporaine] no label, generally defies party labels. Words like it is not dedicated to our existing "technical,"' "logical,"' "solution," and today's political pressuregroups.4 Bourgeois-CapitalistSociety nor to "expert" all associate him with a general
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ideological position current in postwar France that was predicatedon American models of industrial rationalizationand managerial reform. Both art and politics of were placedundertherubric professional expertise. Far from being void of specific this political andsocial implications, vision -incorporating Taylorism, Fordism, and other models of so-called Scientific Management-frequently led to specificstances on international commerce, worldgovernment, trade regulations, productionhierarchies, and land ownership, all of which he conceived as essential componentsof a foreseen social regeneration.This vision linking technology and social change, as this essay will attemptto show, was fundaand mental to Le Corbusier'sarchitecture theory duringthe postwarperiod.

Taylorism An important dimensionof this ideological stance was Taylorism, the Americansystem of Scientific Management.Like many saw Europeanprofessionals,Le Corbusier Taylorism as a means of breaking with componentof Taylorismwas the Fig. 2 A workshopplan in relief. An important prewar society, a key to social renewal. views and of process.Perspective organization the orderanddirectionof theproduction The word "Taylorism" appearsin almost flow of multi-story models were frequentlyused to illustratethe production workshops. every one of his books from Apres le cubisme(1918) toLa Villeradieuse(1935); Ville Contemporaine and Plan Voisin, premiseduponspeed, efficiency, andeconomy, were architecturalvisions of the American industrialutopiamade manifest (Fig. 1). in Taylorism, popularized the firstyears of the century, was a methodof labordisbased upon cipline and plant organization of ostensibly scientificinvestigations labor efficiency and incentive systems. In the early 1880s the Americanengineer, Frederick Winslow Taylor, disturbedby work slowdowns, organized manufacturing plants and devised wage scales based on piecework, to improveefficiency and expand production (Figs. 2 and 3). His objective was to maximize the ratio of output to input, benefits to cost; rationalhe ized management, believed,wouldbring optimalproduction. The most originalfeatureof his system, however, was the applicationof efficiency engineering to labor relations;Taylorism entailed, to use the words of its zealous followers, "a complete mental revolution." Both laborers and management, Taylor explained, "take their eyes off of the division of the surplusas the important matter, and together turn their attention the towardincreasing size of the surplus."6 The increased productivity would ultimately benefit all. With scarcityand constraint eliminated, there would no longer be bitter confrontationover the divisions of profit.In short,Taylorism--orScientific Management, as the more general movement was frequently called--offered an Fig. 3 Film study of a worker'smovements.Film techniqueswerepopularwith many advocatesof Scientific Management.The film frames,takenevery 1/15of a second, escape from ideological conflict and class revealeduseless or inefficientmovements,which could thenbe eliminated. divisions: traditional politics would be Summer 1983 133

subsumedby a rational technologyof political and economic choice. As the historian CharlesMaierhas shown, it was this political andsocial implication,morethanTaylorism's strictly technical features, that interest.7 generateda European Before World War I Taylorism was alreadyknown in Franceby a small group of technicians.Theirinteresthadfirstbeen sparked at the Paris Exposition of 1900, where Bethlehem Steel exhibited highhailed speed steel. The Frenchindustrialists this example of Taylor's experimentsas a great scientific invention, andby 1914 the metallurgistHenri Le Chatelier, "le barnum frangais de Taylor," had translated three of Taylor's majorworks:On the Art of CuttingMetals (La Coupe des metaux), Shop Management(La Direction des ateliers), and The Principles of Scientific (Lesprincipesd'organisation Management inscientifique). In 1907-08 industrialists troducedTaylor's time-studymethodsinto factories, but these earlyefforts, knownto the workersas "systematizedsweating," generateda spate of unfavorablepublicity and ended abruptlyin a series of violent strikes throughoutthe region of Paris in 1913.8 World War I, however, completely reversed this situation. The demands for rapid, precise production,the loss of manpower, and the introductionof new, unskilled (andoften weaker)workersinto the labor force encouragedinterestin American industrial innovations; in 1916 the publication of the Frenchengineer Henri Fayol's Administration industrielle et generale addedimpetusto the "scientific" organization of war-related industries. Newly rationalizedenterprisesincludeda majorstate plant for gunpowdermanufacture, large sectorsof the steel industry,the yardsof Penhoet(the builders shipbuilding of the great Frenchliners Parisand the Ile de France), and a military automobile repair shop, the last celebrated in 1918 througha series of lectures sponsoredby of the Society for the Encouragement National Industry.The governmentitself was of a leader in the introduction the precepts AlbertThomas, of ScientificManagement. the Minister of Armaments,spoke of the war as an "enormous industrialrevolution" for France and pleaded with labor and managementto intensify production, ignore class differences, and accept Taylorism. In early 1918 Clemenceauhimself signed a decree asking that all heads of military establishmentsstudy new industrial techniques and proposedthe creation of a Taylorite "planning department"in every plant.9 But it was not only the demandsof war production that generated the impulse towards industrial innovation;the formidable task of reconstructionencouraged exploration of more general applications of modemrn productivetechniques. By the 134 Art Journal

France,November1918. Fig. 4 An invadedareanearLens in Northeastern

with its pitched This gardencity development Fig. 5 The new city of Lens-Mericourt. effortsfollowing the was typicalof the reconstruction roof houses and picturesque plan war. Erectedby the railroadcompanyNord, it was one of severaltowns designed authorization, beganone week aftergovernment completely by engineers.Construction 9, 1919, and in six months800 houses were constructed. May war's end, the devastationwas immense: in the 4,329 communesthathadbeenoccupied or evacuated,some 6,147 publicbuildings--townhalls, schools, andchurcheswere razed;293,039 dwellings were completely destroyed;another435,961 homes severely damaged;and 52,734 kilometers of highways neededto be rebuilt.Muchof northeast France was reduced to rubble: some 100,000 wagonloads were required to clear the debrisfrom the city of Armentieres alone (Figs. 4 and 5).lo Although afterthe warmanysimplywantedto recapture the past and returnto "normalcy," therewere dissidents,amongthemprogressive industrialists, officials, andtradeunion groups, who sought to adapt the innovations of war to a peacetime economy. In February1919 Louis Loucheur,the Minister of Reconstruction,decreedthat "there must be fromnow on only one hymnon the lips of every Frenchman-the hymn to Secretaryproduction,"andLeonJouhaux, Generalof the principaltradeunionfederation, the CGT, condemnedthe toleration of "the worst prewarmethodsand follies, the practices that made our industrypuny As and shabby."911 earlyas 1917, Lieutenant Colonel G. Espitallier declared that shouldbe a pointof depar"reconstruction ture for progress towarda more scientifically modem [form of] organization."'12 art In the avant-garde world, Le Corbusier and Jeanneret) (then still Charles-Edouard Amedee Ozenfantwere amongthe first to of announcetheirendorsement new industrial methods: The war has ended;all is organized; all is clear andpurified;factoriesare built;nothingis just like it was before the War; the great Struggle tested everything, it destroyedsenile methods and replaced them with those which the battleprovedbest. [Taylorism]is not a questionof anything more than expoiting intelligently scientific discoveries. Instinct, groping, and empiricism are replaced by scientific principles of analysis, organization,and classification.13

Taylorism, a fundamentalcomponent of the Purists'l'esprit nouveau, now became a pervasive call in discussions of reconstruction, just as it had been in plans for war production. As a writerin Revue des Vivantes explained, "The war made the Taylor method the orderof the day. ... The nameTaylor,whichwas barelyknown in Franceby well-informedpeople only a few years ago, is now mentionedby everyone: owners, engineersandworkers."14 Also importantto the introductionof Taylorism, however, was a long-standing

familiar with the principles of Scientific Managementduringthe war years, when he studied extensively at the Bibliotheque Nationale. In 1917 he wrote to his Swiss friendWilliamRitterthathe was immersed in Taylorism,butnot withoutsome ambivalence: he called it "the horribleand ineluctable life of tomorrow.'"20 But his doubts had clearly subsidedby the time of the publicationof Ozenfant'sandhis Apres le cubismethe followingyear, andthroughout the partners'culturalreview L'Esprit Nouveau (1920-25) references to mass and production economicefficiencyabound (Figs. 6 and 7). Evenin its advertisements, "Taylorism" is cited.21 ,,,,"R i Le Corbusier's interest in Taylorism, however, was more than theoretical. By C4Et December 1914 he hadalreadydeveloped, . .c. O~t.e. .e. .f. in response to the immensedevastationof Reeln ta itfpas! the first months of the war, the Dom-ino V. yo 4me system, one of the earliest applicationsof mass-productiontechniquesto housing.22 After his arrivalin Parisin February1917 ~i~iMOO he servedas an architectural consultant for the S.A.B.A. (Societe d'Application du for Fig. 6 (left) Advertisement a cement-gun,L'EspritNouveauno. 28. Le Corbusier Beton Arme), an associationof engineers used the cement-gunto cover the pressedstrawwallsof the EspritNouveaupavilion,as and industrialists involved in the construcwell as the gardenwalls of his housingprojectat Pessac. tion of national defense projects. Shortly eventssection, November afterwards,he also foundedhis own enterFig. 7 (right)A page fromL'EspritNouveau(no. 27), current Inin 1924. Le Corbusier previouslypublishedthe upperseriesof photographs Versune prise, S.E.I.E. (Societe d'Entreprises had dustrielleset Etudes), which includedboth architectureto illustratethe evolutionof a "standard."He took the lower-right fromL'lllustration(July 12, 1924), a Frenchpicturemagazinethatcovered a small concrete block factory and a rephotograph search section devoted to the studyof conclosely the developmentsof the automobileindustry. crete and refrigeration.Le Corbusierdeideological strain in French politics of (1931) were among Le Corbusier'smost scribed his enthusiasmfor this new industrial endeavorto Ritter: rationaladministrative reform-in partic- heavily annotatedbooks.16 ular, Saint-Simonianism.The nineteenthBy 1923 Taylorismwas popularenough The scene magnificent: enormous gas Henride Saint-Simon to be the subjectof an elaboratesatirepubcenturysocial thinker meters, four huge chimneys to the hadproposeda systemof organicinequality lished on the frontpage of L'Intransigeant. east. I breathe proudlyon my site: with "productive" and "industrial"ele- Shortlyafterwards, Quotidienserialized Le the bureaucrat,the agent, the funcments replacing useless aristocrats and Henry Ford's memoirs and in 1925 pubtionary, the eunucharchitectwill be landowners;in his 300-memberChamber lished a Frenchedition of My Life andMy obliterated one day, finally. I will of Inventionssome 200 places were occu- Work."7 Fordismhadjoined Taylorismas make beautifulprintsof my factory pied by engineers. American theories of a model of rationalization;the assembly and I will be able to talk of "my reform were strongly reminiscentof this line, standardization, the expansionof and stocks" and "my sales" like a rice nineteenth-centuryutopian plan in their a mass marketthroughhigher wages and or coal merchant!23 proposalof the engineeras social manager, lower prices gave impetusto the belief that their condemnationsof waste and ineffi- social problemscould be alleviatedwithin At S.E.I.E. he continued his pursuit of low-cost housing "for reconciency, and their belief that an increased the boundariesof capitalism.The French, prefabricated aggregate wealth would be beneficial to like the Germans, appearedto take the struction in the devastatedregions" and all. After the war Saint-Simonianism claims of Ford's ghost-writtenbooks at gained first-handexperience with Taylorgained a small following with Gabriel face value, seeing them as "primitive ism in the tasks of industrialdesign and Darquet's publication of Le Producteur socialism"; Ford's prognosticationof a production. Although the factory venture in (1920-33), named after the nineteenth- car for every family was a sign of the soon raninto difficultiesthatculminated bankruptcyin the early twenties, Le Corcentury periodical.s1 This strict revival well-being to come.18 found an echo in the generalendorsements Also popular,althougheventuallyover- busier maintainedclose contactwith engiof production, modernization, and new shadowed by American methods, was a neers and industrialists. rationaltechnology by such prominentfigures as native Frenchtheoryof industrial Throughoutthe twenties Le Corbusier, the popular mayor of Lyon and Radical ization, Fayolism. In contrast to Taylor like manyof his German contemporaries,24 leader, Edouard Herriot; Clemenceau's and Ford who concentratedon the opera- regardedTaylorism and serial production Ministerof Commerce,EtienneClementel; tional levels of industry,Henri Fayol fo- as fundamentalcomponents of social rethe editor of Figaro, Lucien Romier;and cused on issues of management admin- newal. While the aesthetic suggestionsof and the resident general of Morocco, Marshal istrative reform. His Administrationin- mechanisticrepetitionand standardization Lyauty. One of the most importantpopu- dustrielle et generale especially attracted echoed manyof his own formalprinciples, larizersof the Americanindustrial methods French employers who had initially been the promise of industrialefficiency and was a workingmechanicandunionleader, put off by the excessive technicaldetailof greater productivityallowed him to conas ceive of architecture a social tool. Only Hyacinth Dubreuil, whose two studies the first articleson Taylorism.19 Standards(1929) andNouveauxStandards Le Corbusier probably first became with the applicationof modernindustrial
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techniques, Le Corbusierbelieved, could architecture produced be cheaply, andthus become availableto all. This argumentbecomes one of the predominant themes in his famous polemic Vers une architecture.As ReynerBanham has demonstrated, the text, composed largely of a series of articlespublishedin as L'Esprit Nouveau, can be interpreted a dialectic between old and new, classical and mechanical, architectureand engineering, which concludesthatarchitecture must incorporatethe lessons of mass productionor perish.25 Althoughits links with the past are deep and explicit, the book strongly proclaims a commitment to an industrialfuture. It is, in fact, in a passage to following his nostalgictribute theAcropolis that Le Corbusierintroduceshis most significantand originalargument,"MassProductionHouses". Here he specifically advocatesTaylorismandmodemindustrial methods, and at the same time illustrates his own studies for low-cost prefabricated housing: Dom-ino, Monol, Citrohan,and the Immeuble-Villas. The section opens with the assertionthat Bonnevay and Loucheur'sreconstruction plan for 500,000 low-cost dwellings is an "exceptional event," and continues with the statementthat the buildingindustryis completely unequipped to meet such a program.26The only solution, Le Corbusier asserts, is the abandonment handof crafted production and the widespread adoption of modern industrialtechniques -technical specialists, workshops, stanthe dardization,mass production; innovations of warmanufacturing mustbe applied to housing. The war has shaken us all up. One talked of Taylorism. It was done. Contractors have boughtnew plants -ingenious, patientandrapid.Will the yard soon be a factory?Thereis talk of houses made in a mould by pouring in liquid concrete from above, completedin one day as you would fill a bottle. ... Nothing is ready, buteverythingcan be done. In the next twenty years, big industrywill have co-ordinated its standardized materials,comparable with those of metallurgy;technical achievementwill have carried heating and lighting and methodsof rationalconstruction beyondanyfar thing we are acquaintedwith. Contractors' yards will no longer be sporadicdumpsin which everything breathes confusion; financial and social organization,using concerted and forcefulmethods, will be able to solve the housing question and the yardswill be on a huge scale, runand exploited like government offices.
Dwellings
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an isolated discipline. In contrastto the and square-built no longera disand Beaux-Arts practioners who rarely conmal congeries; they will incorporate sidered in the prewarperiod the issue of the principleof mass-production and housing or new materials, Le Corbusier large-scaleindustrialization.27 was arguingfor an expansion of the very This vision of the futuremodels housing conception of the architect's role to emof production on airplane and automobile bracethe consideration social problems. manufacture.Just as HenryFord's assem- Taylorismandnew industrial methodswere bly line was to resultin lower-priced goods the only way the architectcould continue and more available commodities for the to be relevantin a society threatened with worker, so, too, industrializedbuilding potentialdestruction. Le Corbusier stated this with greater processes were to reduce housing costs and provide a "maximum dwelling" for zeal and to a largerlay audiencethan did all. Even the relationshipbetween tenant any of his Frenchcontemporaries, he but and landlord was to be changed in the was hardlyalone in his perception housof "inevitablesocial evolution." Lowercosts ing as "the problemof the epoch" and "at would permita system of rentpurchasein the root of social unrest.'"32 With the exwhich tenants would take shares in the ception of the Communists,all sides of the enterprise." Similarly, a more efficient political spectrum-republican, socialist, urbanism,includingrationaltransportation clerical-were in accord. In Paris, about systems and an increased density of ser- two fifths of the populationwere saidto be vices, would lead to greater economies dangerouslyhoused;seriousovercrowding and increased land values. One need not and general deterioration living condiof worry about sacrificing the rich to solve tions were common. Some 16,000 deaths, the social problemsof the poor. The sur- in the 1920s alone, were attributed these to was pluses, as Le Corbusier laterto explain, conditions. The severity of the housing would be sufficiently large to compensate crisis threatened drivetraditionally to stable the owners "up to the present value of middle-class supportersof the Third Retheirproperty.""29 Additionalfundswould public into a precariousfinancialposition still remainfor greaterpublic services. Le as housing costs soaredwhile income stagCorbusier's "technical solution," like nated.33 It was not illogical to see these Taylor's "mental revolution," offered an conditions as leadingto social unrest.Like Le Corbusier, Loucheur saw large-scale improvedenvironmentfor all. The social urgency of implementation constructionof low-cost housing as one of becomes the focus of the last chapterof the only means of preservingthe weakand Vers une architecture,writtenspecifically totteringRepublic.34 Nor were otherarchifor the book's publication.Le Corbusier's tects completely unawareof the necessity analysis was based upon the assumption of copingwith thisimmenseproblem.Long that the physical environment-namely, before the war ended, as Kenneth Silver housing-was the major social ill facing has shown, architects argued for an exFrance. "The balance of society comes panded conception of the profession'ssodown to a question of building.'s30 Both cial role.ss The architect AdolpheDervaux, workers and intellectuals(such appealsto for instance, claimed: a professional elite were common to both Now to createorreconstruct city, a Le CorbusierandTayloristadvocates)sufis assuredly an issue of national fered seriouslyfromthe lack of appropriate economy, but it's also architecture! dwellings: tuberculosis, mental demoralTo sanitize a tightly populated ization, and the destructionof the family region, to join a river's bankswith a were among the dire consequences;social bridge, that's architecture. upheavalwas imminentin postwarFrance. To plan conveniently a locale, to The book concludes with his famousrhetsocial customs study the inhabitant's orical plea for reform: and needs to ease their labor, their education, their rest-that is, to Society is filled with a violent deinvolve onself with individual and sire for somethingwhich it may obcollective psychology-that's still tain or may not. Everythinglies in architecture.36 that:everythingdependson theeffort made and the attentionpaid to these And the large exhibitionLa Citi Reconstialarmingsymptoms. tude, held in the Tuileriesgardensin 1916 Architectureor Revolution. and organized by such prominentpractiRevolutioncan be avoided.3' tioners as Agache, Jaussely,Jourdain, and This statementof strongprotestwas still Plumet, focused on the problem of refar less radicalthanthe conclusions of the constructionand the use of new industrial growing CommunistParty. But although building methods "to spread the fruitful Vers une architecturewas a call for reform principles of association, cooperation,renot violent revolution, for workingwithin grouping, which will conspicuouslyfaciliexisting political and economic structures tate the realization of plans of developrather than overthrowing them, it was ment .... into architecture as Although culturally, conservative fachardly a retrenchment

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tions seem to have dominatdin the postwar period-regionalism was particularly strong in the early twenties38-Le Corbusier's endorsement of scientific management was in fact echoed throughout large segments of the Parisian town-planning movement. Leftists such as Henri Sellier, Maxime Leroy, andGeorgesBenoit-LIvy, as well as more conservative spokesmen such as Louis Renault,PierreLhande,and Louis Loucheur, all advocatedsome form of lieved thata more efficient organization and transportation services would produce less fatigued workersand thus preventthe of "degradationand disintegration human For most of these reformers, capital.""4 garden city towns, located close to indussolution.Benoittry, were the mostrational L6vy, for instance, whose work La Citijardin (1904) Le Corbusier had studied closely, carried the notion of efficient functional segregation (somewhat analogous to Taylor's division of labor) to an extreme. He divided each new town into "hamlets," with everyhamletrepresenting a different specialty:therewas to a hamlet for ironworkers, for carpenters, and for men of letters.41 Also popular was the notion of the home as a model of managerial efficiency, an idea anticipated Alfred by de Foville and othersof the Musee Social. advocateFayol The ScientificManagement explained: Like any other enterprise,the home has to be managed, i.e., it needs foresight, organization, command, co-ordination, and control.... Then only will the home play the part which befits it in the management trainingof youth.42 But for most architectsandurbanists the application of industrialmodels to urban planning and house design was limited to studies of efficient organizationand management of the physical plan. Mass-production procedureswere largely ignored. Their interests in Taylorism, like those of most Frenchindustrialists,were morepsychological then technical, moreconcerned with theory than substance. Dubreuil, an eyewitness to both French and American experiments, observedthatTaylorismhad not fully penetratedeven Americanfactories and was no more than a superficial gloss on the operations of most French enterprises.43Loucheur and Renault, for instance, despitecertaininnovationsin war and automobileproduction, madeno effort to propose prefabricationin the housing industryitself. Le Corbusier'stechnocraticstance was more radical than that of most architects and town planners in its endorsementof not only efficiency but also mass production. Fordas muchas Taylorwas his model; standardization and prefabricationwere predominantconcerns, however naive his
of "municipal Taylorism."'39 They be-

of actualunderstanding the economic variables of the construction industry may have been. Among the Frencharchitectsof the early twenties only Perret and Gamier, in bothillustrated L'Esprit Nouveau,shared his interest in new industrialmethods.44 Yet, in other respects Le Corbusier's approachto social change resembledthat of the more official town-planning reformers. Economic ratherthan political measures were the means to social reform.Big business-"a healthy and moral organism"-more than parliament,was likely to be the generatorof reform. Business has modified its habitsand customs. . . . Industryhas created new tools. . . . Such tools arecapable of adding to humanwelfare and of lightening human toil. If these new conditions are set against the past, you have Revolution.45

modern technology and an accompanying social change. In theelections of 1919, the parties of the right, grouped in the Bloc National, won 433 seats in the Chamber, against a mere 86 for the Radicalsand 104 for the Socialists; for the first time since the 1890s, clerical and reactionarysegments dominated. Particularlydisturbing to this conservative public, yearning for stability after the wartime upheaval, was orienL'Esprit Nouveau's internationalist tation and its commitmentto landreform. Although for some Frenchindustrialists the advocacy of new, productivemethods was a protectionistcall, a means to insure France's industrial preeminence, for Le Corbusier, as for the technocratsinvolved in the Pan-Europe movement,it was intrinsically tied to a broader world vision.49 Taylor's orderly factory creating orderly men was eventually to lead to a more orderly world. Le Corbusier'sfuture, like In short, Le Corbusier envisioned the that of the earlier Saint-Simonians, was "Revolution" of Fordism and Taylorism one of order on a series of ever grander as an improvedcorporate wouldspreadin even capitalism,prem- scales; rationalization ised on efficiency and econony. For the wider spheres, resultingeventually in the advocates of Taylorism, social justice was attainmentof universalharmony.Internaa product of technical rationalization,not tional cooperation and reduced trade reof materialequality. strictionswere essentialcomponents this of The specific political and social impli- projection. Just as traditionalclass struccations of this technologicalvision become tureshad little relationto appropriate manmore evident if one considers Le Corbu- agerial hierarchies in Scientific Managesier's writings in the context of L'Esprit ment, so, too, nationalboundaries only had Nouveau as a whole. Althoughthe review marginalconnection to issues of industrial dealt predominantlywith the arts, it also production and economic exchange. The examined science, industry, economics, architect'sendorsementof an international sociology, and foreign affairsas topics of stylistic vocabularyrelateddirectly to his important concern. By the fourth issue, conception of industrialefficiency and a January 1921, the subtitle changed from network of rationallyunified enterprises. Revue internationale d'esthitiqueto Revue A standardization of architecturaleleinternationale illustrie de l'activiti con- ments, Le Corbusierstated in his article temporaine; later, in fact, L'Esprit Nou- "Nos moyens," would not only result in veau was to publish a L'EspritNouveau, greaterformalunity, but also lead to "unirevue internationale hebdomadaire d'&con- versal collaboration" and "universal omique.46As the editors explained in the methods.'"s' The larger-scaleproduction preface to an article "Wilson et I'human- and wider access to technologicalinnovations resultingfroma broader isme frangais," market would lower costs and benefit all. Le Corbusier A few of our readerswere surprised cited the Barragede Barberine,with parts thatl'EspritNouveaushowedinterest coming from Germany, Switzerland,and in economic and sociological questhe United States, as an example of the tions. L'EspritNouveau wants to be kind of "greatwork" emergingfrominterthe great Review of connection for nationalcooperation; embodied"the sum it people who think, . . . who can not of man's knowledge." Subsequently,he but realize thatin this day andage all suggested in Urbanismethat Paris should subjects are more thanever of great be rebuilt with foreign capital; German, relevance and that intellectual and American, Japanese, and English investspiritualquestionsareclosely related ment would insure the city against future to the social situation.47 attack.51In short, rationalbusiness pracIn the spectrumof well-known French tices meantworldpeace. CamilleMauclair, cultural reviews of the epoch, L'Esprit the art critic of Figaro, was particularly Nouveau appearsas one of the most aes- sardonic about this suggestion for "the of thetically and politicallyprogressive.Only internationalization the centerof Paris": Surrialiste Clarte'and the laterRdvolution This immense value of the built cenwere further to the left. At a time when terof Paris-it wouldbe goodfor one many artisticpublicationswere calling for section of it to belong toforeigners. a resurgenceof regionalstyles anda return If, of the numerousbillions of giganto la tradition latine,48L'EspritNouveau tic glass towers to be raised, a large was unequivocal in its endorsement of Summer 1983 137

partbelongedto AmericansandGermans, don't you thinkthattheywould prevent the towers from being destroyedby long-rangecanons. ... The interestingthing is not to decide whetherthis genius is recovering with the help of psychiatry,but whetherthis Picasso of concrete is not ratherLenin.52 Le Corbusier, perhaps in anticipationof such attacks, was carefulin L'EspritNouveau to show examples of "Frenchrationalism"-Perrault's east fagade of the Louvre or Gabriel'sPlace de la Concorde -and to defendthestraight as French.s3 line But more than most contemporary French architectshe resisted the nationalismthat was to characterize Expositiondes Arts the Decoratifsof 1925. Otheraspectsof L'Esprit Nouveaureiterated Le Corbusier'sinternationalism. The review publishednumerousarticlesby foreigners (Loos, Gropius,Rathenau,and the Czechoslovakian Siblik), cited foreign periodicals frequently, and devoted considerablespace to the discussionof foreign literatureand painting. Erik Satie, in his "Cahiers d'un mammifere,"ridiculedthe chauvinism thatpermeatedFrenchartcircles: "He who does not love Wagnerdoes not love France."s54 The review in its articles devoted to "economique" and "sociologique" and in its one issue L'Esprit Nouveau Economique unequivocally rejected protectionist policies in favorof free trade and greater international exchange. Modern industryand commerce were envisioned as transcending nationalboundaries andregionaldifferences.R. Chenevier, the review's political spokesman, was harshlycriticalof the Versaillestreatyand proclaimedthe Leagueof Nationsa symbol of "l'esprit nouveau." At a time when anti-Bolshevist sentiment was strong he with argued for economic rapprochement the Soviet Union.ss On a morehumanitarian plane the review waged a campaignfor contributions to fight the famine in the U.S.S.R., and afterLenin's deathin 1924 it paidtribute themanwho "hadknocked to out old Russia".s56 Lenin himself had strongly advocatedTaylorismas a means of developing the new Soviet state. Henri Hertz, Chenevier'ssuccessor, also vocally supportedworld government,and in their preface to his article "L'Acheminement vers les grands conseils internationaux," Ozenfant and Le Corbusierendorsed his aspirations: He gives a comprehensiveview of the actual embryonic state of these organizations-news in theeconomic and political history of mankindwhich are vast organizations of power, directing nations. These organizations tend to impede the individualactionof the organization 138 Art Journal

member;we are expecting from the of meetingsa regulation international relations, restraintof individualdesires, a startin thwartingindividual impulse, and thereforethe limitation of impulsivedeclarations war, the of creation of a more stable state of peace-peace being the only stateof society favorableto the blossoming of works of the new spirit in all its forms s7

prised both Radicalsand Socialists.62To a greater extent than its predecessor, the conservativeBloc Nationale,Herriot's new government promised to spend funds on social reformand to redistribute taxes; the Radicals offered, as Hertz explained in words reminiscent of Vers une architecture, "une revolutionpacifique."But both Lurgatand Hertz voiced strongqualifications in their support of the great party built up by Gambetta:

Radicalism is the humus of the The editors hoped that ultimatelya series republic. Withinit, among its many of rationally conceivedorganizations would impurities, is the seed of a political lead to world federation,broughttogether spirit. the ties of multinational,rational,proby The elections of May 11 are an ductive planning. excellent example of this. The posthis social vision represented Although sibility of renewing and re-erecting a liberal humanism based on "rational" the public spiritrests in this big and analysis ratherthan anythingapproaching crass party, and resides only in it. A Communist policy, critics were quick to laborious and crude amalgamation indict the review's position on foreign of currentlife, it represents valuable affairs. Both Camille Mauclairand Alexplans and values, to which it alone is of anderde Senger, the author theinfamous in a position to give intelligent diatribe Chevalde troiedu bolshevisme, Le meaning.63 called L'EspritNouveauBolshevistpropaganda. De Senger, particularly perturbed Herriot, who as mayor of Lyon had sponof by the largenumber Jewishcontributors, sored many of Tony Gamier'sgreatpublic cited GuillaumeApollinaireas "a typical works, was himself a strong advocate of representative. . . a bank employee Taylorism; in his book Crier of 1919 he whose mother is Lithuanianand whose called for a technologically inspired father is unknown, and whose name is "fourth republic" thatwould abandonthe Kostrovitsky.'58 party intrigues, local patronage,and cafrto Even morethreatening existingFrench comptoirecomites thathaddominated precapitalist society, although not as widely war Frenchpolitics.64Despite the promise addressed perhapsbecause of its obvious of such rhetoric, the Radical-Socialists' utopianism, was L'EspritNouveau'sposi- power base of small-town and peasant stated interests necessarily put into questionany tion on landownership.Le Corbusier that privatepropertywas a "serious barri- hope for reform. of er" to the transformation housing and The progressive dimension of L'Esprit the urbanenvironment. Although he was Nouveau's industrialutopiaemerges in its on endorsementof world government,of the careful, as always, to base his argument and professional, not political, groundsand to modificationof property arrangements, stop shortof calling for the completeaboli- of the election of Herriot'scoalition. More tion of private land ownership, he con- conservative strains, however, can be demned inheritance and the landlord's detected in its conceptionof social order. escape from "the rough war of competi- Most apparentof these was the proposed tion."59 Paul Lafitte's article "A propos hierarchy of power. Taylorism, which de la Grand Crise," however, was more purportedto transcendpolitical divisions specific: state ownership of land was the in its guise of professionalneutrality,was block- by no means egalitarian. Casting aside technician's solution to the barriers ing efficient urbanplanning;it "provides traditional of determinants power-wealth, cities with a certainflexibility, which per- family, and class-the system, like Saintmits them to adapt to all their changing Simonianism, predicatedrankon capacity needs, and to all the requirementsof a and expertise. As Le Corbusierhimself progressive society."'6 Ozanfantand Le explained: CorbusierintroducedLafitte as a "subtle the right man for the right job is theoretician"with "a prudent,clever, and coldly selected; laborers,workmen, reasonableeconomic program."61 foremen, engineers, managers, Despite Le Corbusier'spersonalrelucadministrators--each in his proper tance to label himself, the review also explace; and the man who is made of hibited leftist, though hardly socialist, the right stuff to be a managerwill sympathies with regard to parliamentary not long remain a workman; the politics. In the issue releasedjust afterthe higherplaces are open to all.65 1924 elections, both Henri Hertz and the artistJeanLurgat,in a statement represent- This vision of a hierarchyof talent takes and ing an obscure Cartel des Independants, materialform in Ville Contemporaine declared their endorsement of Edouard Plan Voisin, illustratedin the final issue of Herriot's Carteldes Gauches, which com- L'Esprit Nouveau. Engineers, industrial-

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At Fig. 8 Dioramaof Ville Contemporaine. the centerof the town, at the crossingof the two highwaysis the greattransportation center. The towers, locatedon eitherside, containbusinessandcommercialfacilities. Among the hills on the horizon,just beyond a wooded "protected"zone, arethe GardenCities, housingworkers. ists, financiers,andartistsworkin the great skyscrapersof the city center, "clothed in a dazzling mirage of unimaginable beauty (Fig. 8). Other activities, like those in Benoit-Levy's hamlets, are carefully segoutskirts.The regated in the surrounding further of the residentialquarters planning enforces the rigid hierarchy of physical Workersand suband social stratification. ordinates, "their destinies . . . circumscribed within the narrower bounds of family life," live in gardencities; the professional elite reside close to the city center.66The urbanplan, as rationallydetermined as the Tayloristplant, does embody in a new socialorder,butinequities income, habitation, and work conditions remain. Forthe Taylorists,efficiency-not equality -was the means to social renewal. oriL'EspritNouveau was unabashedly ented towardsLe Corbusier'sfuturetower described statement occupants.An editorial (the Frenchtradeunionmovesyndicalism ment) and Bolshevism as being under the tragic aspect from which one mustnot miss seeing the pathetic attemptat a neededre-establishment of values, necessitatedby persisting monstrous anomaliessuchas warand the armsrace. In contrast,the espritnouveauwas createdby faith in the possible organization of all factors of progress; the prodigious intellectualeffort of the period has created an elite of marvelousfecundity;an elite which has yet to find a place in the social machineryor in the governmentand which is dying of hunger.67 The review aimed, as the editorsreiterated on numerous occasions, to address these conleaders,to provoke"an indispensable nection between the elites"-an appeal Prothey sharedwith the Saint-Simonian differed ducteur.Althoughthis publication from L'Esprit Nouveau in its syndicalist orientationand its aim to destroythe "financial plutocracy," Le Corbusier and Ozenfantincludedit in L'EspritNouveau's and list of recommended publications called At it essential for theirreaders."68 least one of the Producteur'swriters,the economic theorist Francis Delaisi, also contributed to L'Esprit Nouveau. Le Corbusierhad hoped that Delaisi would write the last chapterof Urbanisme,"FinanceandRealization.''69 Concomitantwith this elitist orientation with ends, not means; was a preoccupation an emphsis on materialresults, not parliamentary procedures. For the Taylorists, decisions were basedon science andratioand rightswere nality;participation abstract in irrelevant the face of expertise.Throughalterout L'EspritNouveau, Le Corbusier nated between naively wishing for implecontrol. mentationand urgingauthoritarian Colbert, Louis XIV, Napoleon I, and Haussmannwere proposedas the heroesof Paris. The concludingplate of Urbanisme shows Louis XIV commandingthe building of the Invalides, andthe captionunderneathreads: Homage to a great town planner. This despotconceivedimmenseprojects and realized them. Over all the country his noble works still fill us with admiration.He was capableof saying, "We wish it," or "Such is our pleasure."70 Aware of the possible negative connotations, Le Corbusieradded in parentheses "this is not a declarationof the 'Action Frangaise,'" thereby disclaiming any connection to Charles Maurras'royalist group." In a laterproposalfor a statuein a working-class neighborhoodthe architect reconciled his technocraticand authoritarian tendencies by placing casts of his heroeson a pedestalcomposed monarchical of variousautomobiles.But simultaneously he asserted,thoughnot convincinglyto his contemporarycritics, thathis demandsfor radical expropriationand indemnification were "within the bound of practicalpolitics" and "possible underourown democracy.'72 Georges Benoit-Levy, the President of the French GardenCity Association, had fewer hesitationsaboutexpressing the authoritarianstrain underlying much of the rationalist doctrine of the town-planningmovement. The inadequacy of a democratic regime in such affairs can easily be pointed out. One regretsthe absence of a Napoleon III, orderingthe conservationof open spaces, of the forts and fortifications, or a Haussmann who commandedfor 17 years at the Hotel de Ville. One regrets the absence of a Mussolini, telling the Mayorof Rome: "Governor,in five years I will have razed the entire heart of the old city and the model city of Rome-Ostia will have been built."73 with the parliamentaEchoes of frustration ry governmentof the ThirdRepublicwere, in fact, heard throughoutFrenchsociety. In the mid-twenties the rampantinflation the and severe marketfluctuations, general sense andthe lingering legislativeparalysis, that the GreatWar demandedprofoundif to undefined alterationsall contributed the overtones manifest in anti-parliamentary the resurgent popularity of the Action such Frangaise.Even a radicalsympathizer as Hertz complained in his series "Balbutiements de l'esprit politique" of the displacement of "esprit politique" with "esprit politicien." Despite the victoryof the Carteldes Gauchesin 1924, Hertzsaw universal suffrage as an embodimentof misand politicians'opportunism therefore trusted it.74 Almost all political groups voiced in some variation Le Corbusier's executive. Forthose demandfor a stronger Summer 1983 139

on the right, there was the promise of a more rigidly hierarchical stable social and order; for those on the left, the potential triumph, in Max Weber's terms, of the rationalizing bureaucratwho upheld the individualism. public good over capitalistic Le Corbusiersharedthis ideal of a "man of good will" but also the conservatives' strongyearningfor order. tendAccompanyingthese authoritarian encies were somewhatambivalent attitudes in L'Esprit Nouveau towards the family and its importanceto social equilibrium. of Le Corbusier'sproclamations the house as a "machine-for-living," his rejection of the hearth and dining table as formal foci, andhis choice in Ville Contemporaine to design the central business city rather than the family-orientedgardencity suggest a disdain for, or at least indifference to, the French devotion to family life. In Houses" Le his article "Mass-Production Corbusiermade it clear thatserialproduction and Taylorism inevitably demanded the destructionof certainvalues based on traditionin the interestsof efficiency: The house will no longer be an archaicentity, heavily rooted in the built "firm soil by deep foundations, and strong," the object of the devotion on which the cult of the family and the race has so long been concentrated.75 This challenge to traditionalnotions of "maison," "famille," and "patrie" was exaggeratedin the mindsof Le Corbusier's critics by L'Esprit Nouveau's interest in psychoanalysis and sexuality. Libertine literature was often reviewed favorably; called "a very AndreGide's L'Immoraliste beautifulbook filled with the most diverse "76 virtualities.' did But Le Corbusier notrejectthefamily outright; he only discarded some of its forms and customs. In fact, like most of the garden city planners, he upheld the Proudhonnianideal of the family as the unit and as a model for primarystructural other social relationships." Part of Le Corbusier's argument for standardized architecture,paradoxically,was based on the preservationof this dimension of the statusquo: his town, his street, his house or his flat . .. hinderhim [man]from following in his leisure the organic developmentof his existence, which is to create a family and to live, like every animal on this earth and like all men of all ages, an organized family life. In this way, society is helping forward the destructionof the family, while she sees with terror thatthis will be her ruin.78

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moderne(1925), the catalogueof the d'architecture Fig. 9 A page fromL'Almanach EspritNouveau pavilion. poorest sectorsof society per se. As in many of the Americanistvisions of social reform,thereis in Le Corbusier's view a blurring of distinctions between right and left. He denied the existence of class struggle and simultaneously dein manded major transformations international policy and propertyownership. It to was a position thatpurported transcend political categories;yet, in contrastto the apolitical cast of Beaux-Artsacademicism of (involving the passive endorsement the statusquo), it was deeplyengagedin social and political issues. For Le Corbusier,as

viewcombinedprogressiveandtraditional points. He was at once willing to uproot the "firm andstrong"Frenchfamilytraditions while upholdingthe benevolent paternalism long characteristicof the French housing-reform movement. The technologically innovative Ville Contemporaine channeled social interactionto fit patterns of social hierarchyand family structure. Any changes in social order resultedprimarilyin benefitsfor the progressivecadre As with Le Corbusier'spolemical juxta- of modern industrualsociety. Lacking in and position of the Parthenon the automo- his technocraticworld view was any conbile, his discussion of social structure cept of improving the condition of the 140 Art Journal

for Hertz, there was a distinctionbetween most likely to be sympatheticto standard- helped solve some of the legal problems esprit politicien and espritpolitique. The ization and mass production. He named surroundingPessac. But the government as to architect'sprofessionalrole mightexclude the prototype Citrohan-house(1920-22) hardlyappeared Le Corbusier a source Andre of innovation. He consideredthe H.B.M. the former,but not the latter. after the automobile manufacturer Citroen,82and in 1925 he honoredGabriel (Habitations a bon marche) complexes, Appel aux industriels Voisin with the nameof his plan for Paris, built of masonry constructionwith tradiLe Corbusier's efforts to implement his after Peugeot and Citroenhad rejectedhis tional apartmentplans, to be "slums."86 vision werenaiveandscattered technocratic of the Earlier,in Furthermore, Chamber Deputieshad requestsfor financialsupport.83 at best. Believing profoundlyin the ratio- the second issue of L'EspritNouveau, he not succeededin passinganymajorhousing nality anduniversalityof bothhis architec- had Michelin praised the prefabricated "Maison legislationuntil 1928. In contrast, tural and social ideas, he assumed that Voisin" as "light, flexible, and strong"; et Cie., one of the first Frenchcompanies demonstrationof his program would in its resident as "animated by 'l'espritnou- to introduce Scientific Management,had itself generate wide-scale acceptanceand veau.' "84 The Voisin firmdonated25,000 constructedby 1925 a large-scaleworkers' realization. Like Henry Ford, he might francs towards the construction of the housing complex at Clermont-Ferrand, have declared: Nouveau pavilion, and both Voisin using methodsof Taylorismandmass proEsprit I am quitecertainthatit is the natural of and Mongernon,the director Aeroplanes duction.87The Voisin plantdevelopedthe code and I want to demonstrate so it MaisonVoisin, usingairplane Voisin, attendedthe opening ceremonyof transportable the pavilion. Even the advertisementsin technology, and Louis Renault, though thoroughly that it will be accepted, not as a new idea, but as a natural techL'Esprit Nouveau for industrialproducts more conservativein his construction code.79 cement guns or Roneo niques, sponsored a considerableamount ---Ingersoll-Rand Most of Le Corbusier'swritings, theoreti- metal doors--often designed by Le Cor- of working-classhousing.88 cal projects,andexhibitionsin the twenties busier, servedas "appelsaux industriels." were devoted to just such a demonstration, Only once in the twenties, however, was RedressementFrangais but unlike Ford, he had at that time no Le Corbusierable to persuadean industri- One of Le Corbusier's most important contactswas with ErnestMercier low-income industrial to factoryor industrial enterprise provethe alist to build standardized economic or technical feasibility of his housing; the sugar manufacturerHenri and his organization Redressement 135 Frangais, and his participationwith this premises. As the EspritNouveau pavilion Fruges commissioned him to design workers'residencesat Pessac, a smalltown organizationperhapsbest exemplifies his so clearly reveals, his maison types were technocratic stance during the nineteenpolemical statements, not actual realiza- outside Bordeaux (Fig. 10). There, Le Corbusierwas able to constructa few of twenties. For Le Corbusier,Mercier, the tions of mass-production procedures.The directorof France'sleadingutilmodularstorageunits, streamlined bicycle his prototypedesigns and use some of the managing stair, and factory-type windows were all products and techniques, if with only oc- ities company and later presidentof the des Petroles, was custom manufactured. Perhapsmost ironic casional success, advocated by L'Esprit Compagnie Frangais of representative the new elite thathe enviwere the speciallymadecopies of Maples's Nouveau.85 Le Corbusier'sappealsfor mass produc- sioned leading France, a man "capital et modelswere leatherclub chairs:the market tion, reflectingtheAmericantendenciesof general.'"89 In the midst of the critical too large for Le Corbusier'snew "stanto the period, were directedpredominantly financial crisis of 1925, Mercierdecided dard" doors.80 artisticmilieu, most private industrialists,not public officials. to initiate a movement for generalreform Beyond the Parisian of Le Corbusier'ssocial and professional He had contacts with both Anatole de that would enlist the "directing classes" contactswere with industrialists inno- Monzie, Herriot'sMinisterof PublicEdu- of the nation. Called the Redressement and vators in the business world. After the cation and the Arts, and Louis Loucheur, Frangais, it sought to overhaul the Third of Republic along technocraticlines through collapse of his own short-livedindustrial who had become Poincare's Minister endeavors, he envisioned himself as a de- Commerce in his reshuffled cabinet of a dynamic economy premised on mass the tached "technical" advisor. His "appel March1924. De Monziesupported con- production and a governmentheaded by aux industriels,"the sloganof L'Almanach struction of the Esprit Nouveau pavilion, experts. Mercierhadjust visitedthe United d'architecture moderne (1925) (Fig. 9), and his mother was one of the original States andwas convincedthatthe futureof had France dependedon following the Ameriwas a mixture of flattery, demand, and clients of thevilla at Garches.Loucheur simple example. His letter to the glass:::-:--:-:-:: -;::-:-':-:-::-::iiiii~i! :::i_,_-::_:::il::_: -iiiiii:iiiiiiil'ii-iiilit'iiliiii%ii-imanufacturing company Saint-Gobain, after its failure to realize his project for workers' housing near their factory at r77 Thourotte,is typical of this presumptuous approach: :ii-:::_iiiriiii~i iiilii!iii!i-ii-i i!!sa iii~ix iiiiii I am sendingyou a copy of No. 13 of the magazine L'Esprit Nouveau which contains an importantarticle on mass-produced my housing,under pseudonym,Le Corbusier-Saugnier. it etJ When I did a projectat yourrequest, for Thourotte, I was sorry that the programwhich was given to me did not permit me to put forwardideas similarto those containedin this article. Those ideas appearsubversive today and yet they will be current ModernesFruges,Bordeaux-Pessac,1924. In the later Fig. 10 Le Corbusier,Quartiers practicetomorrow.s1 editions of Versune architectureLe Corbusier includesthe Pessacprojectas an Houses." The firsteditionof the book, Le Corbusier In particular,Le Corbusiercourted auto- illustrationof "Mass-Production workers'housing. mobile manufacturers,whom he saw as claims, inspiredHenriFrugesto commissionhim to construct

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Pour batir:standardiser tayloriser,Supplement Bulletindu Redressement et au Figs. 11 and 12 Le Corbusier, Frangais,May 1, 1928. can economic model. The appointment of the movement's primaryspokesmananda Hoover as Secretary of Commerce had patronof C.I.A.M., fearedthatthe miseraddedpotency to thatnation'simageas the able dwelling conditionsmade many resibearerof standardization the eliminator dents ripe for Communistpropaganda. and In of waste. Mercierembracedthe Taylorist the first series of the Cahiers, publishedin belief in enlightenedindustrial wrote production 1927, JeanLevequeandJ.-H. Ricard as a weapon against social injustice and on housing and Henri Prost and Gaston indeed hopedfor the victoryof "Fordover Monsarrat urbanplanning.93 on Marx." The Redressement's slogan was Le Corbusier contributed pamphlets, two which were published as supplementsto "Enough politics. We wantresults."90 The organizationquickly gained a siz- the Februaryand May 1928 Bulletin:Vers able following, and in 1926 it began pub- le Paris de l' poque machinisteand Pour standardiseret tayloriser.94 their As lishing a monthly Bulletin. On the cover baitir: was a symbol of national regeneration,a titles suggest, these reports were among wounded Gaul rising from the earth to Le Corbusier'smost explicit espousals of rejoin the battle. Inside were articlesana- technocraticdoctrine. The first reportelaboratesthe ideas of lyzing current events and reporting on organizational news. Some 25,000 to Plan Voisin. In contrastto his earlierpub30,000 copis of the periodical were dis- lications, however, thereareneitherphototributedwithoutchargeto France'sruling graphs nor drawings:only functionaland elite. The Redressementenlisted various economic arguments-with limited quan"men of action"'-journalists, lecturers, titative support-for the reconstruction of to professionals-to contribute theBulletin Paris and the development of mass-proor to participatein its study committees, duced housing in gardencities. Le Corbuwhich produced a series of reports, the sier criticizes a recent proposalfor a new Cahiers. Among its most distinguished transportation route extending the Grand members were Marshal Foch, Etienne Voie along the axis of the ChampsElysees Clemental, the syndicalist spokesman because it endedin a cul de sac, the TuilerHubertLagardelle,the executive Edmond ies Garden.Any effective solutionto modGiscardd'Estaing, and the Conseil d'Etat em traffic conditions, he argues, requires memberRaphaelAlibert.91 more significant transformation; prohe Le Corbusierwas enlistedto participate poses instead a major new cross artery on an urbanstudy committee.92From its further north, as in Eugene Henard's maintained that scheme of 1904 and his own Plan Voisin. inceptionthe Redressement for housing was the major problem of the He reiterateshis argument quadrupling Parisian working class. Lucien Romier, the densityof centralParis,while reserving 142 Art Journal 85-95 per cent of the land for vegetation. In this documentfor technicians,he makes no reference to the aesthetic possibilities of the new business quarters; industrithe alization of construction,not classical tradition or Platonicpurity,becomes the sole justificationfor aestheticdecisions: The consolidationof blocks reintroduces an orthogonalsystemandpermits the applicationof standardization, industrialization,and Taylorization to building.95 The same tone characterizesthe architect's critique of the picturesquegarden cities, such as Suresnes and Stains, that were being built aroundParis. The "mys"la tique" surrounding petitemaison," he claims, is a majorinhibitionto industrialization: "the effect is to establishvehement opposition to all attempts to change the concept of both the overall organization andthe detailsof gardencities andworkers' houses." One's model for emulationinstead should be ErnstMay's 4,000 dwellwhich were the resultof ings in Frankfurt, a "remarkable industrial process."96 This advocacy of Neue Sachlichkeitis given furtherforce, and also an autocratic slant, by the inclusion in the Bulletin of specific legal recommendations.Among them were a law giving the state unrestricted eminent domain with the purmarketvalue chasing price fixed at current and a dictate establishinga new "authority" with powers surpassing traditional

ministerial jurisdiction to implement the urban program. This authority,a modem Colbert, would stand apart from parliamentarypolitics "to workout the future." "The breadth of his vision would be the greatnessof the country."97 In the second pamphlet Le Corbusier demonstratesthe resultsof standardization and Taylorization with photographsand drawings of his projects at Stuttgartand Pessac (Figs. 12 and 13). With the exception of the temporary EspritNouveaupavilion, these two projectswere his only executed designs for prototypical housing. This Bulletin supplement is again much more specific in its technical details than were Le Corbusier'searlier contributions to L'EspritNouveau. Unlike his articleof 1921, "Maisonsen serie", whichincluded only diagramaticplans and roughperspective sketches, Pour b6itir:standardiseret tayloriser demonstrates various assemblages of room unittypes andgives dimensions of structural components.Itconcludes with a demandfor action: In order to BUILD: STANDARDIZE to be able to INDUSTRIALIZE AND TAYLORIZE ... That is the most urgentprogram of town planning. One must begin at the beginning!98

cratic ideals. In 1931, undera photograph of Wall Streethe placedthe caption"All is paradox, disorder; the liberty destroying collective liberty. Lack of discipline."105 Both formaldisarrayandfinancialdisaster resultedfrom the lack of a collective sensibility. The conditions of the Depression had underminedthe faith of many French intellectuals in the American industrial utopia. Fordism and Taylorismno longer seemed such certain means for obviating class tensions once the prospectsof abundance were in doubt;and with Hoover, the Great Engineer, impotent in the face of nationaldisaster,the mystiqueof the managerial elite was shattered.The disillusionment with technocracyhad almost immediate repercussions on French economic and political life. Tardieu, the SaintSimonian hero, failed to obtain a parliaBy a strictly professional route I mentarymajorityfor his five-yearprogram arriveat revolutionary conclusions. for economic modernizationand technoSince I am a professionalman, I cratic streamlining,andhe soon repudiated make plans accordingto my profeshis association with the "leftist" Resional concepts; this is where my dressement.106 The movement itself had judgment is good. If everyone did lost its dynamism. With France's own the same thing and the plans were ensuing depression, the renaissance of coordinated an authority charge in by Saint-Simoncame to its end. of the public interest, the result In certain respects the reaction to the would, of course, be a Five-Year crash and the subsequentdisillusionment to implement. Plan, impossible with Taylorism and Fordismreflectedthe Impossible because of our present vision superficialhold thatthe technocratic social system! So now what? At this point Le Corbusier,like most of had had on French society. The repeated Now what?Dilemma.The present the membersof Redressement was calls for Taylorismhadled to littlepractical Frangais social system preserves the status still confidentthatthisprogram couldoccur commitment. Herriot'spleas in 1919 for a quo, opposes any action, eliminates within the frameworkof the ThirdRepubtechnologically advanced "fourth repubor rejectsproposalsbothpressingand lic. Indeed, the victory of the Union Nalic" and Clementel'sefforts to formulatea in the public interest necessary ... tionale in April 1928, to which the Remodel for industrial administrationin a Let's change the system. dressement had strongly contributed,and Federationdes Syndicats encounteredreSuch an act would be called revothe passage of the LoucheurLaw laterthat sistance from politiciansand businessmen lutionary.Therearethosewho would summer gave, for the moment, some who wanted to return to the security of make the word "revolutionary" their prewar practices.107The call for a grounds for this optimism. The housing mean "destructive." technocraticelite premisedon production, bill, which the Redressementclaimed as Untrue; it is a completely con"the pure and simple applicationof our although it had a precedent in the two structivepoint of view. 102 ideas," provided public aid for the conNapoleonic eras, was threateningto the structionof 200,000 low-pricedand60,000 Now, his plea was "Architecture and traditionalEuropeanclasses-the aristocand medium-priced dwellings and was suc- Revolution."'103 A more activist stance, racy, clergy, army,academicians, even cessful in instigating an unprecedented one thatwould soon leadto his participation civil service personnel-who were conand building boom all over France.99Le Cor- in the RegionalSyndicalistmovement,was cerned only with self-preservation the busier himself probablyagain saw an ally required.104 This movement, emphasizing maintenance theirfossilized institutions. of in Loucheur,who as a leaderof the Gauche regional groupingsand naturalhierarchies As Gramsciarguedin his essay on "AmerRadicale party became the parliamentary based upon climate, topography,andrace, icanism," rationalization of production floor spokemanof the Redressement.In an encourageda morelimitedendorsement of was essentially irreconcilablewith Euroarticle for the Revue des Vivants, August technology. Insteadof standardization and pean "tradition" and "civilization," 1928, Le Corbusier expressedhis optimism uniformity, these latter-day syndicalists which he saw as intrinsicallylinked to the about the new law: stressed regional diversity and local tradi- existence of a parasitic class with essentions. Likewise, Le Corbusierin his own tially no function in production. Despite This certainlyhadto happenone day! designs, particularlyfor the small houses its pervasiveness, Americanismwas in the The LoucheurLaw (which was sugErrazuris,Mandrot,and Mathes, beganto face of France's long-standinghistorical gested for the first time in 1922) "as and employ local building materialsand tech- and artisticstructure strident jarring the country in the face of a places niques. Just as the rational, geometric as the make-up on the face of an aging gigantic, magnificent, and sensitive forms of the twenties were a manifestation femme du monde." o08 problem, if the spiritwould seize it, of his faith in technology and American Le Corbusier's own fate was symptoenlighten it, and stirit to give France systems of Scientific Management, the matic of the deep resistance to the actual a historicrenown, in the way thatthe rustic, more primitiveworksof the thirties implementation of rational productive works achieved by the MiddleAges, were a rejection of the supremacyof this methods. The French government had by Louis XIV, by Napoleon, by selfsame viewpoint. ignored his urbanplans and proposalsfor Haussmann havebecomehistoric.' 00 The Americanstock marketcrashwas a land reform;privateindustryfailed to deconstructionpractices; crushing blow to Le Corbusier'stechno- velop standardized Summer 1983 143

1930, Architectureand Revolution During the next two years, however, Le Corbusierlost his faith in the capacity of the Third Republic to rejuvenate itself. The Loucheur planhadnot solvedthe social crisis: no rational urbanplan or commitment to industrialized production had emerged. Rather,as AlexanderWerth,the Paris correspondent for the Manchester Guardianobserved, it "transformed much of the countryroundParisinto a mass-an incoherentmass---of ugly red-roofedsuburban houses and villas."o101 After more thana decadeof research proselytizing, and Le Corbusier became convinced that his or earlieranswerto "Architecture Revolution" had been incorrect. Ironically, the reassessmentof his stancewas the resultof the same professionalattitude:

Pessac, his one mass-housing project,stood empty for five years as local officials refused to grant an occupancy permit;and finally, the jury of the League of Nations competition awarded the commission to four academic architects,who enshrouded Le Corbusier'sown proposal in masonry construction historicist and details.Leandre Vaillat's commentson the EspritNouveau pavilion were typical of the suspicionthat many Frenchmen had of Le Corbusier's advocacy of the mass-produced dwelling, the "house-tool": If this pavilion is in the author'sintention a demonstration teach the to public, which has forgotten it, the of overornasupremacy construction ment, then I approveof it, with the reservation that none of this is so new that one wishes it affirmedfor us; but if he intends to persuadeus, with a forcefulness that has nothing persuasiveaboutit, thata house is a "machine for living," no. A house is not a factorywhere one worksand where, in orderto earna little paper money, one performsa few mechanical gestures, always the same. A house, to be sure,mustbe answerable to logic, reason, and good sense, and we find, thankGod! enough of these qualities in our national and regional traditions,without seeking 09 themin German-Swiss rationalism.'

Corbusier's the Redressement's or reforms. Nineteenthand TwentiethCenturies,BaltiMercieradmittedhis failure,butattributed more, Penguin, 1971, andSigfriedGiedion's of it, in languagereminiscent his colleague, Space, Time, andArchitecture,Cambridge, to the public's insensitivity to "wisdom, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1967, largely ignore the political implicationsof moderation, prudence, and disinterestedLe Corbusier's work. CharlesJencks'sbiogness." As Kuisel points out, Albert Thiraphy,Le Corbusierand the TragicViewof baudet gave anothermore convincing exArchitecture, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard planation for the technocrats' failure to UniversityPress, 1973, aftera briefrecapitachieve reform: Neo-Saint-Simonianism, ulationof Le Corbusier's contradictory polithe claimed, had allied itself too strongly ical positions,dismisseshis "quasi-fascism" with the defense of economic intereststo on the groundsof artisticpurity. In recent as speak with authority a broadideological years, however, severalscholarshave begun movement."112 to explore moreextensively Corbusier's Le For Le Corbusieras an architect, the connections. especially See Robert political detachmentfrompartypoliticswas perhaps Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth a special temptation.Visions of industrial Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd utopia, unlike Marxism, offered both the Wright,and Le Corbusier,New York, Basic promise of social redemptionand a means Books, 1977;JeanLouisCohen,"Le Corbusier and the Mystiqueof the U.S.S.R.," by which to continueto practiceone's art. Although by 1930 Le Corbusier'sfaith in Oppositionsno. 23 (Winter 1981), pp. 85America's model of industrial con 121;Giorgio Ciucci,"A Rome Bottai," productivity was shaken, the search for this dual goal Rassegna 2, no. 3 (July 1980), pp. 66-71; Thilo Hilpert, Die Funktionelle Stadt Le was to persist. The new ideology of proCorbusier's Stadtvision-Bedingungen, duction had changed the architect'sconMotive, Hintergrunde, Brunswick,Vieweg, of his social role; housing, urban ception 1978. planning, and modem constructionmethods are in part the legacy of the perished 4 Blake, MasterBuilders,p. 109. hopes of the 1920s.
Notes 5 Le Corbusier, Urbanisme, Paris, Editions Cres, 1925; reprinted in Paris, Vincent,

into Englishby Fr6al, 1966. Translated I should to acknowledge appreciation like to my Frederick Etchellsin Le Corbusier,TheCity the Social ScienceResearch Councilandthe of Tomorrow and Its Planning, London, AllianceFrangaise Foundation (FulFribourg JohnRodker, 1929;reprinted Cambridge, in for bright-Hayes) providing fundingfor my Mass., 1971, p. 301. in Paris1976-1977. research AlsoI should like the Le Critics, forever aware of Germany's in- to thank staffof theFondation Corbusier 6 JudithA. Merkle, Managementand Ideology, Berkeley, University of California dustrial superiority,often condemnedef- for their assistance,as well as SusanBall, Kenneth PasSilver,Francesco Gregh, Press, 1980, pp. 14-15. forts to implementScientific Management Eleanor as not French. Indeed, WalterRathenau, santi, andAnthonyVidler, whose conversations 7 An important sourcefor this accountof Tayhave been especiallyhelpful to the and and writings its lorism and, in particular, ideologicalimGermany'sMinisterof Reconstruction of of ideas.Alan one of Europe's most significantthinkers formulation many thearticle's plications in Europe is CharlesS. Maier's Marc Treib, RobinEvans, and excellent article, "Between Taylorismand on industrialorganization,hadcontributed Colquhoun, havemost Richard reviewed Pommer generously an articlein the midstof reparations Technocracy:EuropeanIdeologies and the anxiety and commentedon my draft. Vision of Industrial Productivity in the to L'EspritNouveau "Critiquede L'Esprit 1 "Beyond the Modern Movement," The 1920s," Journal of Contemporary History Allemand."110 The Figaro writer MauHarvardArchitecture Review no. 1 (Spring 5, no. 2 (1970), pp. 27-61. on clair, elaborating de Senger'sargument, 1980) 6; Charles Jencks, The Language of related the anonymityandregularity Le of 8 HenriLe Chatelier,Le Taylorisme,2nded., Post-Modern Architecture, 3rd ed., New Corbusier'smass-produced architecture to Paris, Dunod, 1934, p. 2. 37. These critiques York, Rizzoli, 1981, p. the objectivesof Bolshevism. Both wanted are directed at the ModernMovement as a 9 Paul Devinat, Scientific Management in to destroyman'sspiritual core:to reduce the whole. LaborOffice, Europe,Geneva, International to Frenchman an "animalgeom6trique.""111 1927, pp. 233-37; RichardK. Kuisel, Capi2 Reyner Banham, Theoryand Design in the To some extent, however, Le Corbutalism and the State in Modern France, First Machine Age, 2nd ed., New York, sier's failure to attain a mass-produced Press, University Cambridge Cambridge, PraegerPublishers,1960;ColinRowe, "The architecture his own. LikeMercier,he was 1981, pp. 31-35. of Mathematics the IdealVilla," TheMathehardly chose the most effective means of matics of the Ideal Villa and OtherEssays, 10 These statistics, prepared by the French exerting his influence. His hope to influCambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1976, pp. Ministryof the Liberated Regions, are from ence policy decisions while maintaining 1-27; William Curtis, "Ideas of Structure William MacDonald, Reconstruction in independence from politics was naive. and the Structureof Ideas: Le Corbusier's France, New York, MacMillan, 1922, pp. Techniciansand architectshad been effecPavillon Suisse, 1930-1931," Journal of 24, 28, 93. tive functioning as officials or advisors the Society of Architectural Historians40, 11 Kuisel, Capitalism,pp. 54, 61. withinthe government-for instance,Ernst no. 4 (December 1981), pp. 295-310. or May in Frankfurt Henri Sellier in Paris 12 Lt. Col. G. Espitallier, Pour rebdtir nos and Suresnes---but Le Corbusiernaively 3 See in particularMaximilien GauthierLe inaisons ditruites, Paris, 1917, p. 3, cited Corbusier ou l'architectureau service de believed that he could shape government de The Silver,"Esprit Corps: by Kenneth Paris, Editions DenoEl, 1944; l'homme, policy simply by offering unsolicitedadGreatWarand FrenchArt, 1914-1925," Le StephenGardner, Corbusier,New York, vice. The leadership of the Republic, redissertation, Yale University, 1981, pp. Viking Press, 1974;PeterBlake, TheMaster 207-8. sponding to a much larger constituency New York,AlfredA. Knopf, 1960. Builders, and one that was often hostile to innovaHenry-Russell Hitchcock's Architecture: 13 Charles-EdouardJeanneret and Amed~e tion, had little reason to initiate either Le 144 Art Journal

Ozenfant, Apres le cubisme, Paris, Com- 24 Since its formation in 1907, the Deutsche Werkbund had encouraged collaboration mentaires, November 15, 1918, pp. 11, 26. between progressiveindustries suchas AEG 14 Charles Faroux, "L'exemple industrieldes and architects, including HermannMutheEtats-Unis," Revue des vivantes 1, no. 9 sius, Peter Behrens, and Walter Gropius. (October 1927), p. 443. The messianic hope in industrial methodsis 15 Marc Bourbonnais,Le Neo-Saint-Simonian- perhapsmost clearly(andnaively)expressed ism dans la vie sociale d'aujourd-hui, Paris, by Mies van der Rohe in the thirdeditionof de Les Press Universitaires France, 1923. G (June 10, 1924): "I see in industrialization the centralproblemof buildingin our time. 16 Le Corbusierowned six books by Dubreuil, If we succeed in carryingout this industrialseveral of which were warmlydedicatedto ization, the social, economic, technical,and the author.Dubreuilwas an adjunct secretary also artistic will problems be readilysolved."9 of the Frenchlaborunion C.G.T. (Confed("Industrial Building," Programs and erationGeneraledu Travail).His best seller ArchiManifestoes on Twentieth-Century Standards, Commentun ouvrierfrangaisa tecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads, Cambridge, vu le travailamiricain, Paris,Grosset,1929, Mass. MIT Press, 1970, p. 81). describes his largely positive reactions to workers'conditionsunderTaylorism,made 25 Banham, Theory and Design in the First aftera tripto theUnitedStates.ForDubreuil, MachineAge, pp. 220-46. the essential difference between assembly line work and ordinarywork was thatin the 26 Le Corbusier,Versune architecture,Paris, EditionsCres, 1923;reprinted Paris,Ediin former all the implementsnecessaryfor the tions Arthaud,1977. Translated English into workerlay at handat the rightmoment, and by Frederick Etchells in Le Corbusier, that disorderassociated with certainmanuTowardsa New Architecture,London,John facturingprocesses was abolished. Rodker, 1927; reprinted in New York, Le Corbusier hadprofessional also contact Praeger, 1960, p. 211. The chapter"Masswith Marshal Lyauty and Lucien Romier. Production Houses" was originally pubLyauty attempted to publicize Scientific lished in L'EspritNouveauno. 13. Managementin the Frenchcolonialarmy.In Loucheur(1872-1931) came fromnorthhis Sketchbooks,vol. 1, Cambridge, Mass., eastern France, where he had substantial MITPress, 1981,p. 21, LeCorbusier praised holdings in the railroadsserving the mining of Lyauty's sensitive modernization Morocregions. Immediatelyfollowing the war, he co. Lucien Romierwas the primaryspokesserved as Minister of the LiberatedZones man of RedressementFrangais, an organandled reconstruction effortsin thenorth.In ization in which Le Corbusier was also 1920, he proposedwith Bonnevaya law for involved. See the discussion, later in this the constructionof 500,000 units of lowarticle. Le Corbusier's library included cost housing. Althoughrejectedat the time, Romier's work Esquisse des consequences the proposal later became the basis of the duprogres, Paris, 1929. 1928 Loucheur Law, which created the 17 Herve Lauwick, "Taylorisations," L'InHabitationsi loyer modere(H.L.M.). transigeant, April 16, 1923, p. 1; Henry 27 Le Corbusier,Towards,pp. 215-18. I have Ford, Ma vie et mon oeuvre, Paris, Payot, includedthe referenceto Taylorismfromthe 1925. Frenchedition(p. 193), whichEtchellsomits 18 GeorgesBricard,L'Organisation from his translation. Etchells,perhapsgiven scientifique du travail, Paris, ArmandColin, 1927, p. the general lack of knowledge aboutScientific Management in Britain, sometimes and 201; Merkle, Management Ideology, p. 154. omits passages referring Taylorism. to 19 See Devinat, ScientificManagement;Henri 28 Le Corbusier,Towards,p. 231. Fayol, Generaland Industrial Management, 29 Le Corbusier, City, p. 301. trans.ConstanceStorrs,New York, Pitman, 1949. 30 Le Corbusier,Towards,p. 247. 20 Charles E. Jeanneret to William Ritter, 31 Ibid., pp. 268-69. December 25, 1917, cited in Brian Brace 32 Ibid., pp. 247, 250. Taylor, "Le Corbusier's Prototype Mass Housing, 1914-28," dissertation,Harvard 33 In 1926, twenty-fiveper centof the Parisians lived in apartments University, 1974, p. 51. averagingtwo residents per room; 318,000 people lived en garni, 21 L'EspritNouveau, no. 20. comparedto 222,000 in 1912;andthe tuber22 For an excellent account of the Dom-ino culosis mortality rate varied from 83 per to 100,000 in the 8e arrondisement 1,247 project and Le Corbusier'sactivitiesduring the war years, see Eleanor Gregh, "The per 100,000 in partsof the 4e arrondisement Dom-ino Idea," Oppositions no. 15/16 (and to 4,263 per 100,000 in furnishedhotels). Duringthe twenties, nearly 1,000,000 (Winter/Spring1979), pp. 60-87. people moved into the still semi-rusticsub23 CharlesE. Jeanneret WilliamRitter,Octoto urbs, where squatter settlements without ber 1917, cited in Brian Brace Taylor, Le sewage or service facilitiesproliferated. The Corbusier at Pessac, Exh. cat., Harvard instabilityof the home mortgagemarketand University, Cambridge,Mass. (in collaboconstructionindustryexacerbated housthe ration with the Fondation Le Corbusier, Le ing problem.See LouisLoucheur, Carnet Paris), October-November1972, p. 6. secret, 1908-1932, Brussels,Brepols, 1962,

p. 145;Peggy A. Phillips,"New-Corporatist Praxis in Paris," Journal of UrbanHistory (August 1978), pp. 413-14. 34 Loucheur,Le Carnetsecret;Phillips, "New Praxis." Corporatist 35 Silver, "Espritde Corps," pp. 206-9. 36 Adolphe Dervaux, "Le Beau, le vrai, I'utile et la reorganisationde la cit6," La Grand Revue 90, no. 584 (April 1916), p. 36. 37 La Citi Reconstituee,May-July 1916, cited in Gregh, "The Dom-ino Idea," p. 83. As Gregh points out, the exhibition'semphasis on winning public favor for industrialized building methods, in orderthatreconstruction could proceed rapidly, economically, and on a large scale, is extremelysimilarto Le Corbusier'sown position. 38 Le Corbusierspecifically attacksthe pervain sive "r-e-g-i-o-n-a-l-i-s-m-e!" his chapter "Maisonen Serie," Vers,pp. 189-92 (again in a passage omittedby Etchells). Many of his articleslaterreprinted L'Artdicoratif in d'aujourd'hui, Paris, Editions Cres, 1925; reprintedin Paris, Vincent, Freal, 1959, are also aimedat countering pervasivetrend. this For a generaldiscussionof regionalism,see Gerard Monnier, "Un Retour i l'ordre: architecture, geomrtrie, societe," in UniLe versit6de Saint-Etienne, Retour'al'ordre, Paris, Spadem, 1975, pp. 45-54. 39 This term is used by Maxime Leroy in his bookLa Villefrangaise, Paris,Riviere,1927, p. 37. Leroy, a university professor and former syndicalist, gave theoreticalformation to the neo-corporatisttown-planning movement. He sought a reestablishment of "community" in French cities, and saw as corporations the new "guilds" of French society. HenriSellier, a syndicalist-socialist, was the most active memberof the Parisian housing-reformmovement. In the twenties, he was mayorof thenew middle-class suburb Suresnes and acted as nationalsecretaryof the offices d'H.B.M. (Habitation a bon marche).DuringthePopular Front,he served as Ministerof PublicHealth.GeorgesBenoitLevy, the presidentof the French Garden City Association, was one of the first to introducethe Britishgardencity movement to the French.LouisRenault,the automobile manufacturer,was a nationaltrusteein the H.B.M. program and built a significant amount of the workers' housing underthis program and later under H.L.M. He saw housing as an answer to atheism and communism. Later he was involved in the production of armamentsfor the Nazis. Pierre Lhandewas one of the chief spokesmenof social Catholicismin Franceand sponsored several "Catholic" garden cities. He consideredthese projectsto be a way to "combat the scourge of hovels" and to "civilize and christianize"the workingclass. Phillips's"New-Corporatist Praxis"gives a brief account of each of these figures and theirneo-corporatist orientation.Fora more extensive discussionof HenriSellierandthe Parisian public-housing movement, see Ginette Baty-Tornikian, Architecture et

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Social Democratie: Un projet urbain iddal no. 11/12, p. 1223. typique: agglomeration parisienne 1919- 48 The postwar "call to order" is evident in 1939, Paris, Institut d'Etudes et de Reboth the political andculturalspheres.For a cherches Architecturales Urbaines,Minet discussion of the conservativereaction on istere d I'Environment du Cadrede Vie, et the culturalsphere, see Universit6de SaintC.O.R.D.A., 77 73 028 00 202 7501, n.d. Etienne, Retour ci l'ordre, and especially 40 Georges Benoit-L.vy, La Formationde la Silver's excellent article, "Purism:Straightrace, Vichy, n.d., cited in Phillips, "Newening Up afterthe GreatWar," Artform15, no. 7 (March 1977), pp. 56-63; also his Praxis," p. 406. Corporatist dissertation,"Espritde Corps." 41 Benoit-Levy,Paris s'entendu,Nice, Socie&6 Generale d'Imprimerie, 1927, pp. 42-43; 49 Manyof the strongest advocatesof European economic integrationwere advocatesof inidem, La Citi-jardin, Paris, Jouve, 1904. dustrialmodernization.Loucheurserved as La Citi-jardin predatesthe widespreadincommittroduction of Taylorism in France, but it presidentof the FrenchPan-Europe relates directlyto ideas of rationalization of tee, andwas followed uponhis deathin 1931 by Mercier.Both were associatesof Le Corproduction. Benoit-Levy opened the text Paul with a quotationfrom the Le Play's Saintbusier, as was the internationalist Otlet, Le Corbusier'sclient for the Mundaneam. Simonian text, L'Organisationdu travail. The Pan-Europe movement was founded He arguedfor the need for "ville modeles" to accompany "ateliers models." For after World War I by Count Coudenhoveof nobleman international Benoit-Levy's influence on Le Corbusier, Kalegi, a European see Paul V. Turner, "The Educationof Le ancestry. See Richard F. Kuisel, Ernest Corbusier:A Study of the Developmentof Mercier, French Technocrat, Berkeley, Le Corbusier'sThought, 1900-1920," disUniversityof CaliforniaPress, 1967, p. 73. For the broaderworldvision of FrenchTaysertation, Harvard University, 1971, pp. 129-33. lorists, see Merkle, Managmentand Ideology, p. 137. 42 Fayol, Management,p. 96. Duringthe war, Le Corbusier studied at the Bibliotheque 50 Le Corbusier, "Nos moyens," L'Esprit Nouveau no. 27, in Le Corbusier,City, p. NationaleAlfred de Foville's L'Enquitesur 140. les conditionsde l'habitationen France, Les Maisons Types, Paris, 1894. The book, uti- 51 Ibid., pp. 147-48,296. lizing Foville's researchwiththe Sectiondes va-t-elle Sciences Economiques Socialesdu Comit6 52 Camille Mauclair, L'Architecture et mourir?La crise du "panbitonnismeintides TravauxHistoriqueset Scientifiquesof the Musee Social, is an early illustration of gral, " Paris,NouvelleRevueCritique,1933, social engineering. In contrast to earlier p. 38. academic studies such as CharlesGamier's 53 The associationof forms with nationalidenL'Habitationhumaine, the book proposesa tity or patriotic allegiancewas most common new scientific and statistical approachto throughout World War I and the 1920s. design;implicitis a notionof potentialsocial Ozenfantin his articlein L'EspritNouveau reform. See Gregh, "The Dom-ino Idea," on Villa Schwob (1916) addressed issue: this p. 82; Taylor, Pessac, p. 1. "even nationalism has become mixed up with it and certainfine spiritshave decreed 43 Devinat, Scientific Management, p. 78; that the straightline is German(witness the Dubreuil,Standards,pp. 10-11. Pantheon,the Egyptian temples,andpalaces 44 Le Corbusierpublished Perret's drawings of Gabriel). The straightline is one of the for a concrete house in "Maison en Serie" rights of man." (JulienCaron[pseudonym and Garnier'sCit6 Industrielle"in "Trois for Ozenfant], "Une Villa de Le Corburappels a MM. les Architectes," Esprit Nouveauno. 6, pp. 679-704; sier," L'Esprit Nouveauno. 4. Perret'sdrawings,however, Julien Caron, "Villa of Le Corbusier," were omittedin Versune architecture. trans.Joan Ochman,Oppositionsno. 15/16 45 Le Corbusier,Towards,pp. 263-64. [Winter/Spring1979] p. 187-97.) Later,in Urbanisme, Le Corbusier also disputes 46L'Esprit Nouveau, revue internationale claims that the straightline is German,Le 1 (January no. hebdomadaire d'dconomique Corbusier,City, p. 23. See Silver, "Esprit 1921). This was the only issue of this review de corps," for an extended and perceptive dedicated to the discussion of "Economie discussionof artandnationalidentityduring politique, Economie nationale, Economie this period. internationale,Science et Industrie,Methodologie." For a discussion of L'Esprit 54 Erik Satie, "Cahiers d'un mammifbre," L'EspritNouveau no. 7, p. 833. Nouveau, see Robert Gabetti and Carlo Olmo, Le Corbusier e l'Esprit Nouveau, 55 R. Chenevier, "La Vie frangaise,"L'Esprit Turin, Giulio Einaudi, 1975; Frangoise Nouveau, no. 6, pp. 705-14; idem, "Wilson Will-Levaillant, "Norme et forme h travers et l'humanismefrangais," ibid., no. 11/12, L'Esprit Nouveau," Universite de Saintla pp. 1223-30; idem "Ou m&me politique Etienne, Retour i 'ordre, pp. 241-76. An anti-sovietique,"ibid., no. 9, pp. 1045-51. adequateanalysis of the social and political ideas of the review remainsto be done. 56 L'Esprit Nouveau, no. 16, p. 1969; Henri Hertz, "Lenine," ibid., no. 21. 47 N.D.L.R., note to R. Chenevier, "Wilson Nouveau 57 L'EspritNouveau, no. 15, p. 1727. See also et l'humanismefrangais,"L'Esprit

Hertz, "Wilson," ibid., no. 22. 58 Alexanderde Senger, Le Chevalde troie du bolchevisme, Bienne, Editionsdu Chandelier, 1931. The best discussionof de Senger'stext, as va-twell as of Mauclair'sL'Architecture elle mourir?, is still Gauthier'sLe Corbusier. See also JacquesGubler,Nationalisme et internationalisme dans l'architecture moderne de la Suisse, Lausanne, L'Age d'homme, 1975. 59 Le Corbusier,Towards,p. 261. 60 Paul Lafitte, "A proposde la Grand Crise," L'EspritNouveauno. 16, p. 1900. 61 Ibid., p. 1889. 62 Hertz, "Balbutiementsde l'espritpolitique III," L'EspritNouveauno. 24; JeanLurgat, ibid. "Le Carteldes Independants," 63 Hertz, L'EspritNouveauno. 24. 64 Maier, "Between Taylorismand Technocracy," p. 38. 65 Le Corbusier,Towards,p. 254. 66 Le Corbusier, "La GrandVille," L'Esprit Nouveau no. 23, in Le Corbusier,City, p. 102. 67 La Direction, "Ce que nous avons fait, ce que nous ferons," L'Esprit Nouveau no. 11/12, pp. 1212, 1213. 68 L'EspritNouveau no. 11/12, p. 1372; ibid. no. 10, p. 1202. 69 Francis Delaisi, "Faut-il emettre 150 milliards de billets de banque?"L'EspritNouveau no. 8, pp. 927-934; see also n. 43 wrotein Urbanisme, above. Le Corbusier p. 277, that he had hoped to give the chapter "Chiffres" to FrancisDelaisi to write. 70 Le Corbusier,City, pp. 251-72, 302. 71 Le Corbusier, Urbanisme, p. 285. This phrase doesnotappear Etchell's in translation. 72 Le Corbusier, La Ville radieuse, Paris, L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui,1935. Translatedinto Englishby PamelaKnight,Eleanor Levieux, and Derek Coltman,in Le Corbusier, The Radiant City, New York, Orion Press, 1964, p. 120;idem, City, p. 256. 73 Benoit-Levy, Paris s'entendu, pp. 22-23. The translation is from Phillips, "NewPraxis," p. 405. Corporatist 74 Henri Hertz, "Balbutiements de l'esprit politique," L'EspritNouveauno. 21; "Balbutiements II," ibid. no. 22; "Balbutiements III," ibid. no. 24. AlthoughHertzfound "impuretes"in the Radical Party, he believed that it was the only hope for a renewal of "l'esprit publique." LaterHertzwroteforthe communist review Europe. 75 Le Corbusier,Towards,pp. 219,245. 76 Paul Dermee, "Andre Gide," L'Esprit Nouveau no. 25. 77 The importanceof Proudhon the L'Esprit to Nouveau group is expressed in R. Chene-

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"charcterof the relationships betweenfundamentalgroups." 92 Le Corbusier, in his article "Reflexions 'a propos de la loi Loucheur," Revue des 109 Leandre Vaillat, "La Tendance internaVivantesannee 2, no. 8 (August 1928), pp. tionale a l'exposition des artsdecoratifs," 79 Henry Ford, My Life and Work,New York, 239-45, expressedmany of the ideas resultno. 31, L'lllustration 4313 (October 1925), Arno Press, 1973, p. 3. Franing from his work with Redressement pp. 459. 80 Le Corbusier, L'Almanachd'Architecture to gais. In a footnote, p. 243, he referred the urbanismstudy committee and its proposal 110 Walter Rathenau, "Critique de L'Esprit Moderne, Paris, Les EditionsCres, 1925, p. Allemand," L'EspritNouveau no. 9, pp. 145. of a law on the "recuperationof surplus 1093-1106. This issue came out in July value." See also his interviewwith Charles 81 Taylor, Pessac, p. 7. 1921, just following the first Wiesbaden Kunstler, "Pourra-t-on bienttt se loger? conference between Louis Loucheurand 82 Le Corbusier,Towards,p. 222. Une enquete sur la loi Loucheur," SeptemWalter Rathenau.Loucheurand Rathenau ber 27, 1928 (no reference, FondationLe 83 Le Corbusier,City, pp. 275-76. attempted to work out an agreement by Corbusier). which Germanywould meet its reparation 84 L[e] C[orbusier]S[augnier], "Les Maisons 93 Bulletin, June 19, 1928, cited in Kuisel, p. paymentsin Germangoods and workman'Voisin,"' L'Esprit Nouveau no. 2, pp. L' 86; H. ProstandG. Monsarrat, Urbanisme, ship. Twenty-five thousandhouses made 211-15. in Germanywere to be erectedin the devasParis, Editionsde la S.A.P.E., n.d. 85 For a detailedaccountof the development tated region. The plans called for a stanof 94 Le Corbusier, Vers le Paris de l'dpoque this project, see Taylor,Pessac. dardizedhouse plan with concrete plaster machiniste, Rapport provisoire,Supplement double walls, the interveningspace filled 86 Le Corbusier,Radiant,p. 13. au Bulletindu Redressement Frangais, Febwith compressedpeat. The roofs, of slate ruary 15, 1928, 14 pp., idem, Pour bdtir: 87 Le Corbusierowned a copy of a brochure or tile, were to be made locally; all other et tayloriser, Supplementdu standardiser materialswere to be providedby Germany. publishedby Michelin et Cie. in 1925, conBulletin du Redressement Frangais, May 1, in their successful efforts to Taylorize essay, written 1918, AlthoughRathenau's cerning 8 pp. 1928, makes no referenceto this agreement,the the construction a companyhousingcomof Le publicationof the article in the midst of a plex builtat Clermont-Ferrand. Corbusier 95 Le Corbusier,Versle Paris, p. 6. and PierreJeanneretare said to have visited lively discussion in the Frenchpressandin 96 Ibid., p. 11. can as this complex (Taylor,Pessac, p. 24). parliament be interpreted an endorsement by Ozenfantand Le Corbusier the of 97 Ibid., p. 14. 88 Louis Renault,like manyof theindustrialists, proposal. Many feared that payment in did workin conjunction withthegovernment. 98 Le Corbusier,Pour batir, p. 8. to kind, as opposedto money, was contrary Much of the housing thathe sponsoredwas the Versailles treaty,and thatthe influx of 99 Kuisel, ErnestMercier, p. 86. built under the H.B.M. program. But, as Germangoods and workmenwould result with many social reformsin thetwenties,the 100 Le Corbusier, "Reflexions i propos de la in a German "colonization" of a region " initiationcame from the privatesector. loi Loucheur, p. 239. that the Germanarmies had only recently 89 Le Corbusierto Bruya, October 11, 1932, 101 Alexander Werth, The Twilightof France ravaged (MacDonald, Reconstructionin Fondation Le Corbusier.Le CorbusierexFrance, p. 253). 1933-1940, ed. D.W. Brogan,New York, of pressed his admiration ErnestMercierin Harperand Brothers, 1942, p. 4. 111 Mauclair, L'Architecture,especially pp. his preface page to the 1963 publicationof 102 Le 35-45. Corbusier,TheRadiantCity, p. 8. TheRadiantCity: 103 Le Corbusier, "L'Authorite devant les 112 Albert Thibaudet,Les Idees politiques de Mobilizationof the land for the comla France, Paris, Stock, Delamain et taches contemporaines," L'Architecture mon good (theRedressement Frangais Boutelleau, 1932, pp. 66-68; Bulletin du 1935),pp. 22-23; d'Aujourd'hui (September has publishedthis thesis). RedressementFrangais, July 1932, p. 11, reprintedin L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui The Presidentof the Redressement no. 158 (May 1971), 87. as cited by Kuisel, ErnestMercier, p. 38. Frangaiswas Ernest Mercier, PresiKuisel's critiqueof Mercierwas a source dent of Est-Lumiere (1928). He 104 For a discussion of Le Corbusier'sparticifor my analysis of Le Corbusier'spolitical wanted to face his country with a in this movement, see Fishman, pation ineffectivenessin the twenties. crucialdecision:to exploit the landof Utopias, pp. 213-42; MaryMcLeod, "Le the nation. Thirty-five years have Corbusierand Algiers," "Plans: Bibliogpassed!!! raphy," Oppositions no. 19/20 (Winter/ Mary McLeod teaches archtectural history and design at the Graduate School Spring 1980), pp. 55-85, 185-89. At the conclusionof his workPrecisionssur of Architecture and Planning, Columbia un etat present de l'architectureet de l'ur- 105 Le Corbusier, "Descartes est-il ameriUniversity. cain?" Plans no. 7 (July 1931); translated banisme, Paris, EditionsCr~s, 1930;reprint into English in Le Corbusier,TheRadiant ed. Paris, Vincent Freal, 1960, p. 249. Le Corbusier, under the title "Un Institutde City, p. 129. France de l'epoque machiniste," published 106 Kuisel, ErnestMercier, p. 87. excerpts of a letter to Lucien Romier, after Mercier, the most importantfigure in the 107 Maier, "Between Taylorism," p. 38. The Redressement. letter,written February 108 This in phrase of Luigi Pirandello(1929) is 1928, expresses Le Corbusier'shope in this quoted by Antonio Gramsci in his essay organizationcomposed of "capitainesd'in"Americanism Fordism,"in Selections and dustrie." For otherreferencesin Precisions from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. to the Redressement,see pp. 144, 176-77, QuintinHoareandGeoffreyNowell Smith, 187, 190. New York, International Publishers,1971, 90 The account of ErnestMercierand the Repp. 279-322. In thiscontemporary analysis, dressementFrangaisis drawnfromKuisel's Gramsci argued that Americanism and ErnestMercier. Fordism in Europe did not constitutethe beginningof a "new historicalepoch" and 91 The Esprit Nouveau contributor Francis that little had been actuallychangedin the Delaisi worked on one of the first Cahiers

vier's article "L'Esthetiquede Proudhon," L'EspritNouveau no. 4, pp. 444-48. 78 Le Corbusier,Towards,p. 268.

series, Echanges commerciaux.

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