ARC423 Advanced Building Systems

The HEIDI WEBER PAVILION by Le Corbusier
System: Top down versus bottom up.
System: The open system and the dilemma of image.

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One can describe two different approaches to the design process:
Top down (from the general to the specific)
Product oriented.

The process begins with an idea/concept/form

---->

and concludes with a component,
made with a fabrication process
of a material

 Bottom up (from the specific to the general).
Process oriented.

The process is driven from the material
to the fabrication process
to the component

--->

to the system, the assembly, the assembly of assemblies, to the building.
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The Dilemma of Image.
The more open a system becomes, the more transformatable it can be, which in turn causes the form to become unpredictable. It may change from building to building or from minute to minute. Architects have always been concerned with the image of the building. During the Ecole des Beaux Arts the discussion would have been about the character of the building. As the openness of a system is increased, there is a corresponding decrease in its image constancy. This tends to produce a reliance on symbols for image quality. The typical fast foot place or automobile dealership is a simple example. Corbusier's use of the parasol is an iconically powerful solution.
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The Centre Le Corbusier, sometimes known as La Maison de l'Homme (the House of Man), and commonly known to architects as the Heidi Weber Pavilion was built in 1967 in Zurich. Heidi Weber was the client and is the current owner. She collaborated with Le Corbusier to bring his furniture designs to market.

The building itself can be seen as the coming together of two threads:

  • One is called Le Brevet (the patent), a system of construction made up of small span (226cm x 226cm x 226cm) (7'5" x 7'5" x 7'5") light weight bolted together steel frames for the construction of housing.
  • The second is the notion of the parasol.

The Le Brevet scheme first appears in the projects for Roq et Rob, a housing project on the steep slope near Marseilles .It allows for a simple cubic structural system resting lightly on the ground while the enclosure and partitioning systems are manipulated as needed. It appears more precisely worked out in drawings from 1949.

The parasol first appears in the Pavillion de Temps Nouveau of 1937 and then in numerous iterations as exhibition pavilions.

The Heidi Weber pavilion is both a demonstration as house and a museum.The first scheme for the actual building was called an exhibition pavilion at Zurich and is dated 1964/65.

Corb's work does not often use steel as the primary structural material but when it does appear, as in the Clarte apartment block in Geneva, it is of short span with small scale members.

Reference:
Image of Heidi Weber Pavilion

Gans, Deborah, The Corbusier Guide, Princeton architectural Press, 1987
Le Corbusier, the Oeuvre Complete, 1957-65
Le Corbusier, the Oeuvre Complete, 1965-69.
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Last update: April 09, 2003. Copyright © 2003 Bruce M. Coleman
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