POI S SY

	THE 	CONTEMPORARY 

HOUSE 

• 

	REX 	MARTIENSSEN 

The subject of this paper-The Contemporary House-covers a very wide and diverse field. I intend, however, to discuss the work of only one exponent, and to restrict my remarks to the work of creative significance, which also indicates a future development. Architecture has a significance beyond the merely material and utilitarian. At its greatest it can be a formulative influence, and have a deep sociological importance. One must realise that the purpose of the leaders of architectural development is to induce a consciousness in the public mind of the technique and possibilities of building. The term architect, then in this context implies very much more than is commonly supposed. Our architect must have a full understanding of the problems involved in the present social and economic structures. His function is to correlate and unify new scientific processes with the scale of human requirements. This is the traditional approach to the problems 

of architecture; it was in this spirit that the great buildings of Egypt and Greece were conceived, symbols of intense aspiration expressed with superb artistic economy. 

It is important for us to distinguish between phases of frivolous "taste" or fashion, and the true interpretations of changing requirements. The limitations which conditioned the South African house in the past no longer exist. To-day scientific experiment and advance in Europe and America are reflected in this country. To retain the use of local materials-inflexible, uneconomic, and approximate-is to retard the free development of a natural and unaffected architecture. 

Modern research has established the predominance of three materials: steel, concrete, glass. The possibilities of these materials in combination have not yet been fully explored, but we know that we can build our house on slender supports, with reinforced 

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	HOUSE SAVOYE AT 	POISSY 
	G R 0 U N D. 	F L 0 0 R 	P l A N 
	ARCHITECT 	• LE CORBUSIER 

concrete floors and roofs, and if need be with walls of glass. We are steadily approaching the point when this method of building will be the most direct and economic. The problem is to endue these elements with spiritual and metaphysical qualities. 

With this ideal in mind I have selected for discussion the work of the foremost exponent of contemporary architecture-Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier defines the house as "stages of floors; light interior partitions varying on each floor, and in strict conformity with the functions of the interior-and all around them walls of light. Reinforced concrete and steel make this construction possible, and give us the independent framework and the Free Facade. The facade no longer has to support floors or roof, it is itself supported by the floors. The facade fulfils its true destiny, it is the provider of light. Light can be provided from nil to one hundred percent of its surface. The house will be raised on pillars and the space beneath will be completely restored, the reception rooms will be 

at the top in direct communication with the roof garden, in the fresh air in full sunshine. The roof will become a solarium." 

The photograph and three plans illustrate a house built by Le Corbusier at Poissy near Paris. He has built many houses, each bearing the imprint of variable creative impulse, but each subscribes to his basic principles of arrangement. Each embodies the idea of circulation, movement and enclosure, the idea of intense relationship between house and setting. Whether we consider his houses at Garches, Auteuil, Ville d' Avray or Poissy, we shall find an exposition of a central thesis coloured by the personal equation and by the imposed conditions. I have chosen Poissy because it represents the solution to a problem which most closely impinges on our practice in South Africa. That is, the house of five or six rooms in an attractive setting. 

Your first reaction will probably be one of repulse, and if you do find this house startling and unnatural I must sympathise. From the point of view of sentiment or pure inertia it is difficult to make the complete readjustment of values required in one step, and by considering illustrations of only one example. The house as we know it has an official front and back. There is no merit in this combination but we have never questioned its rightness and we have never troubled to consider the whole question of house design de novo. The salient surfaces of Le Corbusier's house are not only lateral but horizontal. It has an underneath and a top, but no "back." The idea of approaching the house is different. 

The house at Poissy is a box suspended in mid-air with views across a great stretch of green. The air circulates all round, the sun penetrates everywhere, and the house breathes. You drive up in your car right under the house, under cover, and on the ground level are arranged garage and chauffeur's quarters, service rooms and entrance hall. Then, once entered you ascend by an easily inclined ramp to the first floor which is the chief level of the house; elevated where the air is fresh, and where the eye can contemplate distant views. (In our own double-storied houses the bed-rooms have the best and sometimes the only aspect; why?). Here the living rooms, bed rooms and kitchen are arranged. The former opening on to a 

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spacious terrace garden-a hanging garden as it were, into which we can move freely from the living and bed rooms, but always clear up above the ground. The rooms have great windows embracing the surroundings and merging the house with its setting in a combination which is quite new. Then if we wish to experience directly the curved sky above we move further up and stand on the flat top of the house-the solarium where there is no definition but the sky and distant horizons. The house is a box. In the photo it appears as a group of primary forms, cylinder on flattened cube, carried on slender columns. Instinctively one says-"how ugly! " 	But this house is so simple and offers so much more than the "ordinary" house. It is self-contained, there are no straggling out-buildings, no "waste lands" because it has been arranged; it is "a creation of the spirit," deliberate, exact, but inspired with poetry and shaped to a function which its author regards as a function of "living," and not of "architecture" which is an accretion of snobbisms and habits. 
Why should we call anything ugly which fulfils its purpose so admirably? Why should primary forms revolt us? The clear perception of beauty in primary forms will remove the barrier to right building. 
Many people admit that they admire the working of the contemporary house, but shrink from its supposed nakedness-they are terrified by simplicity. Le Corbusier does not enrich, but he evaluates every limiting surface. Every form reaches fruition in terms of its relation to space without secondary surface treatment. This is an important principle, and when one can enjoy a plain, coloured surface, uninterrupted, but bending to some magnificent space, contact will be established with the new aesthetic. This will be difficult, for we are still terrified by simplicity. 
	Examples pour into one's mind. 	The 
Russian film "Earth" repelled people of "taste" because it was "stark." Where every scene was an enrichment of experience it passed almost unheeded because its shape and movement were not complicated by vulgarities. 
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Brangwyn on the other hand invites you to swoon in a luscious fruit-laden atmosphere with no clear form or pattern. He does not ask you to think, there is nothing left for you to do but look. . But the thing is crowded with competent triviality, so the spectator is soothed and flattered into "appreciating" the artist.
For every ten travellers who admire Milan Cathedral, only one enjoys the Pyramids. For every ten (or hundred) people who like a Tudor house (modernised) only one can tolerate a plain house. Which brings us back to Poissy. 
The photograph does not give a true impression of a Corbusier house, so that again effort is required to visualise the original. To realise Poissy with any degree of truthfulness we must have further description of its form. (As a friend reminded me recently the Doge's Palace at Venice is hopelessly maligned in photographs because the light pink and biscuit coloured upper walls appear dark and sombre in photos and bear heavily down on the columns instead of floating almost ethereally in the damp air). Well the colour of Poissy is important, and we must picture the curving ground floor wall in dark green, and the upper walls in cream with chocolate coloured window frames. Above, where the bonds 

		
of architectural form touch the natural elements, the solarium walls are defined with pale rose and pale blue. The house is not crude or harsh. The forms are clear and limpid but quickened by lovely tones. Green, cream, brown; pale rose and pale blue, a bold palette but clearly ordered like the surfaces they define. 
Poissy is a triumph of Le Corbusier's new integration. It has a lesson for everyone, but it would be better to pass it by completely rather than vulgarise it by adapting it to meet the canons of "good taste." 
I shall conclude with a short quotation from Le Corbusier himself. "The house is a product of the spirit; as we ourselves are, so can our house be, if we bring our natural tastes and logical reasoning to bear on it. The question of our dwelling is a question of attainable well-being. Teach this to the children you who are schoolmasters! But first teach yourselves, else your precepts might only be falsehoods. Alas, are not our present-day houses (now and then very charming I admit) often a monstrous lie? If the social relations between men were as false as the taste (or more exactly the ethics) which govern the construction of our houses, we should all be in prison! " 

A paper read at the Ideal Homes Exhibition Johannesburg, on September 13/934, and modified for publication 
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