Le Corbusier-Villa Savoye

Located in suburban Poissy from Paris, France, Villa Savoye, a masterpiece from Le Corbusier is considered as an intriguing weekend home. The use of “Five Points of Architecture” helps to present the house in a Puristic design and to sustain the sheer mass of the building creating a floating house.

Components

Roof garden is designed flatly and solarium gives extra shades to the highest floor while horizontal windows is used in the façade with the providing view to the surrounding landscape.

 

Structure & Construction

Domino System, Pilotis located on the lower floor gives a floating effect to the house, this forms the structural grid that serves as a guideline to the construction stages and the resulted form and shapes.

 

Spatial Organisation

Free floor plan allows the spatial wall to be in curve shape similar to the radius of a car.

The ramp is the main elements which is used for dividing the space into private and public spaces.

 

Massing

The overall massing of the house is a cube and breaks down into semicircle and squares.

The mass of the highest floor(solarium)gives balance to the ground floor with the first floor supported by pilotis.

 

External Façade

Ribbon windows is used on the entire ground floor regardless of the presence of load-bearing walls with no extra ornamentation is presented on the upper floor free façade.

 

Materials

The general materials used are reinforced concrete for almost the entire building, tempered glass for the horizontal windows and aluminium for the framing of the glasses.

 

Individual Essay
 

Structure & Construction

Villa Savoye was built by Swiss architect Le Corbusier between 1928 and 1929 in Poissy, a small country outside of Paris, France. One of the important themes of the building appears to be its structure and construction. Le Corbusier’s dictum is “Architecture or Revolution”.

              Villa Savoye is the concrete representation of Le Corbusier’s ideal living space, the main support in the villa is the use of concrete columns to raise the building of the ground and support the structure. Le Corbusier believed "the building had to be raised 3-6 meters so that the Villa Savoye could be removed from soil therefore introducing it to light and air." The elevated rectangular structure make the building has a feel of lightness. Moreover, the uses of pilotis throughout the building allows the design having no bearing walls, creating an independent structural system that carries floors separate from the wall, meaning the placement of wall is wherever it desire. In this result, no bearing wall considerations result in the ability to create open space without concern of changing in building structure. The idea of free plan also carried on in bringing the landscape under the outline of the building. Creating unencumbered views was another advantage of piloti based construction, in which windows can run through the length of the building, framing the nature by the handmade structure windows, offering the direct link with the horizon. Besides, columns are the most important structural elements in Villa Savoye. Although the building in part rests on the ground floor base, the first floor extends beyond the base which makes the structure seem to hover in mid-air.       
              In addition, the plan was set out using the principal ratios of the Golden section: in this case a square divided into sixteen equal parts, extended on two sides to incorporate the projecting façades and then further divided to give the position of the ramp and the entrance. Corbusier's piloti perform a number of functions around the house, both inside and out. On the two longer elevations they are flush with the face of the façade and imply heaviness and support, but on the shorter sides they are set back giving a floating effect that emphasises the horizontal feeling of the house. Pilotis are the replacement of supporting walls by a grid of reinforced concrete columns that bears the load of the structure is the basis of the new aesthetic. Pilotis also enable cars to go under the house, provide a garage space, and eliminate the bearing walls and large spans.

             The materials used in the Villa Savoye is prosaic materials; such materials were used during this time in building houses for lower-class Parisians. Although the house is designed for the affluent, plaster walls and iron handrails are used. It used the new construction techniques based on concrete, steel, and industrial glazing to build its hovering planes and interaction of the solid concrete and steel with the lighter glass. The Style wanted to project a utopian image of the future where the Machine brought a higher level of living.

In a nutshell, Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting it by pilotis, reinforced concrete stilts. These pilotis, in providing the structural support for the house, allowed him to elucidate his philosophy.

References

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• http://arch1201designstudio3.blogspot.com/2011/05/project-2-villa-savoye.html

• http://www.archinnovations.com/featured-projects/houses/le-corbusier-and-villa-savoye/