This deserves a longer answer than I can give it in any reasonable time. I'll try to hit a few of the high points, here.
Aalto used a lot of white in his interiors because most of his buildings were north of the 54th parallel. In those long winters, every bit of daylight is precious. (This is also part of why Scandinavian modernists used light wood.) He had an extensive range of devices for distributing and smoothing daylight, most of which are hard to photograph. If you get a chance, visit the Mt. Angel Abbey Library in Oregon.
Corbu (the apprenticeship system in architecture leads to recent designers being called by the names their apprentices knew) was influenced by the light of the Mediterranean, and liked to use it to illuminate sharply definite forms. His purist phase only lasted 20 years and, even then, included some swoopy sculptural forms. Example: the Villa Savoye. His later work was much more sculptural and textural. Example: Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut series 1, series 2. His city plans, on the other hand, were heavily influenced by the ideal cities of 19th-cy French utopianism (Fourier and so on), and seem to me heartless; they are unfortunately widely influential.
Corbu and Mies were better than those people who focus on pure boxy forms make them.
Something on SimModernism tomorrow--it's getting late.
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timeasmymeasure
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- Aalto used a lot of white in his interiors because most of his buildings were north of the 54th parallel. In those long winters, every bit of daylight is precious. (This is also part of why Scandinavian modernists used light wood.) He had an extensive range of devices for distributing and smoothing daylight, most of which are hard to photograph. If you get a chance, visit the Mt. Angel Abbey Library in Oregon.
- Corbu (the apprenticeship system in architecture leads to recent designers being called by the names their apprentices knew) was influenced by the light of the Mediterranean, and liked to use it to illuminate sharply definite forms. His purist phase only lasted 20 years and, even then, included some swoopy sculptural forms. Example: the Villa Savoye. His later work was much more sculptural and textural. Example: Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut series 1, series 2. His city plans, on the other hand, were heavily influenced by the ideal cities of 19th-cy French utopianism (Fourier and so on), and seem to me heartless; they are unfortunately widely influential.
- Corbu and Mies were better than those people who focus on pure boxy forms make them.
Something on SimModernism tomorrow--it's getting late.