“The Hand, Sister of Eye”. Architectural Models in Atelier Le Corbusier

Abstract

Le Corbusier would supervise more than two hundred models of his projects, the first volumetric manifestations of his architecture, from the modelling of his first house in La Chaux-de-Fonds, to his collage of the Venice Hospital. This research material acquires still more intensity if it is analysed not only as an architectural representation, but also as the production of a plastic artist. The model, as opposed to the sketch, is a shared creation space. Corbusier saw it through the hands of others, craftsmen and collaborators, who would contribute values to the project. In the model, the architect-artist would find a mediator between the two dimensions and the volume, a lesson learnt from his teacher, Charles L’Eplattenier, and would undergo a metamorphosis as his plastic interests were modified: drawing and model go hand in hand. Beyond geometry, the choice of materials, the method of accomplishment and the scale of the model, were decisions related to the action of constructing the object in itself, in which these plastic values were transferred to the architecture which they represented. Thus converged a double mastery of materials and forms, that of the architect and that of the craftsman, a “Synthesis of the Arts”.