INTRODUCTIOn

As Le Corbusier stated in the book “Vers une architecture” the problem of architecture related to the house, is that our architects neglect the standards for dwelling while building houses only answering their own aesthetic rather than needs, essentials, and order which all originated in the organism of the man. Here, houses are only a product of random and unidentified selection. However, perfect dwellings are a product of selection applied to an established standard. a standard which is a matter of logic and tries to answer a well-proposed problem of the house in an organization of harmony.
As Le Corbusier mentioned in the chapter “The Engineer aesthetic and Architecture “; The diagnose is clear. Our engineers produce architecture, for they employ a mathematical calculation which derives from natural laws, and their works give us the feeling of harmony. The engineer, therefore, has his own aesthetic, … for architect we have written our “Three reminders” Mass…. Surface…. Plan…. Then, still for the architect, “regulating lines” showing by these ones of the means by which architecture achieves that tangible form of mathematics which gives us such a grateful perception of order. (Le Corbusier, 1986)
Since the construction of the La Roche house was finished in 1925, four years before the writing of “Vers une architecture”, the possibility for finding the traces of three reminders of architecture in this house is an issue which would be considered in this research. Thus, the research question is; How had the problem of architecture (indicated by Le Corbusier) been solved in The La Roche house?

 

The arrangement of the volume

As Le Corbusier indicated, architecture is the skillful, exact, and magnificent play of volumes assembled in light … there are plastic elements which reveal by light. forms that are clearly visible to our eyes and that we can measure with our minds. Such forms, which may be elementary or subtle, smooth or rough, work physiologically upon our senses (sphere, cubes, cylinder, horizontal, vertical, oblique, etc ) and stimulate them. (Le Corbusier, Towards a new architecture, 1986, p. 7). they are beautiful and everyone agrees on this point.
The La Roche house expands its volume toward the environment without any superimpose system while forms grow naturally into the surroundings, however, by looking at the standard modules Le Corbusier used in the “Furges housing estate” in Pessac near Bordeaux from 1924 till 1926, and considering the idea of regulating line, mentioned in “Vers une architecture”, presence of a rectangular units in a cubic layout could be identified while arrangement of the building volumes is chosen according to the golden ratio which will be explained in the section of “ forms of the plan”.

 

Proportion in surface

Since architecture is the skillful, exact, and magnificent play of volumes assembled in light, the architect brings the surface that envelope these volumes to life without letting them become parasites that devour the volume by assimilating them to their own ends… (Guiton, 1981, p. 37). Elements like doors and windows which are accepted to answer the requirements of the house in bringing light inside and providing access for the users, start their existence in the entity of each façade. In this interaction, spaces inside the volume of the house find their ultimate salvation through these horizontal gates. Here, facades are not only treated as the 2-dimensional surfaces which only embrace the “Dom-ino” structure of the La Roche house, they become the inventors of the sensation by getting help from geometry and proportion.

Forms of the plan

According to “Le Corbusier” the reason of order is the only faculty for rooting the architectural abstraction and ideas. while the volume and the surface are the mediums for architectural manifestation. They need a generator (Plan) which could add a layer of order to them and an eye of the observer could understand them in a structural framework. The difference between plan and volume-surface is lie in harmony, rhythm, order and unity that only the plan could bring in two individual volumes and surfaces. “The plan is basic, where there is no plan, there is no greatness of intention and expression, no rhythm, no volume, no coherence. Where there is no plan, we experience that sensation of formlessness, indigence, disorder, unreason, that human mind cannot endure…” (Le Corbusier, Towards a new architecture, 1986)

 

RESULt + LEARNINg

The architectural promenade which Le Corbusier introduced in the La Roche house indicates a chain for connecting the volume, surface, and plan of the house. In the arrangement of the volume, he reaches to a cubic rectangular form which follows the golden ratio and emphasizes in the horizontality of the dwelling. Also, in the surface and façade of the building, linear windows with narrow openings, for entering the light into the interior spaces of the house, follow the horizontality of the total volume. Finally, in the plan, he tried to get acquainted with the story of the spaces while using the regulating line as a reference to architect aesthetic for generating coherence function to the building.