Villa Besnus in Vaucresson

Le Corbusier – Villa Besnus, “Ker-Ka-Ré”, Vaucresson France, 1922

This project was the direct practical result of the urban planning stand at the “Salon d'Automne” in Paris in 1922.. It dates back to a time when all kinds of difficulties arose simultaneously. Although theories had been put forward and principles developed to clarify the terrain in “L'Esprit Nouveau”, everything in this house had to be architecturally created anew: construction methods, an effective structural solution to the problem of the roof and window frame, parapet, etc. The project reveals its free planning: the bathroom is placed in the center of the plant area. Likewise, it defines the shape of the windows and their proportions, correctly sized to the human scale.

Here, for example, is an example that is only one of many that could be taken from this nursing home given over to aesthetic considerations: a sketch shows the cage of the rounded staircase, which you will see is placed perpendicular to the facade. Le Corbusier told how one evening when he had just left the Velodrome d'Hiver, he suddenly realized "that this perpendicular staircase had a discordant rhythm that destroyed the basic unity of his design. He therefore readjusted the position of the staircase to make it turn a quarter of a turn along the facade, thereby emphasizing and amplifying the latter. Intense moments like these, he says, teach us a permanent lesson. "They make us turn our backs on the simple accident, they push us to sacrifice a pleasant detail and force us to seek a coherent unity. We must use all our terrain to the full and invariably realize the largest possible dimensions. It will be seen that in an architecture in which we can engage in plastic speculations, from the purely plastic point of view, we can do well or badly."