Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Le Modulor



This week, Mr Zul want us to do a blog post about Le Modulor. When I first listen to this topic. The first thing appear in my mind is what is this name. And what is that?! i don't even know anything about this. But, I have to do so. So, I try to make some research on it.


The Modulor is an anthropometric scale of proportions devised by the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965). It was developed as a visual bridge between two incompatible scales, the Imperial system and the Metric system. It is based on the height of an English man with his arm raised. It was used as a system to set out a number of Le Corbusier's buildings and was later codified into two books. Le Modulor contains fascinating biographical details concerning life during and after the occupation of France during WWII, it describes the birth-pains of a new artistic movement, and it provides a full description of  Corb's theory of architectural proportion: Le Modulor. 



Examples~
Examples of Le Modulor in use (mainly the RadialCity) are combined with the story of its theoretical development, and exercises for the reader intended to clarify common misconceptions. It's a striking book. After reading it one never again looks at concrete housing developments apparently based on models made out of Lego by a clumsy child in quite the same way. Not only are these monsters ugly, impractical, life destroying eyesores; they are also uninspired, cut price, shoddy approximations to their own intended idiom. Le Modulor supposes that harmonious design can, must, proceed from a scale of proportions analogous to the scale of tones used in music. But isn't the 12-tone equal-tempered scale actually an artificial construct designed to facilitate transposition? Or was he referring to the "ideal" ratios found in "just intoned” scales?

My thought~
Actually I did not know about it. However, after I have made some research on the architect Le Corbusier. He ought to introduce a scale of visual measures that would unite two virtually incompatible systems: the Anglo Saxon foot and inch and the French Metric system. Whilst he was intrigued by ancient civilizations who used measuring systems linked to the human body: elbow (cubit), finger (digit), thumb (inch) etc., he was troubled by the meter as a measure that was a forty-millionth part of the meridian of the earth. 

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