Villa Savoye : a bad prototype of modern architecture 

I agree!

Today, 90+ years down the road, almost any technically inclined architect (some are; some others somewhat less) can replicate this project across the street, make it work flawlessly and durably. No need for an engineer, except for non architectural disciplines (as always). Unbelievable that it isn’t obvious to all that the construction products and materials industry, as well as a certain amount of trial and error cycles, are required to build something that lasts. Only ignorants don’t know it has always, ALWAYS been this way. If I come up today with a design 90 years ahead of our time, indeed am I clueless of all the obstacles awaiting me. So, is it about me or how am I supported by the society I live in?

@@brunodesrosiers266 If you are designing a building far ahead of its time. you would be prudent to seek the advice of an engineer, to know what was possible and what the pitfalls would be.

@@newshound64 - So many assumptions need to support your theory. To begin with, the client won’t pay for it. He will just ask: ‘what am I paying you for?’ Kaufmann, as a client, did what you suggest for Fallingwater and it didn’t necessarily make things any better. That was FLW’s opinion, mind you. I could carry on endlessly. It is a cliché to reckon that engineers know construction better. I’ll give you they typically are more specialized, so what you suggest is hiring an army of those, implicitly. Some architects are extremely sound, technically. Learn how to identify them. The letters after your name is only a small part of the story.

Amen brother, and pass the ammunition.

Architecture is not a 'decorative art'

​@@diemes5463 I agree. It is more than this.

@@diemes5463 Are you an active architect in the artistically destitute commercial sector by any chance? Either way, you don't know your architectural history. To suggest that the architecture of Greek, Myan or Azrec temples, Roman buildings of state or our own medievalm palaces, etc., etc. do not embrace decorative elements is crass beyond belief. Go away and read up.

​@@diemes5463Says who? You? Are you God? These stupid ideas have created cities that are so ugly that psychologists agree that such places are conducive to depression. I am sorry that you and others of the elect espouse such inhumane ideas.

FLW acted in similar way with many clients.

@@TheReverb1 I was going to say it was a similar scene Wright had with the Falling Water residence.

@@bobholtzmann ...and with Clinton residence and...

I cannot seem to understand why failures from contractors are the Architect's fault, specially when we don't know the full story (maybe LC was not hired to supervise the works..., or even the client wanted to save money by cutting corners during construction... )

​@@robbedontuesdayDear Robbed, Many modern architects have a poor understanding of engineering. Their training often takes on the views of Modern architects who were, I am afraid, arrogant people convinced of their own genius. They often disregarded the needs of their clients and designed buildings as forms of their own self expression. Modern Architecture values originality and eschews tried and true building methods and materials as well as familiar building forms. Le Corbusier's shabby treatment of the Savoie family is typical of his behaviour as well as the behavior of other modern architects. So, often when things go wrong they BLAME the engineers. The engineers are the ones who are usually left with the heavy work of figuring out how to make the architects' often underdetailed sketches conform to known physics and become buildings. There was a time when an architect actually knew how to build a building. I don't think Le Corbusier was one of them.This video has told us repeatedly about Le Corbusier's absence from the work site so he could write his books, plug them, and travel about to the right places and people so he could become famous. You seem to have a kind attitude toward Le Corbusier and your being kind is good. Le Corbusier, however, was not deserving of anyone's generosity. Read about his works like L'Unite, St. Peter's church, his plans to destroy the city of Paris and his much hated row houses in southern France. You will see the architect of the Villa Savoie doing the same things in them too. But you will need to read an honest evaluation like this one. Most accounts of the man praise him to high heaven and are written by accolytes trained in the ideology of Modern Architecture. Thank you. Richard

Hi; why is ok that an office should be cold and a residence should be kind of warm? What was warm regarding old fortresses and castles? also; what warm in the old very nice feudal Japan high rank Samurai mansions?

@@TheReverb1 An office is "cold" to encourage activity. A house is "warm" or "cozy" to encourage relaxation. Don't have an opinion on fortresses and Samurai Mansions.

Farnsworth house... A warm, cozy, masterpiece of architecture. Yes it's mostly steel and glass, but the house is the perfect distillation of the glass box. Phillip Johnson even didn't get it quite right. Everything in the Farnsworth house is designed for you to be inside comfortable and warm while forcing the view outward... I think your assessment of Mies misses the point in a huge way.

@@MarcAndre1 Where do you live? Ina freezer in Anchorage?

No, I lived in Chicago, have visited the place on many occasions, winter, summer, spring and fall... But sitting here waiting for the next pithy comeback.

from 1985-1990 I attended Iowa State University's College of Design. The Design Center, where our studios were was an ultra-modern building that was in many ways beautiful. When conditions were just right, enough moisture would condense on the inside of the central atrium skylight. It would then rain inside for about 30 seconds or so. These were never days that it was raining outside or even snowing. I witnessed this several times during my 5 years there.

@@leephillips2837 that sounds cool though apart from the fact that it's not meant to rain indoors lol

You think this is bag ,look at the FARNSWORHT HOUSE by Mies Van Der Rhoe and legal battles between architect and client .

@@georgevavoulis4758 Another excellent example. I gave an example of water coming through the roof. And you gave an example of a house built on a flood plain where there was 2 inches of water on the floor on occasion. You hire these "artists' to build you a house and your getting inundated from both ends. You can get around inside your house in a Peterborough canoe but make sure you also bring your umbrella.

Wit a highly pitched gable roof you will prevent rain to enter but will lose interior volume so space and will look outdated in most cases.

Maybe there was a REASON people didn't build structures like that

The context is - the client wanted a house to live in. This structure didn't pass that fundamental criteria, there is no rational way that can be seen as anything but a failure.

Literally everything you listed not only existed during its time but it was all extremely commonplace, except for maybe the open floor plan.

@@brunodesrosiers266 That's kind of Ironic as I've spent most of my life designing buildings and doing land development. Never designed or built any caves though. I don't see anything wrong with wanting a building that keeps the rain off my head as its primary purpose. Le Corb made a house that looked differrent, but he failed to put in the grunt work of detailing that would have made the building waterproof. Failure. Can't say I like the look of it either. As someone else noted, it looks more like a dentist's office than a house.

@@brunodesrosiers266 I've only designed hundreds of buildings, so sure, I'm clueless. The purpose of architecture; 1. To keep the rain out. 2. To keep the interior warm (if required). 3. To be durable. 4. To provide interior spaces suitable to the clients wishes and needs. 5. To look good and/or make a statement FOR THE CLIENT, not for the architect. If you get these out of order, or miss any, you've failed your client. Le Corb failed on 1, 2, and 5. PS. When I say build, I mean in supervisory and developmental roles. I don't pound nails. Bruno, I think you are the one who is clueless as to the purpose of architecture. I pity your clients (assuming you have any, and I doubt you could ever have any repeat clients). I'm currently working with a client that I first worked with over 20 years ago, so I must be a complete failure in satisfying my clients wants and needs. Edit: I'm going to retract number 5. If a customer wants a storage shed, don't try to sell them on the Taj Mahal. 5. is optional depending on the client.

This is true, and a good architect will make drawings of a building that works.

A comment I read which touches more specifically on your criticism states a really interesting point: "The failings of the Villa Savoye are often used as evidence of the failure of modernism itself, because the house is often held up as a one of the greatest products of modernism. But the failings of this one house cannot be immediately extended to all flat roofed, large glass windowed products of modernism. In fact Ive always wondered why this house leaked so badly, when flat rooves had been used or years, decades even, and serious leaking wasnt a problem on the dozens, even scores of flat roofed white walled large glass windowed Bauhaus-like houses, factories, schools, and blocks of flats, built across Europe and even Russia in the 1920s and 30s. From the above it seems that Corbusier himself detailed some of the roof junctions badly, and it was a more complex roof than most, with two levels joined by the ramp, and with structures on top. And there is no doubt that he designed it as much as a sculptural piece as an actual house for living in, being more concerned with the former, though inspired by innovations in the latter. if only he had learned from his previous similar but smaller houses; this is obviously a case of an architect over-reaching their expertise in order to innovate. Not the only architect to ever do that - Frank Lloyd Wright’s extreme cantilevers at Falling Water eventually sagged after 70 years and had to be expensively rebuilt." (posted by Rohan Storey on MisFits architecture's article considering Villa Savoye's many problems.)

1. The new always starts off as an experiment. What you wrote about prototypes is spot on. 2. Every project underestimates it’s cost by at least by half. At least. An architect who is upfront about this with his clients will have few if any to work with. This is an unspoken ethical reality that all architects know but won’t publicly acknowledge.

Most results in modernist housing are visually boring, lack identity and sense of place. So in the end humanity is losing architectural diversity

@@combatINFOcenter An architect who is NOT upfront with his clients will NOT have any repeat clients. In my experience a 2nd time or 10th time client is far more valuable than a first time client. The more you work together, the better you understand each other and the smoother things go. That's good for business.

You cannot separate the socialist aspirations out from the architectural designs and their resulting failures.

That’s literally what I experienced too.

È l'unica chiesa moderna che ha un collegamento chiaro tra l'uomo e Dio sotto forma di luce che proviene di lucernari. Per qualsiasi architetto che non si ferma alla superficialità ronchamp è un capolavoro e villa sovoie rimane un manifesto di un pensiero architettonico che ha rivoluzionato il mondo e che come tutte le ideologie ha sofferto di architetti incapaci che lo hanno scimmiottato senza capire i concetti base. Come fanno i cinesi rispetto al design made in Italy!!! Poveri noi se gli architetti di adesso si devono basare su architetture povere d'intelletto come quelle realizzate dagli enormi studi che vedono come unico riferimento il profitto!!!!

​​@@angeloruocco4501 Ma se andassimo a vedere le chiese non moderne ci arcorgeremo che il collegamento tra ľuomo e la luce divina é nettamente migliore, almeno a mio parere. Perché rinventare le chiese quando il passato ci insegna che una cupola rappresenta molto meglio la luce divina?

​@@lukiocciola concordo che la luce e lo spazio delle chiese non moderne sia eccezionale soprattutto se visto in funzione del fine ultimo della chiesa del tempo che era rendere evidente la distanza tra l'onnipotenza divina e la normalità umana, ma se ci fermassimo a riprodurre solo cose già esistenti non esisterebbe progresso. Quello che non viene spiegato in questo video è il rapporto che ogni architetto dovrebbe avere con i materiali del proprio tempo. Il cemento armato era un materiale nuovo e lecorbu studia le sue caratteristiche e le porta al limite per testarne le potenzialità. È normale che ci possa essere qualche errore quando si sperimenta, ma si può dire tutto su ronchamp tranne che non sia uno spazio sacro. Per quanto riguarda le cupole credo che un ottimo esempio di quello detto prima lo si possa vedere nella mosche di Cordoba in cui si trova una chiesa rinascimentale al centro della moschea. Un luogo stupendo da visitare in cui si trovano le visioni differenti del rapporto con Dio. Da un lato la moschea che mette gli uomini e Dio allo stesso livello attraverso le colonne tutte uguali tra loro e dall'altro la chiesa rinascimentale che con la sua altezza ed il rapporto luce ombra crea una distanza enorme tra Dio e l'uomo.

*History of Questionable Looking and Usless Architectural Objects.

@@lukiocciola ...or, History of Pretty and Useless Architectural Objects (pretty in a somewhat pejorative sense).

@@brykmann ...or History of Pretty (much) Useless Architectural Objects lol

@@lukiocciola Yeah, that'll do it! :)

I've been in many FLW building and houses and yes, there where leaks, but the owners where incredibly happy with the internal space design. The Kauffmanns (Fallingwater house) where friends with him till their death and his son has incredible memories of the house. So no, is not the same.

I'm sorry, but this is only a precursor for a dentist's office. Art???

Cope. It's overrated crap and LC wasn't even a real architect.

1. Art, doesn’t necessarily indicate quality. 2. One of the consequences of industrialization is emulation in all dimensions of life. Glad to finally see the failed aspect come to light, but since we are human, we will forever be in thrall to our enthusiasm. 3. The technical fixes to the problems of early Modernism arrived many many decades after their debut. But they exist. It should not be surprising that early modern architecture sprang from a conceptual basis and its earliest manifestation ignored the practical realities of water infiltration, temperature control, mechanical systems. We were all babies once upon a time.

“I’m not your Test Pilot” - Mme. Savoye

​@@ariesorbitershe did not actually say that... it's just your biased interpretation...

Yes, well, we will not succeed in getting the notion inside their tiny heads.

“We” are too many people@@robbedontuesday, this train left months ago, stop trolling from the empty platform. Bye

@@ariesorbiter I would have thought Internet was an open and free forum, not that you had the right to say whatever crap goes through your mind, and I had to just abide.

It's good to learn from other peoples failures.

A house is a protection against the elements. This house cannot even handle a simple rainfall. Only fanboys like this building.

It's not about liking it. It failed completely at the basic requirements of being a house.

​@@JL-tm3rc that's due to the lack of technology of the age, since it was one of the first to have a flat roof, not due to the idea of the house...

@@HarBosSar many skyscrapers have flat slab roof even before this building.

This, like many things that get praised by architectural schools, should be used as an example of what not to do. Leaving your client with a house they can't live in is a failure on a fundamental level.

His buildings are ugly and you are wonderful???? Are you still mom's fave son?????

Look up how living conditions were in those old cities, people like the ornamentation now, but would hate to live in them at the time.

@@diemes5463 that has to do with the sanitation, overcrowding, pollution, and fire standards. The fact that those buildings have been retrofitted to modern standards and still command high prices speaks to their quality and the effectiveness of those styles. The buildings themselves were fine.

What are you drinking/smoking/snorting??? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

"Propaganda"...

@@pinguinpros6614 propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.

@@MrRecrute Propaganda is the indoctrination you received all through academia that made you believe this trash is not only good architecture, but one of the most important and iconic examples of modern architecture.

@@andresalvarez6412, oh Andres what a delight, now redefining the word “propaganda”! Do turn on auto correct that way your spelling will be corrected before you press send. Note: spelling is “received”. Did study Le Corbusier and his buildings and certainly one of the most iconic examples of modern architecture especially its clean lines and horizontal windows. Discolouration and water leaks were due to Corb’s propensity to exclude down pipes and sills to retain the building’s clean lines but discoloured the white exterior. The building did however have an impact on the development of modern architecture. Note that Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings also leaked.

@@MrRecrute I agree with your definition of the word "propaganda", It's just that it fits better with Le Corbusier worship by mainstream architecture academia. After all the evidence presented in this video, you still cling to your idol and his failed "architecture" because you lack any critical thinking skills. English is not my first language, so some spelling mistakes are to be expected. You focusing half your comment on that little mistake just proves how you have no good argument.