Le Corbusier and a New Structural System as the Germ of the Modern Grammar

Abstract

The opposition between the terms carcasse (carcass), conceptualized by Auguste Perret, and ossature (frame), proposed as an alternative by Le Corbusier, gives rise to the exploration of the capital contribution of the “Dom-ino” prototype as the basic and in escapable condition for an aesthetic operation. Some issues addressed are: the importance of the question of the structure—which remains implicit in Toward an Architecture—as key to a quest for the specificity of architecture; Le Corbusier’s troublesome relationship with Perret and the debates between them, which convey two different ways of understanding the potential contributions of concrete to the redefinition of architectural vocabulary; the “Dom-ino” system considered as a new structural type in the sense ascribed to this category by Violletle Duc; the topic of the abri souverain (sovereign shelter) fit for all programs, which triggered typological invention; the ways in which Le Corbusier plays with Gottfried Semper’s Urformen and, finally, how this new structural type anchors Le Corbusier’s radical redefinition of the elements of the discipline, the making of a new grammar.