A Machine for Living In
Revisited
The machine exists in many places in the Villa Savoye. It exists everywhere that an aspect of the inhabitant’s life is made easier. Whenever its inhabitants find their routine cleaner, purer, simpler - there exists the machine of Corbusier’s making.
But these are not the only places where the machine exists. Around the pilotis, around the stairwell, in every curve, the machine is in motion.
Did Corbusier see a certain curve of an aeroplane propeller or perhaps a section in an automobile engine and decide to use these elements in his creations? The presence of the machine in the Villa Savoye seems too strong to deny this possibility.
This thesis is an interpretation of Corbusier’s machine for living in. The site is a field of waving farmland near Newport, Virginia. The house is for a restless wanderer, who frequently finds the need to journey by motorbike and leave the house to wait in its own solitude. Thus the approach and the departure from this house become of great importance, as well as the permanence of the building which often has no master to maintain it.
The machine for living in focuses then not on that of Corbusier’s purifying machine – making the inhabitants lives cleaner and simpler – but a house whose spaces are actually formed by the inspirations of machines and machine parts.
The Machines
The Box
