Visual Arts Center: Severity or Humaneness?

To The Editors of the CRIMSON:

I question "the harsh, raw severity of Le Corbusier jars a world conditioned for softer, more comfortable art forms." I think you should have been far more specific. In its own way the Arts Center was designed so that it would be a functional companion for man "harsh" and "raw" modifiers imply unfriendliness. And this building is not unfriendly at all. Le Corbusier's architecture is based on his own Modular System, a geometric proportion to the human figure, i.e. sixfoot man with hand upraised. In using this system of measurement his work is a derivitive of some of the best Greco-Roman and Renaissance architect-humanists who based their architecture on the proportions of the human figure as well. With their own module, the golden section, they designed such visually beautiful buildings as the Colliseum and the Parthenon. Are these harsh and raw? Le Corbusier does use new materials--it is a new age; but the humaneness is borne out by the same proportions of the design. Thus, what I mean by the building being a functional companion to our activity.

Are the Georgian Houses "softer more comfortable art forms?" If so, only because we are used to them. Indeed, they have pretty exteriors, but aren't their interiors by comparison harsh, raw, and severe? The outside is so completely different from the inside. There is unity neither of materials or design, compare with the Arts Center. There, glass and concrete serve to unify the inner and outer space.

And what about light. Le Corbusier has poured natural light into his building in every possible way on all sides. Most room in the Arts Center are in the natural light on at least one side. The very center of the building is on the "outside;" yet this is at once a mingling of the interior and the exterior. Is an abundant use of the natural light "harsh" and "raw"?

One technical point. You mention that "the exact positioning of the visors is not duplicated in any previous Le Corbusier work but is vaguely similar to those used in the government buildings of Chandigarh, India. . ." You imply that these are almost completely new, which they are. Actually the visors (more correctly, brise-sollel, invented by Le Corbusier in 1931) cannot be duplicated anyway, if geographical and climatological positions of the buildings differ. Here more than anywhere, form follows function; or better yet, form and function are one.

Le Corbusier's first work in North America should not "jar" our world. Is our architectural world too small for this masterpiece of form? The building is designed according to man's own figure is even comforting for those willing to befriend it. For this building, unlike most others, has the humaneness of a friend. John Paul Russo '63