Gaudi vs Le Corbusier

When Antoni met Charles-Édouard…

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Gaudi: There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.

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Le Corbusier: A house is a machine for living in. Form follows function. The quickest way from A to B is a straight line. A machine has straight lines.

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Gaudi: It may look like a straight line but there are many corners on the roads to Rome.

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Le Corbusier: Putting it another way, does not this post hold up the wisteria?

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Gaudi: Which is more beautiful: the post or the wisteria?

__________

Voice-over

There may be no definitive answer here but you might conclude that Gaudi is the wisteria and Le Corbusier was the post?

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Ralph Erskine's Stockholm University Library

Stockholm University Library

On a campus tour…

Visitor: What are those pods jutting from the building?

PR Rep: Reading rooms. And inside there are not only book stacks but also lobbies for conversation. The architect, Ralph Erskine, thought carefully about uses his buildings would serve.

Södra huset

Visitor: And that older building next to the library?

PR Rep: That’s Södra huset, it contains administration and classrooms.

Visitor: Looks a bit drab alongside the library building.

PR Rep: Erskine tried to avoid a design clash. The arch he designed to link the two buildings is his idea of trying to achieve harmony, not conflict on a site.

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Voice-over

“The job of buildings is to improve human relations: architecture must ease them, not make them worse.” Ralph Erskine

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Frank Lloyd Lamp

The bulb in Frank’s lamp flickers erratically.

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Olga: The bulb’s on the blink, Frank.

Frank: That’s a technical problem. Not a design problem.

Olga: Need we call a man?

Frank: Look at it this way. The electrician won’t come tonight. And he probably won’t have the right bulb.

Olga: I’ll try screwing it up, there, that seems to have fixed it.

Frank: Well, I’ll be blowed.

 

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Voice-over

How many architects does it take to change a light-bulb?

Choose one from the following options:

A: None. They can't get planning permission for the new one.

B. Just one, but he has to coordinate ten other professionals who are doing this quiet complicated task.

C.   Four. One to criticize light-bulb design, one to sketch a new light-bulb design, one to call in a consulting engineer, one to bill for professional services.

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