Here are a few more issues of СтроительÑтво МоÑквы:
СтроительÑтво МоÑквы – (1929) – â„– 5
СтроительÑтво МоÑквы – (1929) – â„– 6
СтроительÑтво МоÑквы – (1930) – â„– 6
Moscow
Le Corbusier’s “The Atmosphere of Moscow,†along with His Letter to Ginzburg on Deurbanization
Barsch and Ginzburg, Proposal for the Green City (1930)
From Le Corbusier’s Precisions on the Present
State of Architecture and City Planning (1930)
*****
I am not trying to learn Russian, that would be a wager. But I hear people saying krasni and krassivo. I question. Krasni means red, krassivo means beautiful. Before [the Revolution], they say, the terms meant the same: red and beautiful. Red was beautiful.
If I base myself on my own perceptions, I affirm: red is what is a living being, life, intensity, activeness; there is no doubt.
So naturally I feel I have the right to admit that life is beautiful, or that the beautiful is life.
That little linguistic mathematics is not so ridiculous when one is preoccupied with architecture and planning.
*****
The USSR has decided to carry on a general program of equipment for the country: the five-year plan. It is being carried out. It was even decided to concentrate the greater part of the product of present work on carrying out this program: that is why there is no longer any butter on the spinach here,nor any more caviar in Moscow; the savings are used to make foreign exchange.
“Exact Air,” from Le Corbusier’s Radiant City (1930)
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Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse (1930)
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Exact air? Queens and Brooklyn could probably use it, seeing the tornado that just passed through here. Perhaps it’s too fantastic, pure technological messianism. Still, it’s interesting. Le Corbusier on “exact airâ€:
But then where is Utopia, where the temperature is 64.4º?…
…And why the devil do men insist on living in difficult or dangerous climates? I’ve no idea! But I can observe a worsening situation:
…The variety of climates had forged races, cultures, customs, dress, and work methods suited to the obtaining conditions.
…Alas, the machine age has, as it were, shuffled the cards — the age-old cards of the world. Since the machine age, the product of progress, has disturbed everything, couldn’t it also give us the means to salvation?
…Multiplicity of climates, play of seasons, a break with secular traditions — confusion, disorder, and the martyrdom of man.
…I seek the remedy, I seek the constant; I find the human lung. With adaptability and intelligence, let’s give the lung the constant which is the prerequisite of its functioning: exact air.
…Let’s manufacture exact air: filters, driers, humidifiers, disinfectors. Machines of childish simplicity.
…Send exact air into men’s lungs, at home, at the factory, at the office, at the club and the auditorium: ventilators, machines so often used, but so often used badly!
…Let’s give man the solar rays which will penetrate the all-glass facades. But will be too hot in the summer and terribly cold in the winter! Let’s create ‘neutralizing walls.’ (And ‘sun control’).— Le Corbusier, The Radiant City: Elements of a Doctrine of Urbanism to be Used as the Basis of Our Magine-Age Civilization (1933), pg. 42.