The Grid and Axis in Modern Architecture From Durand to Le Corbusier

현대건축에서 그리드와 축에 관한 연구 -듀랑에서부터 르 코르뷔제까지-

Centered on Durand and Le Corbusier, this study analyses the changing status of the grid and axis in modern architecture. In the Renaissance, the taxis grid operated as a contour grid, defining the elements and space of the building as part of closed harmonized world. In his Pre'cis des lec., ons d'architecture, Durand provides the most explicit demonstration of a new modem grid in which its lines function as spatial and structural axes. In principle these axes are coordinates for the placements of a priori elements but in Beaux-Arts practice, as Durand himself acknowledged, they involve a simultaneous process in which the spatial axis sets up the basic parti and the structural axis is developed into the building's poche'. As a coordinate, Durand's grid provides a place for the 'subject' to enter the architectural process. At the same time, it is the object of the subject's gaze, the dense site of the subject's transformative actions. Though Le Corbusier is noted for his frequent attacks on the academic system, his architecture should be seen within the continuity of the classical tradition. He redefines the Beaux-Arts axis as a moving and seeing observer, and continues the discipline of the plan, the essential discipline of the Beaux-Arts system. In his dialectics, an intellectual scheme which extends to his commentators, the intention and will of the subject must come in tune with the objective material form of the building. Like Durand, Le Corbusier's axis provides the medium for the subject to enter. Unlike the Beaux-Arts system, however, Le Corbusier's mobile subject no longer has a holistic view of the building previously provided by the central axis. If there is a parti for Le Corbusier, it consists of the domino grid as a potential, but nonetheless, tangible form. In comparison with the Beaux-Arts structural grid, his gaze no longer lingers on their lines because they no longer constitute a formal process tied to the development of a thick articulated structure. Le Corbusier's grid constitutes a 'loose' form, one that breaks down the hierarchical nature of the Beaux-Arts system.