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B. Klinkhammer
College of Architecture and Design, University of Tennessee Knoxville,
USA
Abstract
The factory Claude and Duval in St. Dié represents one of Le Corbusier’s few
remaining buildings where the original colours and paints survived restoration
efforts. The colour schemes of the ceilings in the main working area, which for
the most part until today haven’t been touched, bear exceptional witness to his
postwar architectural polychromy. In Le Corbusier’s own work the factory
represents a turning point regarding the application of his colour concept
polychromie architecturale. Here, he applied a new colour palette for the first
time, which from now on in variations determined the colour schemes of his
postwar buildings. Bright, vibrant hues, often used as combinations of primary
colours are juxtaposed as colour accents with “the robust character of concrete”
and other natural materials.
The planning and construction of the factory Claude and Duval in St. Dié
coincided with the development of the Modulor, which puts the change in his
architectural polychromy in a new context. What role did colour play in the
interplay of the architectural elements, which for the first time were precisely
controlled through the Modulor?
Drawing on primarily unpublished documents, this paper investigates the
colour design for the factory in St. Dié and ties it back into the broader context of
Le Corbusier’s Polychromie Architecturale.
Keywords: Le Corbusier, Polychromie Architecturale, colour, Modulor,
architecture, restoration, preservation, architecture in France.
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1 Introduction
“A l’occasion de la construction de cette usine, on a pu jouer un
jeu d’une subtilité quasi musicale: un contre-point et fugue
réglés sur le “Modulor.”
Figure 1: Factory Claude and Duval, St. Dié, France, architect: Le Corbusier,
built 1947-51.
After Le Corbusier’s reconstruction plan for the city of St. Dié, which had been
destroyed by the Germans, was rejected by the city council in 1945, he received
a commission from Jean-Jacques Duval to rebuild Duval’s knitwear factory,
which had also been destroyed during the attacks. The two men were bound by a
longstanding friendship and an intellectual closeness that lasted until Le
Corbusier’s death in 1965. Duval’s interest in art and architecture and his
sensitivity and admiration for Le Corbusier’s work explain why today, almost 60
years after its construction, the Claude and Duval Factory is still in its original
state, even though it has continued to operate, and has not undergone any
significant structural alterations. The colour scheme of the ceilings inside the
factory is still virtually unchanged (only several ceiling areas near the gallery
have been repainted) and is a unique record of Le Corbusier’s architectural
polychromy of the postwar period. The building is also one of the few in which
the original colours are still visible at all. For Le Corbusier it represented a
turning point in the application of his concept of polychromie architecturale.
What is apparent is not only the break with previously established principles but
also a revision of the architect’s palette, which then reappeared, with some
variations, in all of his postwar structures. Strong colours, often in combinations
of primary colours, are placed as accents next to rough exposed concrete and
other materials left in their natural state. It seems appropriate to analyze these
changes in Le Corbusier’s approach to polychromie architecturale in
combination with the “Modulor,” which was being developed at the same time
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that the Claude and Duval Factory was being planned and constructed and was
published in book form in 1950 as Le Modulor [1]. What role does colour play in
the interplay of architectural elements, which for the first time are governed here
by a new arrangement of space, precisely controlled by the Modulor, and result
in an altered perception of space?
Planning for the factory began in January of 1947, and the cornerstone was
laid in April of the following year, 1948. The factory was dedicated three years
later. After the rejection of his city planning proposal for St. Dié, Le Corbusier
returned to his ideas for a “green factory” (usine verte) that were developed in
1944: humanization and enhancement of the workplace and the work
environment, proportioning of the building to reflect its function, separate
circulation paths for personnel and products, light, and green spaces. The factory
in St. Dié remains the only building of Le Corbusier’s based on the ideas of the
“usine verte” that was actually constructed.
Figure 2: Reflected ceiling plan, Factory Claude and Duval in St. Dié, colour
survey 2002 by the author.
At the same time that he was working on the Claude and Duval Factory, Le
Corbusier was planning and constructing one of his most important buildings:
the Unité d’habitation in Marseille. Together with the usine verte, it represents
his vision for the linear industrial city (cité linéaire industrielle), even though the
vision was realized only in part after rejection of the overall plan for St. Dié. In
spite of their different functions and end users, the factory in St. Dié and the
Unité d’habitation in Marseille (which was built at the same time as the factory
but completed later) share many common features and explore principles that
appear again in Le Corbusier’s later buildings: concrete skeleton construction
with large spans, standardized building elements, consistent application of the
Modulor, roof gardens that can serve as usable living spaces, and a polychromy
based on a new palette. In comparing the two buildings, Le Corbusier wrote:
“The factory at St. Dié was finished before the Unité at Marseille. Both express a
rude health [in their “epidermis”], their colour schemes being pushed to a most
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2 Colour concept
The construction of the factory in St. Dié was a turning point with respect to the
quality of paints used in Le Corbusier’s architectural works. Until the mid-1930s,
he used only glue-bound or oil-based pigmented paints that were mixed from
powder by the painting crew on site. In connection with construction of the Unité
d’habitation in Marseille, it was found that the traditional paint-mixing process
and the precision of shade that Le Corbusier demanded were impossible due to
the size of the project. This problem had occupied him for a long time. In 1931,
for example, he wrote the following endorsement for the Swiss company Salubra
in connection with the development of his first wallpaper collection: “Salubra is
an oil-based coating in roll form. – Instead of applying a number of coats of
paint to walls and ceilings in the dust and tumult of the construction site,
“mechanical paint in rolls” is applied to the surfaces as the very last operation
and is immediately ready for use. … To the architect, who is of course always
more or less dependent on the work of the painting crew, Salubra offers the
guarantee of uniform good quality and stability in colour and material.“ (As
translated from the German text of a Salubra advertisement) [3] However, the
wall coverings that Le Corbusier praised as offering a solution to the problem
were used only rarely in his own projects since they solved the problem only for
the interior and therefore did not guarantee unity between the interior and
exterior colours.
After the war, Le Corbusier abandoned the use of powdered paints altogether.
In 1950 he seemed to have his first contact with the company Peintures Berger
de La Courneuve (established in Paris in 1926 as a branch of the English paint
manufacturer Lewis Berger & Sons’ Ltd., Homerton, England) and decided to
use Berger’s paints for both the factory in St. Dié and the Unité. The paints were
industrially manufactured flat paints and thus their colours could be controlled.
Le Corbusier selected the two paint products Matroil and Matone, which Berger
had formulated, based on an English patent and was marketing in France. Both
paints – Berger was marketing Matroil under the slogan “Le mat parfait“ (“the
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perfect flat paint”) exhibited the non-glossy surfaces that were essential for Le
Corbusier when it came to spatial effect [4].With a few exceptions, Le Corbusier
relied on Berger’s two products for almost all his structures built after 1950, in
spite of protests from his clients, who objected to the fact that the dull flat
surfaces were more vulnerable to dirt [5]. In cooperation with Peintures Berger,
which produced “special shades” or “nuances” of existing shades specifically for
him, Le Corbusier developed as mentioned in a letter an established series of
paints over the next few years that included approximately 40 different shades
[6].
Because of the large window areas and open factory interiors, Le Corbusier’s
colour concept focused primarily on the ceiling in the large production hall and,
at ground level, on the underside of the body shell supported by pilotis, whereas
he provided primarily for vertical coloured surfaces for the office floor, which
was composed of smaller units. The spatial impression of the large factory
interior is dominated by the coloured ceiling (fig. 2), along with the coloured
accents provided by the supply lines. The ceiling is in sharp contrast to the
exposed concrete used elsewhere and to the rough end wall built of sandstone
from the nearby Vosges Mountains. Le Corbusier wrote in this connection: “You
should see the intense and powerful colours which, animating the ceiling, have
added a heroic touch, breath of the Middle Ages (but careful: the Middle Ages of
the mind) to this industrial working place.” [7].
The ceiling of the factory building was the subject of many studies in which
Le Corbusier investigated the interaction between the ceiling and the coloured
curtains for the large window areas in green and reddish brown. In an interview
that I conducted in July 2002, Duval commented that no records existed relating
to the colour concept for the Claude and Duval Factory except for a single sketch
(the sketch is illustrated in the exhibition catalog Le Corbusier et St. Dié, 14.
Oct. – 10. Nov. 1987, Museé Municipal de Saint Dié, in which Duval’s comment
is also printed: “Malheureusement, il ne subsiste à la Fondation Le Corbusier
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his hand. With regard to this particular day, Duval notes: “Finally, I should add
that Le Corbusier spent an entire afternoon choosing and determining the
location for four colours, for the selection of which he had had a voluminous
range of samples sent to him. The colours were applied to small paddles similar
to ping pong paddles so that he could hold them easily with his arms extended.”
(Enfin, il faut ajouter que Le Corbusier passa un après midi entier a choisir et a
localiser quatre couleurs pour la sélection desquelles il s’était fait envoyer un
volumineux échantillonnage. Les couleurs étant appliquées sur des petites
palettes analogues à des raquettes de ping-pong afin de pouvoir facilement les
tenir a bras tendus. Translation from French to English: B.K.) [14]. This
extensive collection of samples (perhaps based on Berger’s paint samples) has
unfortunately been lost. This quote indicates, however, Le Corbusier’s method
for selecting individual shades. Although he left supervision of the construction
site to his employee Gardien as far as possible, the colour scheme remained
completely in his hands, which indicates the significance that Le Corbusier
attached to this means of artistic and architectural expression.
The ceiling design for the large production hall and the wall design in Duval's
office show that Le Corbusier was working on a new definition of the principles
of his polychromie architecturale after the war. His article “Polychromie
architecturale,” which he wrote in 1931 in connection with the launch of his
wallpaper collection for Salubra, presents one of the most important principles
for the anti-decorative use of colour as an element that modulates space and
classifies objects: “I believe in one wall that is enlivened by one colour.“[15].
This requirement that the wall be of one uniform colour is also expressed in an
article by Le Corbusier that appeared in 1923: “… il faut que les murs soient des
entiers qui entrent comme des unités dans l’équation. “ (“The walls must be
totalities that enter into the equation as units”. Translation from French to
English: B.K.) [16]. He made a final break with this principle when designing
the colour scheme for the factory in St. Dié. It is not just that he put several
colours next to one another on a wall or in a ceiling bay (fig. 4). The wall design
for the director’s office shows that several colours can be combined with other
materials such as concrete and wood in the form of a collage. Both colour
schemes must be evaluated as indications of a separation of colour from its
relationship of dependence on form. Le Corbusier and Ozenfant had formulated
this principle in 1918 in their joint book entitled Après le cubisme: “L’idée de
forme précède celle de couleurs. La forme est prééminente. La couleur n’est
qu’un de ces accessoires. … La couleur est coordonnée à la forme et la
réciproque n’est pas vraie.” (“The idea of form has priority over the idea of
colours. Form is preeminent. Colour is nothing more than one of its accessories.
Colour is coordinated with form, but the reverse is not true.” Translation from
French to English: B.K.) [17]. After the war, we see in Le Corbusier’s projects
that the colour scheme of his buildings frees itself from the formal design and
becomes an independent element in the interplay of architectural determinants.
Le Corbusier’s various projects show that from 1945 on he was in search of a
synthesis of findings from mathematics, music, the theory of proportion and the
theory of harmony that were relevant to architecture. From a combination and
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A direct transfer of formal aspects from music to architecture takes place for
the first time in the Claude and Duval Factory. Basing his design on the art of
counterpoint in music, in which several voices or parts of a composition are
carried as independent melodies and yet produce a harmonious whole, Le
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Corbusier created a visual counterpart using the number games from the série
bleu and série rouge of his Modulor, which he was also working on at the time.
Horizontal and vertical planes – sectional view and plan view – are no longer
positioned exactly in front of one another but are offset within a basic dimension.
Le Corbusier writes the following about this “visual counterpoint”:
“The construction of this factory provided the opportunity to play a game of
almost musical subtlety: a counterpoint and fugue based on the “Modulor”.
There are three masses:
the open colonnade of pilotis,
the parallelepiped of the factory ateliers,
the crowning structure of offices and roof garden.
In addition, there are three cadences, different rhythms:
a) The spacing of the supporting skeleton of reinforced concrete: pilotis, posts
and floor slabs;
b) the brise-soleil lettice work (of concrete) on the façade of the ateliers,
c) the network of framed glass panes (oak construction) that extends behind the
brise-soleils in front of the ateliers and offices.).” [20].
(A l’occasion de la construction de cette usine, on a pu jouer un jeu d’une
subtilité quasi musicale: un contre-point et fugue réglés sur le “Modulor“
(dessins à gauche). Il y a trois masses: la colonnade à jour des pilotis ; la
parallélépipède des ateliers ; le couronnement des bureaux et toit-jardin. Il y a
de plus, trois cadences, rythmes différents :L’écartement de l’ossature portante
de béton armé : pilotis, poteaux et planchers;Le grillage (de béton) du brise-
soleil de la façade des ateliers;La résille du pan-de-verre (construction en
chêne) qui s’étend derrière les brise soleils au devant des ateliers et des
bureaux. Translation from French to English: B.K.)
Thus we might describe this composition as a three-part contrapuntal
movement that Le Corbusier has built as a constructed “acoustic form” in
accordance with his own laws of harmony. Iannis Xenakis, a young Greek
engineer and composer of radical modern compositions, joined Le Corbusier’s
team of employees in 1947 and soon assumed a leading role in a number of
projects. In him Le Corbusier found his intellectual counterpart and the
sensitivity he was searching for with respect to a symbiosis of architecture,
music, mathematics and poetry. These qualities are evident in the composition of
the Unité in Marseille, the pans ondulatoires of La Tourette, the Philips Pavilion,
Ronchamp and many other buildings. Xenakis’ graphic composition technique is
again apparent, as a direct parallel, in the colour treatment of the loggias in
Marseille.
The colour scheme for the ceiling of the factory interior follows its own
melody in the rhythm of the column spacings. It forms the horizontal
complement to the melody of the brise-soleils, window frames and concrete
skeleton, controlled by the Modulor-based dimensions and resonating in the
unique rhythm of the alternating colours. In the transfer of forms from the world
of music, multi-coloured bays form chords of colour that reverberate like visual
chords through the factory building. It is a subtle visual organ concert in a space
that has the magnetism of a medieval cathedral, but a cathedral in which the
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3 Conclusion
The colour scheme for the factory interior in St. Dié is one of Le Corbusier’s
great artistic masterpieces. In harmony with the architecture and controlled by
the mathematical harmonic laws of the Modulor, it becomes a fourth voice in the
interplay of the melodic lines that are artistically woven together. The synthesis
of architecture, painting, music, mathematics and poetry gives rise to an
architectural symphony whose elements provide a new spatial experience in the
subtle interaction of contrapuntal elements. In his forward for Fasani’s book Le
Corbusier wrote: "Everything is, in reality, caught up in the nascent architectural
event, a dominating force, wholly new: the new architecture with its victorious
polychromy, its proportions, its quantities, its essential geometry.” (Tous sont, en
réalité, happés par événement architectural naissant, dominateur, tout neuf: La
nouvelle architecture avec sa polychromie victorieuse, ses proportions, ses
quantités, sa géométrie essentielle. Translation from French to English: B.K.)
[23]. Le Corbusier’s peinture spatiale in St. Dié is a radical further development
of his purist polychromie architecturale. The reduction of colours for St. Dié to
primary colours, in combination with neutral colours, and their juxtaposition on
one plane, represents a departure from the principles that he established in 1931
in his “Polychromie architecturale” article. Separated from its bond with form,
colour becomes an independent element in the complex interplay of architectural
elements.
Acknowledgement
Amy Robertson, graduate student at the University of Tennessee who assisted
me in surveying the colours of the factory during the summer of 2002.
References
[1] Le Corbusier, Le Modulor, Paris: Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 1950
[2] Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète, Vol. 5, 1946-52, p. 13.
[3] As translated from the German text of a Salubra advertisement illustrated
in Das Werk 1931, page LV.
[4] Fondation Le Corbusier (FLC) O5-10-52, advertising brochure of
Peintures Berger with attached reference list.
[5] FLC J1-8, 424-425 and FLC J1-8-429
[6] FLC J1-7, 340-342. Letter from Le Corbusier to Jakob Ott, dated July 1,
1957, 1957. “J’ai établi une série d’une quarantaine de couleurs qui
constituent la “Série Le Corbusier”…”
[7] Le Corbusier, Modulor 2, 1954, English Translation, p. 320.
[8] Q3-6- 141, perspective view of the factory interior, dated 10.Juni 1949.
[9] Jean Jacques Duval, “L’Usine Claude et Duval”, in exhibition catalogue
Le Corbusier et St. Dié, Musée Municipal de St. Dié, 14.Oct. – 10. Nov.
1987, p. 168.
[10] Op. cit., footnote 15, p. 167, sketch dated June 10, 1949.
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[11] Letter from Le Corbusier to Duval, dated June 10, 1949. Duval, “L’Usine
Claude et Duval”, op. cit., p. 168. “Voici le croquis ouvrant perspective
possible pour polychromie des locaux intérieurs.“.
[12] FLC Q3-6 – 57 to 62, undated, Le Corbusier’s handwritten instructions on
the colour scheme for the Claude and Duval Factory in St. Dié. Note on
the title page: “Couleurs St. Dié 1950.“
[13] FLC F3-8-9, S. 121, Carnet des notes 16/03/1949-1951.
[14] Jean Jacques Duval, “L’Usine Claude et Duval”, in exhibition catalogue
Le Corbusier et St. Dié, Musée Municipal de St. Dié, 14.Oct. – 10. Nov.
1987, p. 168. Different from Duval, I counted seven different shades that
were used by Le Corbusier for the factory.
[15] Le Corbusier. “Polychromie architecturale,” published in German
translation in Rüegg, Arthur (ed.), Le Corbusier – Polychromie
architecturale. Le Corbusiers Farbenklaviaturen von 1931 und 1959.
Basel; Boston; Berlin: Birkhäuser 1997, p. 143.
[16] Le Corbusier, “Déductions consécutives troublantes,“ Esprit Nouveau,
No. 19, 1923.
[17] A. Ozenfant and Ch.-E. Jeanneret. Après le cubisme, Paris 1918, p.55.
[18] Le Corbusier in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’ hui, special issue on Le
Corbusier, April 1948. Translated here from a German translation in
André Wogensky, Le Corbusiers Hände, p.78.
[19] Valero Casali, “Le Corbusier, la musica, l’architettura” in Parametro, No.
234, March/June 2001, p. 40-66.
[20] Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète, Vol. 5, 1946-52, p. 14.
[21] Fasani, Antoine. Eléments de peinture murale, pour une technique
rationnelle de la peinture. Paris : Bordas, 1950. Le Corbusier wrote the
preface at Fasani’s request. The FLC archives include not only the
manuscript of the preface (FLC U3-06-268 to 271) but also a letter from
Fasani to Le Corbusier dated September 30, 1949 (FLC U3-06-275).
Apparently a list of excerpts from the book’s text (FLC U3-06-276 and
277) was enclosed with the letter.
[22] Fasani, Antoine. Eléments de peinture murale, pour une technique
rationnelle de la peinture. With a preface by Le Corbusier. Paris: Bordas
1950, p. 228.
[23] FLC U3-6-270.
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