労働者用住宅のSalle Communeに込められた共同体の形成意識

ル・コルビュジエの工業化への応答

抄録

 This essay discusses the period between the 1910’s to 1920’s when Le Corbusier’s realization of the impact of industrialization grew and when he made an untiring effort to spread the awareness in society through his own works. As we already know through previous works, he received the effects of the optimization of labor and the systematization of mass production which had permeated Europe from America in a positive way. In response to that, he put into practice those ideas in terms of factory plans and suggestions of construction methods for residence models but distanced himself from it in the end to return to his original construction methods. This essay, however, will give a new interpretation of His perceived social responsibility as an architect and as such his position in this new industrialized society. I will shed some light on his tireless attempts to humanize labor’s living conditions in his projects during the afore mentioned period.

 In the background of Le Corbusier’s contact with industrialization, there is the influence of two major ideas that had taken root in France at the time. In 1918 after the First World War, securing the number of labors and the mass production line was a major issue in France. It was the time period in which “The Principles of Scientific Management” by F. W. Taylor (1856-2015), which was published in America in 1911, was translated into French in 1912. He was also reading these methods of re-examining with a scientific approach the work processes and management systems of labor’s in terms of the production industry. The conventional methods were fundamentally changed that realized maximum efficiency along with new human relationships. Furthermore, “Saint-Simonianism,” which resonated with the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), was being supported in the same time period, and it has been confirmed that he was in physical contact with these supporters. He grasped the labor’s class as an entity that will bear an important role of managing production in society, in which the development of technology would advance in the future.

 Le Corbusier was in fact carrying out two types of plans towards labors: factories and residences, and this essay carried out an analysis regarding residences. First, I focused to Salle Commune which was one of the ten notations attached to rooms that functioned as living rooms. From 1922, the written expression of Salle Commune was not used, it was unified in the written expression that was used from the early stages known as Salle (Room in English), but it reappeared again in Unite d’habitation of 1945. It is found that apart from the meaning of “common room” and “an independent self-governing body”. From what is written above, it is shown that he placed Salle Commune as a room for a social community formed inside the building, and at the same time it showed that by having this definition feed back to the labor’ s residences, with the expression written in his planning. He showed that labors who bore the production industry, were forming independent social communities.

 The conclusion of this essay is that Le Corbusier’s thoughts of Salle Commune that includes Taylorism and Saint-Simonianism. He sympathized the respect of human rights for labors.