►An educational design tutorial and spatial analysis of Villa Savoye's garden terrace ("roof garden"), designed by Le Corbusier in Poissy, France (1929-1931). The tutorial analyzes how Le Corbusier manages the garden terrace's spatial experience with two garden boxes and a small "altar" table to create an integrated, dynamic mix of both circulation and occupiable space. The architecture's garden terrace (or, "roof garden") is an excellent example of managing spatial experience and building spatial suspense by making subtle decisions with architectural elements.
The tutorial is intended to teach architecture university students fundamental lessons about managing spatial experience and architectural circulation, suggesting methodologies for analyzing, dissecting and understanding space; its lessons are intended to be "actionable," meaning that the general design principles can be learned, extracted and applied to other architectural design projects.
The tutorial teaches a general rule about an architect's use of "guidance": typically, instead of providing the visitor with total freedom, or no freedom at all, the architect should aim to gently "guide" the visitor with subtle hints, subtle clues, and subtle suggestions about both function and experience. The teaching also references a method for drawing projection lines from an existing space's architectural elements to understand how it is working spatially.
Villa Savoye is considered a masterpiece of modern architecture, and the definitive statement of Le Corbusier's "Five Points of Architecture" (pilotis, roof garden, free plan, free facade, ribbon window) and his manifesto to modernism, "Towards An Architecture" (also known as "Towards A New Architecture"). Villa Savoye also features Le Corbusier's most definitive example of his "architectural promenade," a dynamic circulation experience and excellent precedent for an architecture of "motion."
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