181

Le Corbusier, Teilhard de Chardin and

La Planétisation humaine: spiritual
ideas at the heart of modernism*

FLORA SAMUEL
†

Le monde moderne a rendu toutes choses solidaires. Les rapports sont

continus et contigus autour de la terre, affect6s de nuances et de
diversite. Proc6dant de lunit6, ils conduisent a lunit6. La question est
1homme et son milieu, 6v6nement dordre local et mondial.

Connaissez-vous cet homme et ses recherches (paleonthologie[sic],

apparition de 16tre humain/*...?) wrote the architect Le Corbusier of the
works of the priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin to his friend and
collaborator Andreas Speiser on 22 December 1954. He had spent the whole
journey back from India reading the priests works. Je serais curieux de
connaitre votre opinion sur lui. Moi, jai ete impressionn6 trbs favorablement
[sic]. Je dois avoir contact avec lui sous peu. Le Corbusier included in the
letter a list of papers by Teilhard, which he must have believed to be of
particular interest. These were:
* La Plan6tisation humaine
Hominisation et Speciation[sicl

This article was published with the assistance of a Stroud Bursary from the Society of
Architectural Historians of Great Britain. The research for this article was made possible by the
Modern Architecture and Town Planning Trust of the RIBA. -- -- - -&dquo;.

&dag er;
Address for correspondence: Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, Bute Building,
King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NB, Wales.
1
Extract from a letter dated 21 July 1955 written from Le Corbusier to Nehru published in Petit,
Jean Le Corbusier lui-même (Geneva, 1970), 116.
2
Fondation Le Corbusier (hereafter referred to as FLC). Dossier Speiser R3 04 369. 3. This article
was written in
Peking on 25 December 1945. It appeared in Cahiers du monde nouveau,
August-September 1946, before being published in 1959 with a series of other essays in a volume
entitled LAvenir de lhomme by Editions du Seuil.

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182
La Structure phyl6tique du groupe humain
La R6flexion de 1energie
LHumanit6 se meut-elle biologiquement sur elle-m6melsicl
etc...

The etc is of interest, indicating the extent of this, supposedly irreligious,

architects reading of this Jesuit priest.
Being first on the list, the essay La Plantisation humaine is probably the
most important in terms of Le Corbusiers reading of Teilhard. In this article I
will focus on this essay in an attempt to deduce just why Le Corbusier was
so impressed by the works of this radical priest. In doing so, I hope to shed
some light on Le Corbusiers spiritual agenda for architecture which still
remains remarkably obscure. In particular I will focus on the concept of
community expressed in the Unite block in Marseilles.
This letter is not the only evidence that we have that Le Corbusier was
interested in Teilhard; he also mentioned him in a sketchbook dated 1960
when he was assembling ideas for a book.
Teilhard de Chardin lorganisation spirituelle la nouvelle 6tape
...
= = ...

La rapidite instantan6e:1electronique T616phone, Radio, T616vision puis

1Electronique outil scientifique de Iaction et de la solution: plan
universel, cosmique, exp6rimental et dhypoth6se, de securite analytique,
conceptif, par preuve + ou - 6lectronique. La Contiguit6, la terre, la
Solidarit6 des termes patents: organique, biologique, humain, Cosmique
corporel, mental, fraternel ...3
That he must have publicly acknowledged his interest is evinced by a letter
in which he was asked to contribute to a conference on Teilhard de Chardin
in 1960. There is no record of whether Le Corbusier did actually attend but
he annotated the letter of invitation with the word flotter suggesting that he
was considering it seriously. Incidents such as these indicate that the

priests ideas were a continuing source of inspiration for the architect during
the latter part of his life.
Born in 1881, Teilhard de Chardin was, simultaneously, a Jesuit father and
a distinguished palaeontologist. Given these dual, potentially conflicting
roles, he felt a strong need to create a theory of evolution that would
reconcile the facts of religious experience with those of natural science. In

3 Le Corbusier, Sketchbook 4, 1957-64 (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982), sketch 607.

4 FLC E1.16.113. Le Corbusier was asked to give a talk at the 2nd symposium run by the
association Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (at Vézelay) on 13 May 1961. The theme was to be
Construire la Terre.
5
Teilhard was a close friend and associate of the prehistorian Abbé Henri Breuil whose
documentation of neolithic cave art remains of key importance to this day. By 1920 Le Corbusier
had acquired two large volumes of Breuils work. An interest in evolution and the primitive was to
remain with him for the rest of his life, See Breuil, Henri, Peintures et gravures murales des
cavernes paléolithiques, 2 vols (Monaco, 1910).

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 183
1926 his ideas on the relationship of original sin to evolution were criticized

by the Vatican who forbade him from spreading his radical ideas through
teaching. From this date on he experienced considerable difficulty in
publishing any his prolific output of books and papers since their subject
of
matter was considered to be too contentious. The problem for the Church
was that Teilhard did not accept that Christ had come back to restore a state
of primitive perfection that had been destroyed by sin. He believed that
Christ had come to earth as a catalyst for change and as a guide for the
process of evolution. Teilhard developed a theory of evolution that would
address simultaneously his knowledge of the natural world (developed in
his work as a palaeontologist) and his knowledge of God. He wrote of an
evolution vers plus dorganisation (individuelle ou collective), et vers plus
de spontan6it6. Teilhards vision of the cosmos echoed the processes of
nature and more particularly biology. Through a close examination of the
history of life on earth he concluded that organisms were constantly
evolving and that their transformations had a predetermined direction.
In LHumanit6 se meut-elle biologiquement sur elle-m6me [sic], another
of the articles read by Le Corbusier, Teilhard referred to &dquo;la Noosph6re&dquo;, de
1Etoffe de lunivers: non pas seulement des hommes, mais de 1Homme
encore a naitre demain!&dquo; The Noosphere, as distinct from the biosphere, was
a new sphere, the sphere of human thought and love that was, he believed,

beginning to cover the globe like a huge web. In Teilhards opinion the
Noosphere had its own momentum, one which would inevitably carry us
along with it. However, he noted that people rebelled against this
momentum, because they were scared that they would lose their own
identity. Teilhard stressed that this would not be the case, affirming
paradoxically that cette meme collectivisation est une marque et un effet de
super-arrangement biologique, destin6 a nous ultra-personnaliser.9
Teilhard envisaged a society in which humanity would begin to work
together more closely as it developed in consciousness.
Extrapol6e vers 1avant, cette loi de r6currence permet dentrevoir un 6tat
futur de la Terre ou la conscience humaine, parvenue au terme de son
evolution, atteindra un maximum de complexit6, et par suite de
concentration par r6flexion totale (ou plan6tisation) delle-m6me sur
elle-mme.10
In his opinion, as people became ever more inward looking or reflective and

6 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, LÉnergie humaine (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962), 35.
7
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Une nouvelle question de Galilée: oui ou non lhumanité se meut-
elle biologiquement sur elle-même?, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1959), 329.
8 See Ursula King, Christ in All Things (London: SCM: 1997), 44.
9 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, Une nouvelle question de Galilée: oui ou non lhumanité se meut-
elle biologiquement sur elle-même?, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1959), 330.
10
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1959), 159.

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184

knowledgeable they paradoxically, become better attuned to one

would,
another. They would comprehend the collective processes that were
start to
at work. In this way they would be drawn together through a mutual
sympathy with no accompanying loss of self identity.
Returning to France in 1946 after a lengthy period of travel and research
abroad, Teilhard found that the controversy surrounding his ideas made life
difficult. It was only after his death in 1955 that the main body of his work
was actually published. The fact that this passionately religious man

appealed so greatly to Le Corbusier is highly significant, suggesting the

extent of his interest in the subject of spirituality.
Teilhard wrote La Plantisation humaine at the very end of World War II,
a fact that gives the work a distinct poignancy. It was eventually published
in Cahiers du monde in its edition of August September 1946, before being
brought out, with a selection of other essays, in 1959 under the title LAvenir
de Ihomme. It seems that Le Corbusier must have read it in its early form or
perhaps in one of the illicit roneoed pamphlets of Teilhards work that were
circulated among his friends and supporters.
That Le Corbusier was so interested in religion is a fact that has, until
recently, remained unacknowledged. In a book that he wrote about the
Chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut-Ronchamp (1955) Le Corbusier recorded that
he was asked by a reporter from the Chicago Tribune whether it was
necessary to be a Catholic to build the chapel, to which he replied Foutez-
moi le canlp! 11 This blunt answer has generally been taken to mean that Le
Corbusier was not interested in religion and chose to hide this fact. However,
closer investigation reveals that this could not be further from the case. His
ideas about religion were so rich, complex and potentially inflammatory that
it would, in fact, have been too dangerous to discuss them, especially with
reporters.
Born in 1887 in the town of La Chaux-de-Fonds in the Swiss Alps, the
young Le Corbusier, or Charles-Edouard Jeanneret as he was known then,
grew up in a Calvinist family. Although he quickly rejected this particular
aspect of his upbringing, he seems to have spent the rest of his life looking
for alternative set of spiritual values. Having no formal training as an
an
architect, Le Corbusier threw himself into the task of self education. He
travelled extensively, the highlights of his Voyage dOrient being the
Parthenon, and the monastery at Mount Athos in Greece where, in the
sanctuary of the Virgin Mary, he seems to have experienced some
extraordinary mystical revelation.12 The ideas developed during this period
were to be reworked again and again throughout his career.

Many of those books that were particularly influential on the young

11
Le Corbusier, The Chapel at Ronchamp (London: Architectural Press, 1957), 9.
12
Le Corbusier, Journey to the East (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1987), 206.

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 185
architect were devoted to a reappraisal of religion through a re-evaluation of
the ancient past, for example Ernest Renans La Vie de 16sus, Henri
Provensals LArt de demain and Edouard Schur6s Les Grands Initis.13 Le
Corbusiers annotations on the last of these books suggest that he had begun,
himself, to develop pretensions towards a somewhat Messianic role.
In the period between the wars there seems to have been a good deal of
interest in primitive religion, alchemy and the occult within the artistic
circles of Paris.&dquo; Le Corbusier became involved in this scene when he finally
moved to Paris in 1917. The explorations that took place during this period
were to have a lasting influence on him. There are many books in Le
Corbusiers own library that dwell upon the subject of the Manichaean
heresy, most particularly upon the Albigensian Cathars from whom the
architect believed himself to be descended.
In the early 1930s in the years following his marriage to Yvonne Gallis, a
dancer and model, Le Corbusier seems to have experienced some sort of
transformation. His architecture went through a profound change from the
crisp white buildings for which he had become so famous, for example the
Villa Savoye at Poissy (1928), into something that was far more primitive
and earthy. It was during this period that he began to include natural objects
such as shells and bones in his paintings. Women also became an object of
fascination and a favoured subject.
It was at this time that Le Corbusier became involved with the Syndicalist
movement, contributing to two regional Syndicalist journals, Plans and
Prlude.15 It was here that he was to publish his ideas for the Ville Radieuse
of which the Unite at Marseilles represents but one small element. These
journals were not solely political in content: whilst advocating the
unification of mankind, a range of cultural issues were covered beneath
which lay an underlying spiritual thread. Taking their cue from nature, city
planning became a problem of biology for the Syndicalists, a theme which,
as shall be seen, Le Corbusier applied to the development of the Unit6,
Marseilles.
In the 1940s Le Corbusier was introduced to Father Couturier, a
Dominican Priest who had set up the highly influential journal LArt sacr6.
Couturier was particularly interested in finding new ways of expressing a
modern church in both art and architecture. He believed that it was
important that the best artists should contribute their work to the church,

13
Provensal, Henry, LArt de demain (Paris: Perrin, 1904); Renan, Ernest, Vie de Jésus (Paris:
Calmann-Lévy, 1906); Edouard Schuré, Les Grands Initiés (Paris, 1908) in FLC. See, Paul Turner,
The Education of an Architect (New York: Garland, 1977) for a overview of Le Corbusiers early
education.
14
See Fagan-King, Julia United on the threshold of the twentieth century mystical ideal, Art
Historv, xi (1) (1988), 89.
15
Mary McLeod, Urbanism and Utopia: Le Corbusier from Regional Syndicalism to Vichy (1985,
DPhil Princeton: 1985), 75.

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186

regardless of their faith or lack of it.

Through his contact with men such as
Couturier Le Corbusier developed deeper understanding of religion. Je
a

decouvre[sic] dans le catholicisme la continuation des rites les plus

lointains, humains, (6chelle humaine, pertinente), he wrote.&dquo;
et
It is not clear who introduced Le Corbusier to the works of Teilhard. It
could have been one of his friends in the Art socr6 movement, but it seems
equally likely that he may have come into contact with his ideas through the
Jesuit priests who were his neighbours: Le Corbusiers own office adjoined
the Centre S6vres, one of the main Jesuit centres in Paris. Whatever the link,
his ideas seem to have struck the architect with great force.
Le Corbusier read La Plantisation humaine before or during December
1954. The Unite in Marseilles was completed in 1952, Ronchamp was under
construction, and the Dominican monastery of La Tourette near Lyons was in
its initial stages. As we already know, he was busy journeying to and from
India working, amongst other schemes, on the new city of Chandigarh in the
Punjab. Le Corbusiers reading of Teilhard comes at a key point in his career.
Teilhards writings, drawing together so many themes that Le Corbusier held
dear, provide a useful tool to shed light on the hidden spiritual agenda that
lies behind the architects vision of community.
Le Corbusier was always in search of scientific backing for his ideas. He
was, for example, delighted when Albert Einstein described the Modulor
(the system of proportion that Le Corbusier had spent many years in
perfecting) as a scale of proportion which makes the bad difficult and the
good easy. 17 It seems that in Teilhards work he was able to find just the
scientific corroboration that he was looking for. Le Corbusier vehemently
denied that he was working within the sphere of metaphysics, and insisted
that he was working with the laws of nature discovered through close
observation and research.8 Likewise Teilhard was keen to stress the
scientific basis of his ideas, although he had to admit that au voisinage du
Tout, Physique, M6taphysique et Religion convergent trangement.Q9 It is
perhaps unsurprising that Le Corbusier responded with such enthusiasm to
Teilhards ideas since they enabled him to tie together a number of those
disparate strands of thought contained within his work: evolution, science,
technology, electricity, spirituality, nature and the veneration of the feminine
were brought together into a more cohesive theory.

16
Le Corbusier, Sketchbooks, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982), sketch 549.
17
Le Corbusier. The Modulor (London: Faber & Faber, 1951), 58. Le Corbusier describes Albert
Einsteins statement as "a gesture of friendship made by a great scientist towards us who are not
scientists but soldiers on the
field of battle". For a study of the development and origins of the
Modulor see Judi Loach, Le Corbusier and the creative use of mathematics, British Journal of the
History
18
of Science, xxxi (1998), 185-215.
On me prête un tas de rites, de symboles (métaphysique, modulor etc) Or je suis un ...

innocent: je rencontre. Le Corbusier, Sketchbooks 2, 1950-1954 (London: Thames & Hudson,

1981), sketch 933.
19
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1959), 161.

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 187
Teilhard believed it was important not to be distracted by the minutiae of
everyday life, and that it was vital to try to rise above them in an attempt to
see the broader picture. Only then could one chart the
changes in evolution
of the processus cosmique majeur which he called la plan6tisation
humaine.&dquo; His words echo uncannily those of Le Corbusier who, with
similar preoccupations, entitled the second chapter of his book on the
Marseilles block Lets Take the Broad View. 21
From his lofty position Teilhard was able to observe the ways in which
improvements in communication and the effects of war and migration had
led to the mouvement de la pate humaine.
conomiquement et psychiquement, enfin, de la m6me p6riode, au cours
-

sous la pression inexorable des 6v6nements, des moyens de et grace a

communication prodigieusement accrus et acc6l6r6s - la masse enti6re
du genre humain sest trouv6e maintenue au moule dune existence
commune ...

He was adamant that the only future for society was through une toujours
croissante unification.22 His knowledge of evolution, gained through his
experience as a palaeontologist, was used to back up his argument for
projected developments in the consciousness of man.
In La Plantisation 1?umaine Teilhard emphasized that what he had to say
remained firmly within the realms of science and what can be deduced
through une extension de nos perspectives biologiques. 23 Le Corbusier
himself thought in similar terms stating clearly that in his opinion urbanism
is a biological organisation. 24 He even went as far as describing the Unit6
block as a social laboratory. 21 Since this was the case, it seems that the
architect could not have found a more appropriate framework for his ideas
on the city than Teilhards theology. Like Le Corbusier, Teilhard attacked
the boundaries set up between le domaine &dquo;physique&dquo; de la nature
organis6e and Ie &dquo;moral ou artificiel&dquo; des institutions humaines-6 blurring
the boundaries between nature and culture in a way that was very ahead of
his time.

20
Ibid.
21
Le Corbusier, The Marseilles Block (London: Harvill, 1953), 13. At this point we should
remember Le Corbusiers fascination with the view from the aeroplane. Writing in 1939 as he flew
over the rainforests of South America he makes a connection between the trees and mould, all
manifestations of the same thing whatever their scale; Le Corbusier, Precisions on the Present State
of Architecture and City Planning (Cambridge, MA, MIT, 1991), 7. Le Corbusier wrote, indicating
that he saw himself as an outsider and a witness: "sur léquilibre sexuel des divers pays" Je me
rends compte que par mes voyages je possède la pierre de touche de comparaison liberté et clarté
=

de jugement. July 1954, Sketchbooks 3, sketch 129.

22
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1959,) 162-3.
23
Ibid., 161.
24
Le Corbusier, Sketchbooks 2, 1950-1954 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1981), sketch 880.
25
Le Corbusier, The Marseilles Block (London: Harvill, 1953), 13 and 17.
26
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1959), 166.

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188
Le Corbusiers design for the Unite in Marseilles was hugely influential on
the post-war generation of architects and currently houses a thriving co-
operative community (Pl. 1). Moulded out of deeply textured concrete the
vast horizontal housing block is supported on rough cast pilotis. Interlocking
duplex units are set within its cellular frame (Pl. 2), each with a generous
double height balcony allowing spectacular views of nature, the mountains
and the sea (Pl. 3). Communal facilities are housed at the base and within
internal streets that run through the block. At the heart of the communal life
of the building the nursery forms part of its spectacular, sculptural roofscape
(P1. 4).27
as being the fruit of twenty-
Le Corbusier described the Unite at Marseilles
five years research: 1apparition du thbme de lUnit6 dhabitation remonte ~
une premibre visite ~ la Chartreuse dEma en Toscane en 1907. 28 He saw it as
a prototype ... a solution to a universal problem marking a new beginning
in architecture and capable of infinite reproduction. In it would assemble a
natural social grouping in a harmonious unit. Life in this cit6 jardin
verticale would bring its inhabitants back into contact with nature.
Simultaneously, its cellular structure would bring into relief the connection
between mass housing and the organisms of biology - an idea of which he
was so fond.30 Like Teilhard the architect did not seem to accept the
barri6re that separates les corpuscules dits inanim6s (atomes, mol6cules
...) des corpuscules ou corps vivants. He saw them all as manifestations of
une seule et fondamentale structure granulaire de 1 Univers. 31
Within the Unite families could dwell as independent units in privacy
whilst, at the same time, being able to participate in the collective life of the
building. Le Corbusier took great care over the design of the individual units
giving the optimum in both flexibility (through the use of pivoting walls)
and privacy (for example through the use of soundproofing). With carefully
planned facilities he hoped to relieve housewives from the burden of
domestic drudgery, accommodate play space for children and isolate in
peace the marital bed. Included in early schemes were studies to which both
the man and woman of the house could retreat to follow their own
pursuits.32 Great care was taken to facilitate communal family life as well as
allowing the individual his or her own privacy.
It was vitally important to perfect the individual unit since in Nature, the

27
Le Corbusier, Oeuvre Complète 1952-57 (Zurich: Éditions Girsberger, 1957), 174-200.
28
Le Corbusier, Oeuvre Complète 1946-52 (Zurich: Les Éditions dArchitecture, 1995), 189.
29
Le Corbusier, Special Number LHomme et larchitecture, 12-13, (1947), 5.
30
Poole, C.A., Theoretical and poetical ideas in Le Corbusiers Une Maison - Un Palais, The
Journal of Architecture, iii (1998), 13.
31
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1959), 165.
32
Le Corbusier seems to have taken an interest in Feminism as can be seen from the presence of
a pamphlet within his collection at the FLC. See Mesclon, Antoine, Le Féminisme et lhomme
(Paris: A. Mesclon, 1931).

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 189

PLATE 1. The Unite dHabitation, Marseilles, from Le Corbusier, Oeuvre Complete, Vol. 5
(Zurich: Les Editions dArchitecture, 1995), 197.
@ FLC/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2000

PLATE 2. Une cellule normalis6e et standardisde: le feu, le foyer from Le Corbusier,

Oeuvre Complte. Vol. 5 (Zurich: Les ditions dArchitecture, 1995), 186.
~ FLC/ADAGP. Paris and DACS. London 2000

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190

PLATE 3. Le pan de verre de la salle commune et les casiers encastr6s.

Interior of an apartment in the Unite from Le Corbusier, Oeuvre
Complete, Vol. 5 (Zurich: Les ditions dArchitecture, 1995), 209.
© FLC/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2000

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 191

PLATE 4.Playspace on top of the Unit6

from Le Corbusier, Oeuvre Complte. Vol. 5 (Zurich: Les ditions dArchitecture, 1995), 220.
@ FLC/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2000

smallest cell, determines the validity, the health of the whole. According to
Le Corbusier we must envisage a state of equilibrium in which conditions
must be favourable to the group, while at the same time allowing sufficient
freedom to its members.&dquo; It was the balance between individual and
collective life which was crucial. It may be that in the writings of Teilhard Le
Corbusier had found an expression of the ideas that he had groped towards
for so long. Here was a whole theology that seemed to close the circle on the

33
Le Corbusier, The Marseilles Block (London: Harvill Press, 1953), 17.

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192
ideas that he had started to develop, accommodating his desire to address
the needs of both the individual and the community, what he called le
bin6me indissociable &dquo;individu-collectivit6. 11,34
In Teilhards opinion the war gave rise to a new group of people non plus
sur le plan de la richesse, mais sur la foi au
progres. These men were
facilement reconnaissables: savants, penseurs, aviateurs, etc,. - tous ceux
que possede le D6mon (ou 1Ange) de la Recherche. He talked of these men
with a myst6rieux sens de 1Avenir Dans la foule ils iront droit lun
...

1autre, et se reconnatront. 35 It seems very likely that these words would

have struck a chord with Le Corbusier who continually emphasized the
hardships of those years that he spent in patient research in pursuit of
progress. Here at last was someone who understood.
According to Teilhard the only way that an individual could achieve
fulfilment was in opposition to others.36 Man could only develop through
giving and receiving, the very idea that lies behind Le Corbusiers symbol of
the Open Hand that he used to such effect at Chandigarh (Pl. 5). It was in Le
Corbusiers opinion the imbalance of the machine age that had wreaked
havoc on the relationships between people, particularly upon the
relationships between men and women. Long hours spent at work and
travelling to and fro meant that there was no time for people to regain
contact with one another, to know how to live.3 It was his hope that by
designing a new type of city where home and work could be closer together
and machines would allow the working day to be shorter, people would
really have the chance to communicate with one another again.
It was Teilhards belief that one of the main catalysts for change was love,
primarily love between man and woman. For Teilhard women played an
important role in giving man access to nature and to the divine. In his words
La mol6cule humaine elle est une dualite, comprenant a la fois du
...

masculin et du feminine The Union of opposites, male and female, was a

theme that also ran beneath Le Corbusiers work. 39 It received ample
expression in Le Poeme de 1angle droit, a book of lithographs that he
developed over the years 1947 to 1953 which forms a testament to his faith
in nature. Here he wrote of the importance of women and mans need to
complete himself through woman.&dquo;

34
Le Corbusier. Oeuvre Complète 1952-57 (Zurich: Éditions Girsberger, 1957), 174.
35
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Editions du Seuil. 1959), 173.
36
Ibid., 174.
37
See the chapter entitled The Family Divided in Le Corbusier. When the Cathedrals were
White: A Journey to the Country of the Timid People (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947), 152.
38
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, LÉnergie humaine (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962), 93.
39
Le Corbusier, The Radiant City (London: Faber, 1967), 78.
40 Le Corbusier, Le Poème de langle droit (Paris: Connivance, 1989), section C4.

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 193

,
PLATE 5. Sketch of the symbol of the open hand at Chandigarh from Le Corbusier,
Oeuvre Complete, Vol. 5 (Zurich: Les ditions dArchitecture, 1995), 93.
@ FLC/ADAGP, Paris and DACS. London 2000

The two men seem to be in remarkable accord on the subject of women,

for example Teilhard wrote:
Que 1Homme, en revanche, aperqoive la Realite universelle qui brille
spirituellement a travers la chair. Il d6couvrira, alors, la raison de ce qui,
jusque la, d6cevait et pervertissait son pouvoir daimer. La femme est
devant lui comme 1attrait et le Symbole du Monde. 11 ne saurait 16treindre
quen sagrandissant, a son tour, a la mesure du Monde. Et parce que le
Monde est toujours plus grand, et toujours inachev6, et toujours en avant
de nous-m6mes, - cest a une conqu6te sans limite de lUnivers de lui-meme
que, pour saisir son amour, 1homme se trouve engag6. En ce sens, IHomme
ne saurait atteindre la Femme que dans lUnion universelle consomm6e.
-

LAmour est une reserve sacr6e d6nergie, - et comme le sang meme de

1Evolution spirituelle: voila ce que nous d6couvre, en premier lieu, le
sens de la Terre.41

41
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, LÉnergie humaine (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962), 42.

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194
Love is a sacred reserve of energy. When man and women come together the

energy of love is created. The cross and arrow symbols that occur in outil,
the final square of Le Po6me de langle droit have convincingly been linked
by Daphne Becket-Chary to the sexual symbols for man and woman,42 but
they are also evocative of the positive and negative signs in electricity.
Certainly electricity was a very important theme in the work of the
architect as we know from his plans for the Pobme lectronique.43 It
embodied the dualisms at the heart of his theories in a thoroughly modern
way. Le Corbusier seems to make a link between attraction and love and the
powers of electricity. Reference should be made to a passage in When the
Cathedrals were White in which Le Corbusier refers to the differences in
voltage between men and women as being a problem of town planning.
You your wife again at eight oclock in the evening. - Hello, hello ...
see
Well, she has been alone for twelve hours of the day. She has her life also,
but with a quite different kind of time. She has seen her friends, she has
read books, she has gone to lectures, to exhibitions; her mind is furnished
with things different from those that have been going around in her
husbands head - which continue to go around. The husband is a little
uncomfortable. How to pick up the thread? How are such different
voltages to go together in unity? They are not in harmony. In the USA
women are inclined to take an interest in the things of the spirit ... I have
the feeling that in general these men and women, in spite of all their good
will, have difficulty in communicating with each other. As a result the
husband is intimidated, thwarted. The wife dominates. A great need of
something other than business fills mens hearts, and contact is
impossible because the voltages are different.&dquo;
Le Corbusier believed that the relationships between people could be
represented in terms of electricity. This was an idea that Teilhard seems to
have concurred with. In his book LEnergie humaine he wrote:
Tout se passe en somme comme si chaque individu humain repr6sentait
un noyau cosmique de nature sp6ciale, rayonnant autour de soi des
ondes dorganisation et d6veil au sein de la matibre. Un tel noyau, pris
avec son aur6ole danimation, voila lunit6 dEnergie humaine

For the Jesuit priest there were two kinds of energy: that which was

42
Becket-Chary, Daphne, Le Corbusiers Poem of the Right Angle. MPhil Thesis, Cambridge,
1990.
43
This was a performance devised to take place within an exhibition pavilion that Le Corbusier

designed in Brussels. The composer Edgar Varèse composed the Poème électronique to accompany
it. See Treib, Marc, Space Calculated in Seconds (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
44
See entitled The Family Divided in Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals were White: A
Journey chapter
to the Country of the Timid People (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947), 154. translated
by45 Francis E. Hyslop. Originally published as Quand les cathédrales etdient blanches in 1937.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, LÉnergie humaine (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1962), 146.

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 195

PLATE 6. Sign of the 24 hour day from Le Corbusier.

When the Cathedrals were White: A Journey to the Country of the Timid
People (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947), 152.
@ FLC/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2000 _

embodied in matter, which could easily be measured, and that which was far
less easy to measure, Tenergie spiritualise46 which expressed itself most
clearly in the form of love. Love was able to bind mankind and, indeed
matter, together into one solid and interconnected mass. It may well be that
such ideas lie behind Le Corbusiers choice of name for the Marseilles Block,
the Unit6.
At the entrance to the Unit6, (built of reinforced concrete) Le Corbusier
placed a large block of stone which was designed to help the visitor to
understand the key issues at stake in the building. On one side is carved a
symbol, Le Corbusiers symbol of the 24-hour day, a wave that indicates the
progress of the sun as it rises up and dips below the horizon (PI. 6). If , in
the course of the mutation of machine civilisation, I have been able to
contribute something it will be this sign, he wrote. It combines two
...

oppositions, the darkness of night with the light of day, the two sides of life
and like electricity it forms a cyclical wave. It held within it the key to what
Le Corbusier called savoir habiter. As he wrote knowing how to live! How
to use the blessings of God: the sun and the spirit that he has given to men to
enable them to achieve the joy of living on earth and to find again the Lost
Paradise. 47
It is not widely recognized that Le Corbusier thought of the Unite in
religious terms, a fact that seems to have been blatantly obvious to the
46
Ibid., 147.
47
Ibid., xviii.

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196

priests of the Art sacr movement. For them the Unit6 was firmly linked
with its precursor, Le Corbusiers scheme for a religious community at La
Sainte Baume and, indeed, with the chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut at
Ronchamp48 with its often disregarded housing for pilgrims. It is important
to note the way that the Unite block at Marseilles was depicted in LHomme
et larchitecture, a publication over which Le Corbusier would have had
much control.49 In these images the vast columns that support the structure
of the block frame images of mysterious gods in a darkened underground
world.
Le Corbusier was known to refer to his buildings as though they were
living beings to which he gave birth. The architect Stephen Gardiner noted
that on one occasion Le Corbusier even rushed up and hugged one of the
pilotis of the building as though it were a person. Analogies can clearly be
drawn between figures in Le Corbusiers paintings and some of the forms in
his later buildings and he often describes them in the language of erotic
engagenlent. so Although it might be an exaggeration to suggest that Le
Corbusier thought of his buildings as being in some way alive, acting upon
us through what he called a psychophysiology of the feelings, the

implication is that they are not entirely passive. Teilhards ideas linking
spirit with matter would appear to suit such a conception of things. He
postulated that la conscience ... est une propriete universelle, commune
tous les corpuscules constitutifs de lUnivers, - sous cette reserve que la
propriete en question varie alors proportionnellement la complexite de
chaque esp6ce de corpuscule consid6r6 and further 1homme avec ses
billions de cellules nerveuses agenc6es, trouve enfin une place naturelle,
cosmiquement enracine. 52
This linking of spirit and matter was fundamental to the processes of
alchemy in which the architect seems to have been so interested. It seems
that Le Corbusier would have been able to interpret Teilhards arguments in
terms of alchemy, a subject in which he took a great interest, without too
much difficulty. In a note in the flyleaf of his edition of Rabelaiss Gargantua
and Pantagruel Le Corbusier recorded, as if for posterity, that he was
introduced to the concept of the alchemical metals early on in life by his

48
Cocagnac, A-M. (1955), LArt sacré, September-October, Vol. 1-2.
49I am grateful to Judi Loach for drawing my attention to this image in the Le Corbusier Special
Number LHomme et larchitecture, 12-13, (1947), 5.
50
Pauly, Danièle, The Chapel of Ronchamp, AD Profile 60, 55,7/8 (1985), 31. For the connection
between painting and body see Coll, Jaime, Le Corbusier. Taureaux: an analysis of the thinking
process in the last series of Le Corbusiers plastic work, Art History, xviii (4) (1995), 547. One can
see the language of eroticism, for example, in the way in which the colonnades of St Peters are said
to feed our retinas with their adorable cylindrical forms. Le Corbusier, Precisions on the Present
State of Architecture and City Planning (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1991), 48.
51
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1959), 165.
52
Ibid., 166.

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 197
brother. 53 Fundamental to this concept was the idea that certain metals were
linked to certain planetary influences. It is yet another manifestation of his
interest in linking the atomic and the cosmic in a chain of being, an idea that
must have come to him through the Idealist education, received in early life,
in which a close study of nature was thought to reveal the grand secrets of
nature. 54
The attitude of mankind to this process of plan6tisation would be quasi
adorante. He used the Tree of Life to illustrate this process of evolution.
Au coeur du syst6me, un flot de forces sympathiques se r6pand, qui
modifie du tout au tout 1allure du ph6nom6ne: sympathie dabord de ...

tous les 616ments pris ensemble pour le Mouvement general qui les
entraine; et sympathie aussi (toute fraternelle, celle-la) de chaque element
en particulier pour ce qui se cache de plus original et de plus
incommunicable en chacun des co-616ments avec lesquels il converge
dans lunit6, non seulement dun meme acte de vision, mais dun m6me
sujet vivant. 55
Here at the end of the process, at the culmination of the tree, we will be
divinized par accession ~ quelque Foyer supreme de convergence
universelle.56 In this way Teilhard gave new relevance to the tree - one of
the important symbols in Le Corbusiers work. 57
By examining just why Le Corbusier was so inspired by Teilhards essay
La Plantisation humaine it is possible to gain a further insight into what he
was trying to achieve at the Unite in Marseilles and the other Unit6s that
were to follow. Put simply, the Unite was a place to be reunited with nature.
Not just in the sense that her inhabitants would have access to the sky, the
sun and trees. The inhabitant of the Unite would be participating in the
structures and systems of an evolving nature, emphasized through the use of
geometry. Here the necessary balance would be achieved between individual
and communal life. Through this interaction with nature and with man
a sense of connection would develop together with an increase in
consciousness which would one day bring about Unity, and through Unity,
participation in the divine. Such ideas as those that have been discussed
here would only gain full resonance amongst those with eyes to see an
alchemical aphorism favoured by both men. 58

53
Rabelais, Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1951) in FLC. Le Corbusier reinforced the point
with further annotations on p.22.
54
Turner, Paul, The Education of an Architect (New York: Garland, 1977).
55
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1959), 170-1.
56
Ibid., 171.
57
See Seckler, Mary, Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree and the Open Hand in Walden, Russell
(ed.), The Open Hand
(Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982). 42-96.
58
The foreword is entitled Seeing, in Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man
(London: Collins, 1966), 31. In Le Corbusiers Towards a New Architecture (New York: Praeger,
1970, originally published 1927), 81-139. is the famous chapter Eyes Which do not See.

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198
Teilhard finished La Plantisation humaine with a particularly interesting
statement:
Ici ceux qui voient le Monde a construire comme une demeure
confortable; et la ceux qui ne peuvent limaginer que comme une
machine a progr6s, - ou, mieux, comme un organisme en progrbs. Ici
lesprit bourgeois dans son essence; et IA les vrais ouvriers de la Terre,
ceux dont on peut ais6ment pr6dire que - sans violence ni haine, mais
par pur effet de dominance biologique - ils seront demain le genre
humain. Ici le d6chet, - la les agents et les 616ments de la Plantisation.59
There are those who can only conceive of the earth as a machine for
progress. It is as though Teilhard has read those famous words of Le
Corbusiers about a machine for living and is quoting them back to him. No
wonder Le Corbusier was impressed. Generally there are some remarkable
linguistic parallels between the two men, reflecting the extent of their shared
interests.
Although not widely known amongst architects the writings of Teilhard
de Chardin have been enormously important in the field of theology.
Significantly, Teilhard is also gaining recognition in the field of ecological
philosophy, in particular within the writings of Henryk Skolimowski.60 The
issue at stake is the lack of connection that people feel with their
surroundings. Sustainability can achieve very little unless and until people
radically rethink their perception of the environment.
Expressing his interest in this matter as early as 1930 Le Corbusier wrote
of what he considered to be the fundamental task before him:
Mon devoir a moi, ma recherche, cest dessayer de mettre cet homme

daujourdhui fors du malheur, hors de la catastrophe, de le mettre dans .

le bonheur, dans la joie quotidienne, dans 1harmonie entre 1homme et

z
son milieu. Une biologie (cest 1homme) et la nature (cest le milieu), ce
vase immense contient le soleil, la lune, les 6toiles, 1inconnu
insaisissable, les ondes, la terre ronde avec son axe inclin6 sur
1ecliptique provocateur de saisons, la temp6rature du corps, le circuit
sanguin, le circuit nerveux, le syst6me respiratoire, le syst6me digestif, le
jour, la nuit, la journee solaire de vingt heures, son alternance
quatre
implacable, mais nuanc6e, bienfaisante, etc. 1 ,
~.~ ,; &dquo; . ,

Seen in this light it may not be long before Le Corbusier receives recognition
for being one of the pioneers of the environmental movement.

59
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1959), 175.
60
See King, Ursula, Christ in all Things (London: SCM Press, 1997), 147; and Skolimowski,
Henryk, Ecological spirituality and its practical consequences, The Teilhard Review, xxvii (2)
(1992), 43-53. Early in the 1970s Skolimowski taught at the Architectural Association school in
London where Teilhard briefly became a topic of discussion amongst architects.
61
Le Corbusier, Précisions (Paris: Editions Vincent, 1929), v.

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As someone who worked in the trenches of the First World War Teilhard
knew very well the extent of mans destructive impulse, but, and maybe
because of this, his tone remains optimistic and forward-looking. In his
terms Tout 1avenir de la Terre, comme de la Religion, me parait suspendu
1eveil de notre foi en 1 avenir. 62 Such words must have provided solace to
Le Corbusier as he struggled to keep the faith in spite of what he saw as
serial disappointments and injustices. As far as he was concerned those in
power did not want to listen. In impassioned terms he wrote 1onde
architecturale, comme londe 6lectrique, entoure la terre et partout il y a des
antennes. Que nous sommes encore vieux dans un monde nouveau! Que
nous sommes Crasseux! f13 For Teilhard that electricity was the energy of love
that will bind people together through magnetic opposition in his vision of
the future.

62
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, LAvenir de lhomme (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1959), 19.
63
Le Corbusier, Précisions (Paris: Éditions Vincent, 1929), 19.

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