The Radiant City: Utopia or Dystopia?

Now let us talk about another great modernist architect whose name is known all around the world: Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, although his famous name is ‘Le Corbusier’.  With a vision that revolutionized the world, his innovative works change the looks of buildings like never before.  As seen in his prototype ‘Maison Dom-ino’ (Domino House), he introduced a whole new structure that allowed a free façade to be installed.

Le Corbusier, like Mies van der Rohe, believe in simplicity and honesty of the structure, but he also believed in mass production and standardization.  He looked to houses the same way as automobiles, which were carefully designed once and then produced in mass in the same standard.  This belief of his is shown in his visionary plan of Paris, the Radiant City.  The concept was preposterous in many other architects’ eyes.  It was a city where every building in each zone looked the same, standardized by the design perfected by Le Corbusier himself.  Each unit of living, workspace, facility, is all the same and equal for everyone, because, fundamentally, each and every one of us is equally human.

But is it good?  Will this create the Utopia every one has so long dreamed of?

Actually, this ‘Radiant City’ was built, but not in Paris.  Of all the places, it ended up being built in India.  The name of the city is ‘Chandigarh’.  Furthermore, Jacques Tati depicted the scenario of the life inside this uniform city in the film called ‘Playtime’.

I must say that it looked chaotic.  In the film, an uptown man went into the city to find someone, and he got lost so badly.  He didn’t know where or which part of the city he was because, technically, every part of the city is the same.  It was so lifeless because everyone dressed the same way, worked in the building that looked the same down to each desk, and lived a the house that no one could tell the difference to the neighbors’.  It no longer mattered where you are in this big city.

I must admit that I love its cleanliness and tidiness and uniformity.  The concept that everyone is equal is also ideal, but I wouldn’t want to live there.  It went too far to the point that it makes people become a machine.  They lost their personality, and, most of all, their individuality.  They were no longer seen as an individual, but a mass-produced product.  It is not a bad thing to have a standard, but I think we should always leave spaces for each person’s creativity and imagination.