The Guggenheim And Villa Savoye

Upon cross-examination and comparison, Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye and Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum have many similar attributes to them. Although Le Corbusier adamantly denied Frank Lloyd Wright's influence on his works, by examining the styles of the two architects, one can see similarities that cannot be justified by mere coincidence. However, since the Guggenheim was completed in 1959, after Villa Savoye, it could be also argued that Le Corbusier was the one who influenced Wright. Both pieces of modern architecture emphasize the experience of the building, geometric volumes, and an embrace for modern technology.

The Guggenheim is one of Wright's last works, its completion occurring after his death. Built for the Museum of Non-Objective art, this building was revolutionary for its time. Its inverted ziggurat allowed for visitors to be whisked up an elevator and then to proceed through the whole exhibit at a leisurely pace down the gently sloped ramp of the ziggurat. Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye also implements the gentle ramp as a means of seeing the space and moving through the building. Le Corbusier once wrote, "the Architect, by his arrangement of forms, realizes an order which is a pure creation of his spirit; by forms and shapes he affects our senses to an acute degree and provokes plastic emotions; by the relationships which he creates he wakes profound echoes in us, he gives us the measure of an order which we feel to be in accordance with that of our world, he determines the various movements of our heart and of our understanding; it is then that we experience beauty." (Le Corbusier, p.6) Both architects attempt to manipulate the observer within the environment that they've built to control the experience of space. By taking the ramp in both buildings, one moves through the entirety of the space and not just select segments of the space. Wright's ziggurat ramp is ingenious in the fact that it allows museum visitors to not have to backtrack their steps like conventional museum floor plans of hallways and rooms. Both Le Corbusier and Wright value composition and mass, both of which are experienced through the relationships between spaces. By using the ramps, both architects are able to control the sequence one experiences the spaces and how the spaces compare in relation to each other in the most dramatic manner.

Simple geometric forms were important to both Le Corbusier and Wright. Curvilinear lines are used throughout the Guggenheim. Both architects also use the colour white as the colour of the buildings because of white's ability to emphasize the light and shadows of the geometric forms. Volume was important to them both. Le Corbusier used pilotis to prop up the bottom floor of Villa Savoye and let in nature into the setting of the home. The effects of light and shadow that define this outdoors space as part of the building by creating this cavernous volume of open space. The same light and shadow effect is used by Wright in several instances on the Guggenheim. The shadows cast by the inverted ziggurat creates the sense of depth. The overhanging shapes define outdoor spaces that, although are not enclosed within the building, are still part of the building. Both the Guggenheim and Villa Savoye have walls that are "reduced to a system of intersecting and overlapping planes" (Colquhoun, p.53) and emphasize horizontality. By extending walls outward beyond their original function as walls, the sense of volume, geometry, and space is formed with the casting of light, creating a sculptural esthetic. Both buildings strip decorative structural elements and rely on just the form of the building as the ornament. "In his late works, [Wright] made structure itself at once clear and ornamental." (Kaufmann, p.36)

By embracing and utilizing modern technology, both Wright and Le Corbusier broke free of the constraints of the load-bearing wall. Both the Guggenheim and Villa Savoye used reinforced concrete as the main structural material. With reinforced concrete, Le Corbusier illustrates one of his Five Points for a New Architecture: the Free Plan. The reinforced concrete meant there was no longer need for