The Primitive Origins of Modern Architecture: Le Corbusier's Voyage to the East (1911)
M. Christine Boyer

Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, known to us now as Le Corbusier, made what has been called a "reversed" grand tour in 1911: instead of going to Rome, he went to Istanbul. His travel articles were assembled into a small square book entitled Voyage d'Orient [Journey to the East] and published posthumously at the beginning of 1966. He seems to have reversed the tour of his life-time: through a series of inversions he places 1911 against 1965, the young and naive Charles-Eduoard Jeanneret against the wiser and self-constructed Le Corbusier, just as the voyage itself reversed the grand tour replacing Italy with the Balkans and Turkey, high art with popular art, western traditions with oriental dreams.

Le Corbusier was a good story teller and as Vladimir Propp suggested, all stories start with the central character defined as having something missing whether s/he, recognizes it or not. Thus the hero sets off in quest for what is missing, and it is this quest that propels the narrative forward. Defined as a rite of passage, the journey becomes a testing ground full of tension and struggles in which the hero is transformed and finally achieves a new status. The hero, Le Corbusier in this case or Jeanneret as he will be named here, must end up in a different place from where he begins, he must solve the enigma at the heart of the tale. The voyage between, however, is uncertain and full of tension and unexpected surprises. The unwinding or the unfolding of the journey becomes the space of his story and it is rich in meaning.

This reversed tour, backwards across his lifetime opens the door on the 'primitive', the archaic, the mythological and his own personal recourse to the past and to the brutal facts of reality. Was this encounter with his own past, a backward impulse that linked memories and desires from his youth to the realizations of his adult life, also a revelation of the archaic magic and irrational instincts that had molded the architect? He would write in the preface of volume one to Oeuvre complete (1929) "If I had to admit that my hand is dirtied by the refuse of centuries, I would still prefer washing it to cutting it off. The past centuries do not dirty our hands; on the contrary, they fill them with riches."

This paper will explore four points around which the narrative unfolds. 1. The reversed tour, as recollections of his youthful travels at the end of his life, is an idea that Le Corbusier may have borrowed from Ernest Renan's Prayer on the Acropolis (1883), a small booklet that he purchased in Athens in 1911. What effect did Renan's writing have on the construction of Jeanneret's travelogue and the self-construction of Le Corbusier?

2. Where is the place of the Orient on the Map of Europe? Although the requisite 'Grand Tour' was a thing of the past by the early 20th century, still it left its impression on the map that Jeanneret drew in 1911 of his 'Voyage to the East' for he labeled all of the European sites with "I" for Industry; most of the Balkan places and Istanbul marked with 'F" for Folk lore and Greece and Italy were labeled with "C" for culture. Jeanneret traveled from folk art to classical art, through the plains of eastern Europe to the heights of Mt Athos and the Acropolis. Why was his goal and lifelong appreciation 'Stamboul? How did William Ritter influence this choice? What role did folklore hold in his developing aesthetics?

3. Learning to Write: Architectural historians have paid selective attention to Jeanneret's writings and rhetorical style placing more emphasis on their architectural and sometimes urban references. They quote at random from his writings, without analyzing the development of ideas from one book to another. Here the focus will be on the development of Jeanneret's writing style, struggles and influences, from William Ritter to Pierre Loti. But it is argued in general that Le Corbusier, among his many talents, also wanted to be a writer, to communicate to others his thoughts, impressions and experiences throughout his lifetime. Thus the fifty or so books he wrote should be treated as literary endeavors worthy of analysis on their own right.

4. Learning to See: Jeanneret was also learning to see, to acquire knowledge through appearances and to record these images in words and in drawings, watercolors and photographs. His painterly eye drew quick fragmentary sketches stopping suddenly to frame and record direct impression. Jeanneret undertook this voyage as a painter and it is only in 1914, that he considers himself to be an architect, at the time he inserts his Greek recollections into the text. How is this tension resolved between his desire to be a painter, his ability to record his impression on paper, and his conviction to become a builder? What role do Mt Athos and the Acropolis play in Jeanneret's right of passage, in the solving of the enigma at the heart of his tale?

M. Christine Boyer, is the William R. McKenan Jr. Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, at the School of Architecture, Princeton University. She is the author of CyberCities: Visual Perception in the Age of Electronic Communication (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments (MIT Press,1994), Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of City Planning 1890-1945 (MIT Press, 1983), and Manhattan Manners: Architecture and Style 1850-1890 (Rizzoli, 1985). In addition, she has written many articles and lectured widely on the topic of urbanism in the 19th and 20th centuries. She is currently writing a book tentatively titled The City Plans of Modernism and a series of collected essays entitled Twice Told Stories: City and Cinema. M. Christine Boyer received her Phd. and Masters in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also holds a Masters of Science in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania,The Moore School of Electrical Engineering.