开通会员 勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier,1887—1965),法国建筑家,20世纪最著名的建筑大
师、城市规划家和作家,现代建筑运动的激进分子和主将,被称为“现代建筑的旗手”。
《走向新建筑》(Towards a New Architecture)中集中表现了他的功能主义建筑思想与理
念。在《走向新建筑》的第二版序言中,他声称:一幢住宅是一种围护我们的人道的域
界,应具有满足人们本能愿望的自然功能,现代的建筑应为普通而平常的人关心普通
而平常的住宅,这是时代的一个标志。为普通人、“所有的人”研究住宅,这就是恢复
人道的基础。人的尺度,需要的标准、功能的标准、情感的标准,这是最重要的。这就
是一切,这是个高尚的时代,人们抛弃了豪华壮丽。《建筑或者革命》节选自《走向新
建筑》,在文中,勒·柯布西耶将建筑的功能提升到关乎社会稳定的高度。
当前工业了不起的活动,这是人们非常关心的,每个小时都或者直接地、或者通过
报纸杂志把激动人心的新鲜事展现在我们眼前,引诱我们去追究它们的原因,它们使
我们喜,使我们忧。所有这些现代生活里的事终于创造了一种明确的现代精神面貌。
然后我们惊慌地回顾那些古老的破烂,那是我们的蜗牛壳,我们的住宅,每天跟它们接
触都使我们感到压抑,它们是腐败的、没有用处的、没有效率的。人们到处都看到机器
生产着一些令人羡慕的、干净利索的东西。我们所住的机器却是一辆破旧的马车,充
满了肺结核菌。我们没有在我们工厂里、办公室里、银行里的健康、有效、成果卓著的
日常活动跟我们的处处碍手碍脚的家庭生活之间造起桥梁来。它处处糟害家庭,它使
人像奴隶一样附属于错乱了时代的东西,以致使他们道德堕落。
每个人的心态都是由他跟现代化事业的日常联系所决定的,这心态有意无意地形
成了一些愿望;这些愿望必然跟家庭有关,这是它作为社会基础的本能。今天每个人
都知道,他需要阳光、温暖、新鲜空气和干净的地板;男士们知道要戴雪白的硬领,女士
们喜欢细白布。人们现在感到需要智力消遣、肉体娱乐和肉欲的文化,使他在繁重的
脑力和体力劳动之后的紧张能够松弛。这许多愿望实际上是许多需要。
然而,我们的社会机构没有作任何准备来满足它们。
另一件事:面对着现代生活现实的知识分子的结论可能是怎样的呢?
我们时代工业的辉煌繁荣创造了一个特殊的知识分子阶层,人数很多,以致形成
了很活跃的社会阶层。
在工厂里、在技术部门里、在研究机构里、在银行里、在大商店里、在报纸和杂志出
版所里,都有工程师、行政首脑、代理人、秘书、编辑、会计,他们按要求工作,创造出使
我们赞叹不已的惊人的东西来:
这些人设计桥梁、船舶、飞机、造发动机、涡轮机,这些人主管工地,这些人分配奖
金并当会计,这些人从殖民地或者工厂里采购货物,这些人在报纸上发表许多关于现
代化生产的光明面和阴暗面的文章,他们记录一个人在劳作时、在顽强地写作时、在危
险时刻、在神经错乱胡说谵语时的发烧曲线。所有的人类物质产品都从他们的手指缝
里过去。他们观察,终于正确地作出结论。这些人眼巴巴盯着人类大商场琳琅满目的
货架,现代在他们面前闪闪发光……但却被栏杆挡在另一边。回到家里,暂时舒适一
下,但酬报跟他们的工作质量完全不相称,他们重新钻进肮脏的老蜗牛壳,甚至不敢想
建立一个家庭。如果他们建立了家庭,他们就开始受到长期的慢性折磨。这些人也要
求有权拥有一幢居住的机器,简单而合乎人道的。
工人、知识分子被阻碍去追求对家庭生活的深刻的本能要求;他们每天使用这时
代光辉的高效能工具,但他们却不能为自己而使用它们。再没有比这个更叫人沮丧,
更叫人生气的了。什么都没有得到。我们可以正确地写道:建筑或者革命。
现代社会没有公正地酬劳知识分子,但它还在容忍古老的房地产所有权形式,阻
碍城市和住宅的改造。古老的房地产都是遗产,它总是倾向于惰性,倾向于不变,保持
现状。然而人类的其他行业都屈从于竞争的野蛮道德,房地产主人却在他的产业里像
王侯一样逃避了普遍的规律;他统治着。在现行的房地产所有制的原则下,不可能建
立一项持久的建设预算。因此人们不再建造房屋。但是,如果房地产所有权方式发生
变化,它正在变化着,那么人们还是会造房子的,人们将十分热衷于建造房子,我们可
能避免革命。
一个新时代只有在做了默默的事前准备工作之后才会来到。
工业已经创造了它的工具。
企业已经修正了它的习惯。
结构已经找到了它的方法。
建筑已面对着一个修改过的规范。
工业已经创造了新工具,这里的一些照片给了它们生动的证据。这样的一整套工
具是用来造福于人并减轻人类的体力劳动的。如果我们把这革新跟过去相比,这就是
革命。
企业已经修正了它的习惯,沉重的责任落到了它的身上:成本、时限、产品的坚固
性。许多工程师占满了办公室,计算着,紧张地实践着经济法则,寻求把两个背道而驰
的因素协调起来,这就是价廉和物美。智慧是每一件创举的源泉,向往着大胆的革新。
企业的道德观变了;今天一家大企业是一个健康的、道德的机构。如果我们把这件新
事实跟过去对照一下,这就是企业的方法上和规模上的革命。
结构找到了它的手段,这些手段本身造成了一种解放,这是以前几千年一直在追
求而从来没有得到的。只要我们拥有一整套足够完善的工具,我们凭着计算和发明就
能做到一切,这套工具已经有了。混凝土和钢铁完全改变了至今所知的结构形式,这
些材料在理论和计算上的精确性每天都在产生鼓舞人心的结果。首先是成功,随后,
是它们的外貌,它使人们想起自然的现象,它经常重新发现自然中的经验。跟过去相
对照,我们会看出,一些新的方法已经被找到了,只等我们去利用它们。如果我们懂得
跟常规惯例决裂,它们就会把我们从一直逼迫着我们忍受的束缚下真正解放出来。这
就是结构方式中的革命。
建筑面对着一个修改了的规则章法。结构的革新已经使缠住我们不放的古老的
风格再也不能笼盖它们了;现在使用着的材料也在逃避装饰家的摆布。有了结构方式
提供的形式上和韵律上的新事物,有了有序布局中的新事物和城乡的新工业纲领;它
们终于使我们理解了建筑艺术的深刻而又真实的规律。这些规律建立在体形、韵律和
比例之上。那些风格不再存在,那些风格跟我们不相干。如果它们还来纠缠我们,那
就像寄生生物。如果我们跟过去对照,我们会确认,由过去四千年的条例和章程积累
而成的古老的建筑规则已经引不起我们的兴趣了。它们与我们没有关系。价值已经
重新评估;建筑观念中已经发生了革命。
现在的人受各方面来的反应的作用,感到烦忧不安。他感觉到,一方面,一个世界
正有规则地、合乎逻辑地、明确地形成,它生产出非常简洁的有用的和可用的东西;另
一方面,他在一个古老的、怀有敌意的框框里,困惑不解。这框框就是他的安身之处;
他的城市,他的街道,他的住宅,他的不能再用的公寓,都起来反对他,阻止他在休息的
时候追求他在工作中走过的那一条精神道路,阻止他在休息的时候追求他的存在的有
机发展,这就是建立一个家庭,像地球上一切动物那样,像一切时代所有的人那样,过
一种有组织的家庭生活。这样,社会正在促使家庭解体,但它恐慌地意识到,它将因此
而垮台。
在我们非听从不可的现代精神面貌与使人窒息的有几百年之久的垃圾堆之间,有
一个严重的不协调存在着。
这是一个适应问题,它牵涉到我们生活中的全部客观事物。
社会强烈地希望一件东西,它可能得到,可能得不到。全都在这里;一切决定于我
们将作的努力和我们将给予这些令人不安的症状的注意。
建筑或者革命。
我们可以避免革命。
[出处]:勒·柯布西耶.走向新建筑[M].2版.陈志华,译.西安:陕西师范大学出版社,2004:
241-251.
英文选读
In every province of industry,new problems have arisen and have been met by the creation or a body or tools capable of dealing with them. We do not appreciate sufficiently the deep chasm between our own epoch and earlier periods;it is admitted that this age has effected a great transformation,but the really useful thing would be to draw up a parallel table of its activities—intellectual,social,economic and industrial—not only in relation to the preceding period at the beginning of the nineteenth century,but to the history of civilizations in general. It would quickly be seen that the tools that man has made for himself,which automatically meet the needs of society,and which till now had undergone only slight modifications in a slow evolution,have been transformed all at once with an amazing rapidity. These tools in the past were always in man's hands;today they have been entirely and formidably refashioned and for the time being are out of our grasp. The human animal stands breathless and panting before the tool that he cannot take hold of; progress appears to him as hateful as it is praiseworthy; all is confusion within his mind; he feels himself to be the slave of a frantic state of things and experiences no sense of liberation or comfort or amelioration. This is a great but critical period,above all of a moral crisis. To pass the crisis we must create the state of mind which can understand what is going on; the human animal must learn to use his tools. When this human animal has put on his new harness and knows the effort that is expected from him,he will see that things have changed:and changed for the better.
One more word on the past. Our own epoch,that is to say the last fifty years only, confronts the ten ages that have gone before. During these earlier ages,man ordered his life in conformity with what people call a “natural” system; he took his tasks upon his own shoulders and brought them to a satisfactory conclusion,bearing all the consequences of his own little enterprises: he rose with the sun,went to bed at dusk; he laid down his tools preoccupied with the task in hand and what he would begin on the morrow. He worked at home in a little booth,with his family around him. He lived like a snail in its shell,in a lodging made exactly to his measure; there was nothing to induce him to modify this state of things,which was indeed harmonious enough. The family life unfolded itself in a normal way. The father watched over his children in the cradle and later on in the workshop: effort and gain succeeded one another peacefully within the family order; and in this the family found its profit. Now when this is so,society is stable and likely to endure. That is the story of ten ages of work organized within the family unit; and the story too of every past age up to the middle of the nineteenth century.
But let us observe today the mechanism of the family. Industry has brought us to the mass-produced article; machinery is at work in close collaboration with man; the right man for the right job is coldly selected; labourers,workmen,foremen,engineers,managers, administrators—each in his proper place; and the man who is made of the right stuff to be a manager will not long remain a workman; the higher places are open to all. Specialization ties man to his machine; an absolute precision is demanded of every worker,for the article passed on to the next man cannot be snatched back in order to be corrected and fitted; it must be exact in order that it may play,by that very reason,its part as a detailed unit which will be required to fit automatically into the assembling of the whole. The father no longer teaches his son the various secrets of his little trade; a strange foreman directs severely and precisely the restrained and circumscribed tasks. The worker makes one tiny detail,always the same one,during months of work,perhaps during years of work,perhaps for the rest of his life. He only sees his task reach its finality in the finished work at the moment when it is passed,in its bright and shining purity,into the factory yard to be placed in a deliveryvan. The spirit of the worker's booth no longer exists,but certainly there does exist a more collective spirit. If the workman is intelligent he will understand the final end of his labour,and this will fill him with a legitimate pride. When the Auto announces that such and such a car has reached 180 miles an hour,the workmen will gather together and tell one another: “Our car did that!” There we have a moral factor which is of importance.
The eight hours day! The three “eights” in the factory! The shifts working in relays. This one starting at 10 p. m. and finishing at 6 a. m.; another one ending at 2 p. m. Did our legislators think of that when they granted the eight hours day? What is the man going to do with his freedom from 6 a. m. till 10 p. m.; from 2 p. m. till night? What becomes of the family under these conditions? The lodging is there,you will say,to receive and welcome the human animal,and the worker is sufficiently cultivated to know how to make a healthy use of so many hours of liberty. But this is exactly what is not the case;the lodging is hideous,and his mind not sufficiently educated to use all these hours of liberty. We may well say,then: Architecture or demoralization—demoralization and revolution.
[出处]: Le Corbusier,Towards a New Architecture,New York: Dover Publications,inc,1986: 271-276.
(This Dover edition,first published in 1986,is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published by John Rodker,London,in 1931,as translated from the thirteenth French edition and given an English introduction by Frederick Etchells. )