WHAT IS A HOUSE FOR住宅所为何
WHAT IS A HOUSE FOR住宅所为何House byTalk withInfo

Eric Lapierre: Villa „Le Lac” is far less famous than Villa Savoye, the official masterpiece by Le Corbusier, but what I appreciate more in the „Petite Maison” is its modesty and the fact it gives beginners, young architects, a lot of hope. It tells you that a masterpiece can be designed without precious materials or a large scale. It proves that good architecture is like a good book. A fantastic story can be told using just paper and ink. 

The actual size of the house is objectively small - only sixty-four square meters, but the mental picture created is one of a much bigger space. By that, I refer to how the different atmospheres you experience play a role in your overall idea of the house and in your memory. This begins with the garden and the surrounding wall; the garden is very much part of the house and thanks to the entrance loggia and outside lounge it directly relates to the interior and all its functions: the garden is the house. Emphasizing this room like quality, towards the lake, a traditionally proportioned window pierces the garden wall, offering a view outward, into the landscape.

The presence of landscape is crucial; the Alps fall directly into the lake opposite the house and in doing so, transform your perception of scale. You immediately understand that the real limit of the house are the mountains in the distance. Ultimately, over time, how one lives with and observes this rich, dynamic environment is the main topic of the house. It’s beautiful and captivating, not only because of the landscape’s monumentality, but also in the way it continuously changes through each day and season.

I remember a very good text in which Bruno Reichlin noted that the long horizontal window in Villa „Le Lac” tended to flatten the landscape, because it hides the foreground and a part of the sky. This actually makes the interior much more intimate. The landscape is at once real, but also fake, like a printed image. With a vertical or full height window, you would see the ground and more of the sky. You would have the complete depth of field of the perspective, and, in a way, you would feel much more outside. 

It was his mother’s house. She didn’t want to be totally exposed and live in a house that challenged her all the time. She wanted a normal cosy building, with her own old furniture, a dog and a cat. That’s why it’s loaded with seemingly unspectacular intentions. It seems a banal, almost ordinary building, but is as well an exceptional piece of high architecture. Another proof that banality is the condition of newness. 

REGARDLESS OF SPECTACULAR SURROUNDINGS AND THE WINDOW THAT FRAMES IT, WHAT MAKES THE HOUSE ITSELF SPECIAL?

I appreciate, in this house and in Le Corbusier’s oeuvre generally, the huge number of different references conveyed spatially and physically. Firstly, it condenses many different periods of time into one. The bedroom he built for himself as an expansion of the Villa some years later is a pure demonstration of this. It’s a tiny space made of wood painted blue-grey (the same colour as the landscape in the distance), in which you have the famous little platform, chair and a tiny desk that allowed Le Corbusier to work while looking at the lake through a horizontal window. As soon as you sit on that chair, you feel like San Girolamo painted by Ántonello da Messina, looking at the lake. At first it seems that this room existed there for centuries. Then you look carefully, and you see the proportions of the window, the flat roof - main inventions of modern architecture. 

You realise that this very compact space contains the past, the present, conventional and completely avant-garde elements.

There are many intriguing elements in the house, for example the opening in the lower part of the perimeter wall at the front of the house with a stair to allow the dog to bark at cars and people. On the opposite side, next to the stair going up to the terrace you have a little suspended platform, which allows the cat to look at the lake. A house with special devices dedicated to animals; that’s exceptional and really emphasises the atmosphere of intimacy and celebration of family life. Le Corbusier was not a functionalist, but he was a modern man, so he thought that the functions needed to be located in specific spaces. On the other hand, you can see that he often tended to contradict it, or at least blend things together. For instance, in the entrance space of Villa Savoye you have a basin for washing your hands in a strange location. In Villa „Le Lac”, you also have a little wash basin with a door and a mirror in the dining room. It is too low to really check your face, so it’s just to make this room more spacious or to underline that by opening a small door, you can modify the space: a little poem, like a haiku, made of this strange meeting of a mirror, that is invisible most of the time invisible, and a wash basin in a dining room. You have a feeling that each square centimeter has been considered as a possibility for expression. 

As a student, I had the same experience when I first visited Rem Koolhaas’ Kunsthaus in Rotterdam. Every detail of it seemed to have been thought through. Nothing appeared to be done in a boring, automatic way. The signage was on the floor, the handrail was suspended from the ceiling - and not coming from the ground, rooms where sometimes oblique, the floor could be transparent and suspended, and so on.

Everything was a bit twisted. I saw a link between Koolhaas and Le Corbusier. Their buildings are really full of small narratives: architecture rests on generosity. 

I think this method of design helps to keep our bodies and minds active. Contemporary spaces are very comfortable. You can very easily turn into a kind of apathetic couch potato. You have everything, you just go to the kitchen, it’s full of food and ice; you don’t have to do anything. Therefore, I think, good architecture is a way of bringing you into a state of awareness, similar to the one when you were an animal in the natural environment, full of danger. Obviously, architecture should not be dangerous, but it should create a stronger reality and conjure up signs to keep you awake and question how you live. In a way, good architecture is a bit like a drug, it focuses reality in a funnier and more meaningful way. 

MANY CONSIDER LE CORBUSIER’S ARCHITECTURE, INCLUDING VILLA „LE LAC” TO BE PURIST, PERHAPS EVEN BRUTAL. DESPITE THE REFERENCES THAT YOU SAY ARE CONTAINED IN THE WORK, IT IS SIMPLE, CLEAN, ABSTRACT, AND MOSTLY GREY OR WHITE, SAVE FOR THE AREAS PAINTED WITH PRIMARY COLOURS. SOME WOULD EVEN SAY IT’S COLD. DOES THIS BOTHER YOU? 

Some people might think his architecture is austere, or difficult. I understand one can say this. However, Le Corbusier himself was like this. He wrote important books on small desks. He was not the kind of person that needed a big table with a lounge chair, like a CEO. He just needed a chair and a piece of horizontal wood to write on it. If you visit his apartment in Paris, you see the desk on which he wrote the majority of his books. It’s very modest. Have a look at Cabanon where he died, it is again extremely rudimentary. At the time when he built it, he was really on the top of the world.

Without any doubt he was the most important living architect. He could have made many things, but instead he just built this small hut, directly linked to a restaurant full of friends, spending time painting naked, and swimming, nothing more. It is very important to understand that this architecture was made by an architect that had a certain honest opinion of what is necessary and what is not, what is valuable and what is not. If you compare him to the main protagonists of today’s architecture, he was totally different. He was a guy „what you see is what you get”. I really appreciate this quality in him.

Another thing concerning your question, and the impression of austerity one can have while confronted with Le Corbusier’s architecture is the issue of mental flexibility. When you make a house, people are usually not aware of their own potential to fit and adapt to almost any kind of space. Often a client wants to know where exactly his tennis racket will be stored. In reality, as architects, it’s not something we really should be thinking about, because maybe tomorrow he will stop practicing tennis. And what if he starts hockey? The stick is larger, what will you do with your special tennis racket shelf? Functional pattern is the way most people can grasp space. The majority wouldn’t dare to ask you to make a house that will make them feel happier or make a house that would be as light as cool clothes. The place where the pan will be in the kitchen is more important usually. Even though we know it’s not. But also, that supposed austerity and simplicity are ways of underlining that architecture rests always on a kind of imploded complexity: it is visually simple but then you always discover new dimensions of the space, new relationships between things, and this seemingly simplicity is the essence of architecture.

LET’S NOW LOOK AT IT FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE. THE HOUSE IN FACT ARTICULATES DIVERSE ACTIVITIES WITH ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS, AND AS YOU EXPLAINED, YOU SEE IT AS A POSITIVE ASPECT. WHEN DO YOU THINK IT CAN BECOME EXCESSIVE, WHERE IS THE LIMIT OF THE DETAILS OR GESTURES ONE PACKS INTO A HOUSE BEFORE IT GETS ANNOYING? 

I once visited a house in the outskirts of Ghent, a kind of Ghent Beverly Hills. The couple who owned it, used to have a fantastic 17th or 18th century apartment in the center of the city. It was full of old paintings, works of art and beautiful pieces of furniture. At some point, they went to an architect and told him they wanted to sell everything and build a contemporary house, in which he would choose everything inside. Apparently, he did, he chose everything. Even the ashtray, plates, and the works of art on the walls. I would get mad with such decisions. How can you choose the right work of art for someone else? If you are not able to choose a work of art for yourself, then you don’t need it. I think it’s an example of going way too far by transforming a domestic space into a showroom. 

Another extreme is when architects propose no use, no function, just a disposable area. This can also be problematic. I think Villa „Le Lac” is somewhere in between. It is very balanced.  The building works with the real life, with real objects and is not trying to be perfect. It’s also made with ordinary things. The furniture there, was mostly his mother’s original, classical pieces. 

Regarding this, I can see a similarity between Villa „Le Lac” and Fisher House by Louis Kahn. I visited it years ago when it was still inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Fisher. They were really cool, warm people. Every three weeks, they allowed a visit, regardless of if it was a bus of architects or just a single student - as I was. All you had to do, was write to them sufficiently in advance, and it was set. 

The famous corner window is always photographed empty. Obviously, it wasn’t like that in reality. There were objects, sculptures, things they bought in Mexico during their honeymoon or whatever, and all this did not undermine the quality of architecture. It’s really a house that obviously satisfies your mind and intellectual ambitions as an architect, but you could go and live there with your family that eventually, doesn’t mind about architecture and it would work very well. 

Imagine you come back from work, you are tired, you just want to have a drink, listen to a piece of music or just do nothing, relax. You don’t always want to admire the sculpture you live in. If you live in a masterpiece, that’s really cool, you’re really lucky, but you don’t want this masterpiece to occupy your mind for your whole life. It can be a masterpiece by the virtue that you can forget it and just live there. The most important hints are always in a second position, never in pole position.

I think the goal of Le Corbusier was not to build sacred things, it was to make daily life really cool. It was about the quality that architecture can bring to everyday life. I don’t say that it is not important to live in a space loaded with values that you believe in. I just want to stress that if it is made in the first row, in a demonstrative way, then it is like a trap in which you are stuck. When the building screams: „look, I’m a masterpiece” I am not interested in this. Eventually, I am happy to visit it once, as if it was a museum. It has to be the aim of a good house to live in a very light way, not to be constantly reminded about a state of exception. Daily life requires simplicity that doesn’t exclude, of course, complexity.

I will give you another example from the art world. I love Guernica, but I would not want to live with it in my living room. I would be exhausted by it. That’s a very important thing to consider. Does your house dictate how your life should be? Does it transpose you into Jacques Tati’s „Mon Oncle” character or not? Partly of course, but it needs to still be related to banality as well. That’s the real difference.

HAVE YOU TRIED APPLYING THE SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONS IN VILLA „LE LAC” TO YOUR OWN WORK? 

We have never tried to make a whole building with one proportional system - using the Modulor for instance. Vacchini did, he used the Modulor in his buildings, even representing his symbol in the sections. I never did such a thing. Anyway, I still think proportion is one of the most important expressive tools we have. In the office, when I see a well-proportioned drawing, we calculate what it is, and often it’s a classical variant. Personally, I really appreciate the diagonal of a square (1:1.41). It’s a very beautiful proportion. At least I like it. I don’t use these classical proportions as a priority, but I am quite aware of them.

Le Corbusier explains that in his architecture the proportional system defines everything. For instance, for La Tourette Church he invented the concept of „ineffable space”, explaining that at a certain moment when all the elements of the space are regulated and defined by a certain regime or system of relationships between things, the space starts to radiate, and you reach the point of a so called „ineffable space”. You read this and you say: more nonsense from an architect! But, in La Tourette Church, you really have a very specific experience. Elementally, it is not different to many buildings - you have some stairs, different levels and a few colours, all inside a box made of raw concrete, but something really happens there. 

What is also fascinating about proportion is the role it has in ordering all project inputs. When you imagine a project, you deal constantly with a whole range of data that are measurable like the cost, the area, quantities of materials, function, but you also deal with completely non measurable data - the beauty, the feeling etc. The result of the negotiation which occurs at the crossing point between measurable and non-measurable is a proportion, a ratio between measures or things. By definition, it’s a relationship of measures. Sometimes more this way, sometimes more that. Le Corbusier explains perfectly that understanding these decisions precisely enables a building to speak. The proportion will either frighten you or make you laugh. 

I mentioned at the beginning that Le Corbusier represents the idea of who I think an architect should be. It’s a person who controls these two realms - measurable and non-measurable and makes beauty from very prosaic things. Proportion is at the crossing of these arguments, and that’s probably why Le Corbusier involved himself with it so much.

23.01.2020

埃里克·拉皮埃尔: 相比于柯布西耶的“官方”代表作萨伏伊别墅，湖畔之家并没有那么大的名气。但我更为欣赏的是它作为“小房子”（Petite Maison）的谦逊和它带给事业刚起步的年轻建筑师的希望。它告诉人们可以在不使用贵重材料或大尺度的情况下设计出伟大的作品。它证明了好建筑就像一本好书，写作精彩的故事其实只需要纸和墨水即可。

客观上来看，湖畔之家的实际尺寸偏小——只有六十四平米面积，但它所创造的精神图景却扩展到了远大于此的空间。在这里我指的是，你所经历的不同氛围如何在你对住宅的整体想法和你的记忆中发挥作用。这开始于花园和环绕的围墙：花园本身是住宅的重要组成部分，通过入口门廊和室外休息区直接与室内各功能空间联系，花园即为住宅。为了强调这种房间一样的品质，朝着湖景，花园的围墙上开了一个传统比例的窗洞，提供面向外部景观的视野。

景观的存在是其中的关键：在住宅对面，阿尔卑斯山直坠湖中，转换了人对于尺度的感知。你会立刻理解到这幢住宅真正的极限是远处的山峦。从根本上来说，随着时间的推移，人如何观察并居住在这种丰富的动态环境中是这座住宅的主题。这是美丽且迷人的，不仅由于景观的纪念性，也在于它日复一日随着季节变迁持续的变化着。

我回忆起布鲁诺-赖希林（Bruno Reichlin）在一篇很不错的文章中指出，因为隐藏了前景和部分天空，湖畔之家的水平长窗有一种压平景观的趋向。而这实际上使得室内空间更加亲密。景观在某个当下是真实的，但也是虚幻的，像一幅打印的画面。如果使用了竖向或者通高的窗户，你将会看到地面和更多的天空，这样你会有完整的透视景深，而且，在某种程度上，你会更多的感觉到外界。

湖畔之家是柯布西耶母亲的住宅。她并不愿意生活在一个完全暴露并一直挑战她的生活习惯的住宅中。她需要的是一个正常的、舒适的建筑，能够容纳她的老家具、一只狗和一只猫。这正是为何湖畔之家体现的是似乎不起眼的设计意图。它貌似是一座庸常的、近乎普通的建筑，但同时也是出类拔萃的建筑作品。这又一次证明了，庸常是创新的条件。

除了壮观的周边环境和框起它的窗户之外，建筑本身有何特别之处？

在这座住宅和柯布西耶的全部作品中，我欣赏他在空间上和物质上对于不同参考的大量运用。首先，它将众多不同的时段浓缩在一起。作为对湖畔之家的扩建，数年后他为自己建造的卧室是一个极富代表性的例子。这个微小的空间使用了漆成灰蓝色的木头（和远处的景观一致的色彩），在这里有著名的平台、椅子以及小桌子，可以让柯布西耶一边工作一边通过水平向的窗户欣赏湖景。从坐上椅子的那一刻起，你感觉如同安托內罗·达·梅西那（Antonello da Messina）笔下的圣·杰罗姆（San Girolamo）正望向湖面。一开始，这个房间似乎已经存在了好几个世纪。然而你仔细观察，你看到窗户的比例和水平的屋顶——这是现代建筑的主要发明。

你意识到这样一个紧凑的空间同时容纳了过去和现在，传统和完全前卫的元素。

在这座住宅里有很多耐人寻味的元素，例如在住宅正面围墙底部带台阶的开口，可以让狗对着汽车和人们吠叫。在另外一端，紧邻通向露台的楼梯设置了一个小型的悬挑平台，猫可以在上面看湖景。一座拥有专供动物使用设施的住宅无疑是相当特别的，强调了亲密的气氛和对家庭生活的礼赞。柯布西耶并不是一名功能主义者，而是一名现代人，所以他认为功能需要被安置于特定的空间内。另一方面，可以看到他经常试图去抵触这一原则，至少试图运用混杂的手法。例如在萨伏伊别墅的入口处有一个洗手池，位置很奇怪。在湖畔之家里，同样也有一处小洗手池设置在餐厅中，配有门和镜子。镜子的高度对于人脸过低，所以这样的设计其实是为了增强房间的空间感，抑或强调这一事实：通过开一扇小门，空间得以改变。这样的组合成为了空间中的一首诗、一首俳句：与一面大部分时间注意不到的镜子的不期而遇，以及一个在餐厅中的洗手池。你会感受到每一平方厘米都被仔细考虑来发掘表达的可能性。

在学生时期，我曾经在参观雷姆客库哈斯设计的鹿特丹美术馆时有相同的体验。所有的细节看上去都经过了思考。没有东西是用无聊的、不假思索的方式完成的。标识在地板上，栏杆扶手悬挂于天花板而不是立于地面，有的房间是倾斜的，楼板可以是透明的和悬挂着的，种种。

所有的东西都有一些扭曲。我在这里看到了库哈斯和柯布西耶之间的联结：他们的建筑都充盈着微观的叙事性：建筑建立在慷慨之上。

我认为这种设计方法能够帮助我们的身体和头脑保持活力。当代的空间是非常舒适的。你会非常容易就变成一个无动于衷的沙发土豆。你拥有一切，只需要去充满食物和冰块的厨房，其余不用做任何事情。因此，我认为好的建筑建立了一种将你带回有意识状态的方式，一种类似于在自然环境中的动物的状态，时刻面临着危险。显然建筑并不应是危险的，但它应该创造一个更强大的现实，并唤起一些迹象，让你保持清醒，质疑你的生活方式。某种意义上，好的建筑有一点像药物，它更加有趣和有意义地关注现实生活。

很多人认为柯布西耶的建筑，包括湖畔之家，是纯粹主义，甚至可能是粗野主义的。除了您刚才提到作品中运用的参考，这座建筑是简单的、纯净的、抽象的，大部分是灰色和白色，作为主要色彩区域的基底。有些人甚至认为它是冰冷的。这一点有没有困扰到您？

有些人或许认为柯布的建筑是朴素的，或者说是不友好的。我能理解为何人们这样说。然而，实际上柯布西耶本人正是如此。他伏于小桌子上书写重要的著作。他不是那种需要一张大桌子和豪华办公椅的首席执行官。他只需要一张椅子和一片可以在上面写作的木头。如果你有机会拜访他在巴黎的公寓，你会看到那张他伏于其上写就大部分书的桌子，一张非常谦逊的桌子。看一看他在其中去世的小木屋（Cabanon）也是极其简陋的。在建造那里的时候，他已经是世界之巅的建筑师了。

毋庸置疑他当时已是在世最重要的建筑师。他完全可以做很多，但他选择只建造这样一间小棚屋，与充满朋友的餐馆直接连接，通过裸体作画与游泳度过时间，别无他物。非常重要的是我们要明白，这个建筑是由一个建筑师制作的，他对什么是必要的，什么不是，什么是有价值的，什么没有，有着某种程度上的诚实见解。如果将他与今天建筑舞台上的主要角色相比，他是完全不一样的。他是那样一种人，“所见即所得”。我非常欣赏他的这一点品质。

另一件关于你的问题，和人们在面对勒-柯布西耶的建筑时会产生的约束感的事情，是精神上的灵活性的问题。当建造住宅时，人们通常并不清楚他们灵活使用几乎任何类型空间的潜力。往往客户想知道他的网球拍会精确地放在哪个位置。而实际上作为建筑师这并不是我们应当思考的问题，因为也许明天客户就会停止训练网球，或者他会开始练习曲棍球怎么办？挂钩会变大。那么之前特别设计的网球拍架该作何用？大部分人通常会通过功能模式来理解空间，他们并没有勇气询问你如何做一个让人更开心的住宅或者一个和羊毛一样轻盈的住宅。平底锅放在厨房的哪里对他们是更重要的问题，尽管建筑师知道并不是。但是同样地，所谓的朴素与简洁是对建筑是基于内置的复杂性这一事实的强调：它在视觉上保持简洁，但总是可以在其中发现新的空间纬度、事物之间新的联系，而这种看似简单的东西正是建筑的本质。

现在让我们从另外一个视角来看。住宅实际上将多样的活动用建筑元素表达出来。正如您所言，您将此视作积极的方面。那么什么时候您会觉得有些过度？一个人在住宅里承载的细节或姿态的极限是什么，才会令人感到厌烦？

有一次我参观了一座位于根特（Ghent）郊区的住宅，类似于根特的比佛利山庄地区。拥有这座住宅的夫妇曾经在市中心拥有一套极佳的17或18世纪公寓。公寓里充斥着古画、艺术品和漂亮的家具。在某个时刻，他们找到了一名建筑师，告诉他他们打算卖掉所有物品来盖一栋现代风格的别墅，同时建筑师将亲自选择放在别墅里的每一样物件。显然地，他挑选了所有物品，甚至包括烟灰缸和墙上的艺术品。如果是我来做这些决定我会发狂。怎会有办法为别人选择合适的艺术品？如果你不能为自己挑选艺术品，那么你就不需要艺术品。我认为这是一个将居住空间转换成了展示空间的走偏的例子。

另外一个极端是当建筑师提出没有用途、没有功能、只是可自由使用的区域，这同样会带来问题。我认为湖畔之家是在中间地带，它非常平衡。这座建筑处理真实的生活和真实的物件，并不追求完美。它由普通的东西组成，大部分的家具是柯布母亲原有的古典家具。

基于此，我看到了湖畔之家与路易客康的费舍住宅（Fisher House）之间的相似性。我在数年之前参观过费舍住宅，如今费舍夫妇仍然居住在内。他们都是友善温暖的人。每三周他们开放一次参观，不管来客是一车建筑师或只是一名学生——如我当时一样，你需要的只是提前充分地知会他们，然后一切就安排妥当。

那扇著名的转角窗在照片里背后总是空的。显然这并不符合现实。在窗后有物件、雕塑，那是他们在墨西哥度蜜月时购入的或是其他，但这所有一切并没有降低建筑的品质。这确实是一座明显满足你作为建筑师的思想和智识野心的住宅，但最终你会去那里和你的家人生活在其中，不用考虑建筑问题，它本身就运作得很好。

设想你满身疲惫地下班回家，只想小酌一杯，听着音乐放空自己。你并不总是希望去欣赏屋内的雕塑。如果你住在伟大的作品之中，那很棒，你非常幸运，但你不会想要这个伟大的作品占据着你的脑海或者整个生活。正是因为你可以忘了建筑并且只是生活在那里，它成为了伟大的作品。最重要的提示永远在第二位出现，而不是首位。

我认为柯布西耶的目标不是建造神圣的事物，而是让日常的生活变得很酷。这是关于建筑如何将品质带入每天的生活之中的。我并不是说生活在一个装载着你所相信的价值观的空间里不重要。我只是想强调，如果它被置于首要条件，以一种示范性的方式，那它就会成为困住你的陷阱。当建筑在大叫“看，我是一件伟大的作品”的时候，我就会对它失去兴趣。终归，我会很开心的访问它一次，像它是一座博物馆。一座好的住宅的目标必须是能够提供轻松的生活方式，而不是让人一直被例外所提醒。日常的生活所需的简单性当然不会排除复杂性。我可以给你另外一个艺术世界的例子。我爱《格尔尼卡（Guernica）》这幅画，但我不想和它一起生活在我的客厅里，我会被它弄得精疲力竭。能考虑到这一点是非常重要的。你的住宅是否支配了你的生活？它是否将你变换成雅克·塔蒂（Jacques Tati）的电影《我的舅舅（Mon Oncle）》中的角色？部分当然是，但它任然需要和庸常相关联。这才是真正的区别。

你是否在自己的设计作品中运用过湖畔之家中的比例系统？

我们从未试图在一整个建筑中运用同一套比例系统——例如模数系统。瓦奇尼（Vacchini） 这样做了，他在自己的作品中使用了模数，甚至在剖面上重现了他的符号。我从未如此做过。不管怎样，我仍然认为比例是我们拥有的最重要的表达工具之一。在工作室中，如果我看到了一幅比例良好的图纸，我们计算它的比例，往往得出这是一个古典比例的变体。就我个人而言，我十分喜爱正方形对角线的比例（1:1.41）。这是非常美丽的比例，至少我认为。我并不会将使用这些古典比例置于设计的优先级，但是我十分清楚它们的存在。

柯布西耶阐释道，在他的建筑中，比例系统决定所有。举例而言，在拉图雷特修道院中他发明了“不可言喻的空间”的概念。解释为在某个时刻，当空间的所有元素被某种制度或事物之间的关系系统所规范和定义时，空间就会开始辐射，从而到达了所谓“不可言喻的空间”的状态。阅读这些你会说：又是建筑师的扯淡！但是在拉图雷特修道院中，确实能拥有一种非常独特的体验。就元素而言，它与别的建筑并无不同——楼梯，不同的标高以及在粗混凝土盒子内的一些色彩，但一些特别的事情的确发生了。

关于比例，另一个奇妙之处是它有其作用，介入于所有的项目中。设想你在做一个项目，你总是在与一系列的可测量数据打交道，例如造价、面积、材料数量和功能，但同时你也在处理完全不可测量的数据——如美学和感受等等。在可测量和不可测量的数据汇合的交叉点，调和的结果是比例，是在测量值或者事物之间的比率。从定义上来说，比例是量度之间的关系，有时这样有时那样。柯布西耶完美地解释了精确地理解这些关于比例的决定是如何让建筑开口说话的。比例要么让你害怕，要么让你发笑。

在文章开头我提到过柯布西耶代表了我所认为的建筑师应该成为的人。他控制两个领域——可测量和不可测量——并在平凡无奇的事物中创造美丽。比例问题位于上述论点的交汇之处，所以这或许是为何柯布西耶如此执着于此。

2020年1月23日

Eric Lapierre: Villa „Le Lac” is far less famous than Villa Savoye, the official masterpiece by Le Corbusier, but what I appreciate more in the „Petite Maison” is its modesty and the fact it gives beginners, young architects, a lot of hope. It tells you that a masterpiece can be designed without precious materials or a large scale. It proves that good architecture is like a good book. A fantastic story can be told using just paper and ink. 

The actual size of the house is objectively small - only sixty-four square meters, but the mental picture created is one of a much bigger space. By that, I refer to how the different atmospheres you experience play a role in your overall idea of the house and in your memory. This begins with the garden and the surrounding wall; the garden is very much part of the house and thanks to the entrance loggia and outside lounge it directly relates to the interior and all its functions: the garden is the house. Emphasizing this room like quality, towards the lake, a traditionally proportioned window pierces the garden wall, offering a view outward, into the landscape.

The presence of landscape is crucial; the Alps fall directly into the lake opposite the house and in doing so, transform your perception of scale. You immediately understand that the real limit of the house are the mountains in the distance. Ultimately, over time, how one lives with and observes this rich, dynamic environment is the main topic of the house. It’s beautiful and captivating, not only because of the landscape’s monumentality, but also in the way it continuously changes through each day and season.

I remember a very good text in which Bruno Reichlin noted that the long horizontal window in Villa „Le Lac” tended to flatten the landscape, because it hides the foreground and a part of the sky. This actually makes the interior much more intimate. The landscape is at once real, but also fake, like a printed image. With a vertical or full height window, you would see the ground and more of the sky. You would have the complete depth of field of the perspective, and, in a way, you would feel much more outside. 

It was his mother’s house. She didn’t want to be totally exposed and live in a house that challenged her all the time. She wanted a normal cosy building, with her own old furniture, a dog and a cat. That’s why it’s loaded with seemingly unspectacular intentions. It seems a banal, almost ordinary building, but is as well an exceptional piece of high architecture. Another proof that banality is the condition of newness. 

REGARDLESS OF SPECTACULAR SURROUNDINGS AND THE WINDOW THAT FRAMES IT, WHAT MAKES THE HOUSE ITSELF SPECIAL?

I appreciate, in this house and in Le Corbusier’s oeuvre generally, the huge number of different references conveyed spatially and physically. Firstly, it condenses many different periods of time into one. The bedroom he built for himself as an expansion of the Villa some years later is a pure demonstration of this. It’s a tiny space made of wood painted blue-grey (the same colour as the landscape in the distance), in which you have the famous little platform, chair and a tiny desk that allowed Le Corbusier to work while looking at the lake through a horizontal window. As soon as you sit on that chair, you feel like San Girolamo painted by Ántonello da Messina, looking at the lake. At first it seems that this room existed there for centuries. Then you look carefully, and you see the proportions of the window, the flat roof - main inventions of modern architecture. 

You realise that this very compact space contains the past, the present, conventional and completely avant-garde elements.

There are many intriguing elements in the house, for example the opening in the lower part of the perimeter wall at the front of the house with a stair to allow the dog to bark at cars and people. On the opposite side, next to the stair going up to the terrace you have a little suspended platform, which allows the cat to look at the lake. A house with special devices dedicated to animals; that’s exceptional and really emphasises the atmosphere of intimacy and celebration of family life. Le Corbusier was not a functionalist, but he was a modern man, so he thought that the functions needed to be located in specific spaces. On the other hand, you can see that he often tended to contradict it, or at least blend things together. For instance, in the entrance space of Villa Savoye you have a basin for washing your hands in a strange location. In Villa „Le Lac”, you also have a little wash basin with a door and a mirror in the dining room. It is too low to really check your face, so it’s just to make this room more spacious or to underline that by opening a small door, you can modify the space: a little poem, like a haiku, made of this strange meeting of a mirror, that is invisible most of the time invisible, and a wash basin in a dining room. You have a feeling that each square centimeter has been considered as a possibility for expression. 

As a student, I had the same experience when I first visited Rem Koolhaas’ Kunsthaus in Rotterdam. Every detail of it seemed to have been thought through. Nothing appeared to be done in a boring, automatic way. The signage was on the floor, the handrail was suspended from the ceiling - and not coming from the ground, rooms where sometimes oblique, the floor could be transparent and suspended, and so on.

Everything was a bit twisted. I saw a link between Koolhaas and Le Corbusier. Their buildings are really full of small narratives: architecture rests on generosity. 

I think this method of design helps to keep our bodies and minds active. Contemporary spaces are very comfortable. You can very easily turn into a kind of apathetic couch potato. You have everything, you just go to the kitchen, it’s full of food and ice; you don’t have to do anything. Therefore, I think, good architecture is a way of bringing you into a state of awareness, similar to the one when you were an animal in the natural environment, full of danger. Obviously, architecture should not be dangerous, but it should create a stronger reality and conjure up signs to keep you awake and question how you live. In a way, good architecture is a bit like a drug, it focuses reality in a funnier and more meaningful way. 

MANY CONSIDER LE CORBUSIER’S ARCHITECTURE, INCLUDING VILLA „LE LAC” TO BE PURIST, PERHAPS EVEN BRUTAL. DESPITE THE REFERENCES THAT YOU SAY ARE CONTAINED IN THE WORK, IT IS SIMPLE, CLEAN, ABSTRACT, AND MOSTLY GREY OR WHITE, SAVE FOR THE AREAS PAINTED WITH PRIMARY COLOURS. SOME WOULD EVEN SAY IT’S COLD. DOES THIS BOTHER YOU? 

Some people might think his architecture is austere, or difficult. I understand one can say this. However, Le Corbusier himself was like this. He wrote important books on small desks. He was not the kind of person that needed a big table with a lounge chair, like a CEO. He just needed a chair and a piece of horizontal wood to write on it. If you visit his apartment in Paris, you see the desk on which he wrote the majority of his books. It’s very modest. Have a look at Cabanon where he died, it is again extremely rudimentary. At the time when he built it, he was really on the top of the world.

Without any doubt he was the most important living architect. He could have made many things, but instead he just built this small hut, directly linked to a restaurant full of friends, spending time painting naked, and swimming, nothing more. It is very important to understand that this architecture was made by an architect that had a certain honest opinion of what is necessary and what is not, what is valuable and what is not. If you compare him to the main protagonists of today’s architecture, he was totally different. He was a guy „what you see is what you get”. I really appreciate this quality in him.

Another thing concerning your question, and the impression of austerity one can have while confronted with Le Corbusier’s architecture is the issue of mental flexibility. When you make a house, people are usually not aware of their own potential to fit and adapt to almost any kind of space. Often a client wants to know where exactly his tennis racket will be stored. In reality, as architects, it’s not something we really should be thinking about, because maybe tomorrow he will stop practicing tennis. And what if he starts hockey? The stick is larger, what will you do with your special tennis racket shelf? Functional pattern is the way most people can grasp space. The majority wouldn’t dare to ask you to make a house that will make them feel happier or make a house that would be as light as cool clothes. The place where the pan will be in the kitchen is more important usually. Even though we know it’s not. But also, that supposed austerity and simplicity are ways of underlining that architecture rests always on a kind of imploded complexity: it is visually simple but then you always discover new dimensions of the space, new relationships between things, and this seemingly simplicity is the essence of architecture.

LET’S NOW LOOK AT IT FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE. THE HOUSE IN FACT ARTICULATES DIVERSE ACTIVITIES WITH ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS, AND AS YOU EXPLAINED, YOU SEE IT AS A POSITIVE ASPECT. WHEN DO YOU THINK IT CAN BECOME EXCESSIVE, WHERE IS THE LIMIT OF THE DETAILS OR GESTURES ONE PACKS INTO A HOUSE BEFORE IT GETS ANNOYING? 

I once visited a house in the outskirts of Ghent, a kind of Ghent Beverly Hills. The couple who owned it, used to have a fantastic 17th or 18th century apartment in the center of the city. It was full of old paintings, works of art and beautiful pieces of furniture. At some point, they went to an architect and told him they wanted to sell everything and build a contemporary house, in which he would choose everything inside. Apparently, he did, he chose everything. Even the ashtray, plates, and the works of art on the walls. I would get mad with such decisions. How can you choose the right work of art for someone else? If you are not able to choose a work of art for yourself, then you don’t need it. I think it’s an example of going way too far by transforming a domestic space into a showroom. 

Another extreme is when architects propose no use, no function, just a disposable area. This can also be problematic. I think Villa „Le Lac” is somewhere in between. It is very balanced.  The building works with the real life, with real objects and is not trying to be perfect. It’s also made with ordinary things. The furniture there, was mostly his mother’s original, classical pieces. 

Regarding this, I can see a similarity between Villa „Le Lac” and Fisher House by Louis Kahn. I visited it years ago when it was still inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Fisher. They were really cool, warm people. Every three weeks, they allowed a visit, regardless of if it was a bus of architects or just a single student - as I was. All you had to do, was write to them sufficiently in advance, and it was set. 

The famous corner window is always photographed empty. Obviously, it wasn’t like that in reality. There were objects, sculptures, things they bought in Mexico during their honeymoon or whatever, and all this did not undermine the quality of architecture. It’s really a house that obviously satisfies your mind and intellectual ambitions as an architect, but you could go and live there with your family that eventually, doesn’t mind about architecture and it would work very well. 

Imagine you come back from work, you are tired, you just want to have a drink, listen to a piece of music or just do nothing, relax. You don’t always want to admire the sculpture you live in. If you live in a masterpiece, that’s really cool, you’re really lucky, but you don’t want this masterpiece to occupy your mind for your whole life. It can be a masterpiece by the virtue that you can forget it and just live there. The most important hints are always in a second position, never in pole position.

I think the goal of Le Corbusier was not to build sacred things, it was to make daily life really cool. It was about the quality that architecture can bring to everyday life. I don’t say that it is not important to live in a space loaded with values that you believe in. I just want to stress that if it is made in the first row, in a demonstrative way, then it is like a trap in which you are stuck. When the building screams: „look, I’m a masterpiece” I am not interested in this. Eventually, I am happy to visit it once, as if it was a museum. It has to be the aim of a good house to live in a very light way, not to be constantly reminded about a state of exception. Daily life requires simplicity that doesn’t exclude, of course, complexity.

I will give you another example from the art world. I love Guernica, but I would not want to live with it in my living room. I would be exhausted by it. That’s a very important thing to consider. Does your house dictate how your life should be? Does it transpose you into Jacques Tati’s „Mon Oncle” character or not? Partly of course, but it needs to still be related to banality as well. That’s the real difference.

HAVE YOU TRIED APPLYING THE SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONS IN VILLA „LE LAC” TO YOUR OWN WORK? 

We have never tried to make a whole building with one proportional system - using the Modulor for instance. Vacchini did, he used the Modulor in his buildings, even representing his symbol in the sections. I never did such a thing. Anyway, I still think proportion is one of the most important expressive tools we have. In the office, when I see a well-proportioned drawing, we calculate what it is, and often it’s a classical variant. Personally, I really appreciate the diagonal of a square (1:1.41). It’s a very beautiful proportion. At least I like it. I don’t use these classical proportions as a priority, but I am quite aware of them.

Le Corbusier explains that in his architecture the proportional system defines everything. For instance, for La Tourette Church he invented the concept of „ineffable space”, explaining that at a certain moment when all the elements of the space are regulated and defined by a certain regime or system of relationships between things, the space starts to radiate, and you reach the point of a so called „ineffable space”. You read this and you say: more nonsense from an architect! But, in La Tourette Church, you really have a very specific experience. Elementally, it is not different to many buildings - you have some stairs, different levels and a few colours, all inside a box made of raw concrete, but something really happens there. 

What is also fascinating about proportion is the role it has in ordering all project inputs. When you imagine a project, you deal constantly with a whole range of data that are measurable like the cost, the area, quantities of materials, function, but you also deal with completely non measurable data - the beauty, the feeling etc. The result of the negotiation which occurs at the crossing point between measurable and non-measurable is a proportion, a ratio between measures or things. By definition, it’s a relationship of measures. Sometimes more this way, sometimes more that. Le Corbusier explains perfectly that understanding these decisions precisely enables a building to speak. The proportion will either frighten you or make you laugh. 

I mentioned at the beginning that Le Corbusier represents the idea of who I think an architect should be. It’s a person who controls these two realms - measurable and non-measurable and makes beauty from very prosaic things. Proportion is at the crossing of these arguments, and that’s probably why Le Corbusier involved himself with it so much.

23.01.2020

埃里克·拉皮埃尔: 相比于柯布西耶的“官方”代表作萨伏伊别墅，湖畔之家并没有那么大的名气。但我更为欣赏的是它作为“小房子”（Petite Maison）的谦逊和它带给事业刚起步的年轻建筑师的希望。它告诉人们可以在不使用贵重材料或大尺度的情况下设计出伟大的作品。它证明了好建筑就像一本好书，写作精彩的故事其实只需要纸和墨水即可。

客观上来看，湖畔之家的实际尺寸偏小——只有六十四平米面积，但它所创造的精神图景却扩展到了远大于此的空间。在这里我指的是，你所经历的不同氛围如何在你对住宅的整体想法和你的记忆中发挥作用。这开始于花园和环绕的围墙：花园本身是住宅的重要组成部分，通过入口门廊和室外休息区直接与室内各功能空间联系，花园即为住宅。为了强调这种房间一样的品质，朝着湖景，花园的围墙上开了一个传统比例的窗洞，提供面向外部景观的视野。

景观的存在是其中的关键：在住宅对面，阿尔卑斯山直坠湖中，转换了人对于尺度的感知。你会立刻理解到这幢住宅真正的极限是远处的山峦。从根本上来说，随着时间的推移，人如何观察并居住在这种丰富的动态环境中是这座住宅的主题。这是美丽且迷人的，不仅由于景观的纪念性，也在于它日复一日随着季节变迁持续的变化着。

我回忆起布鲁诺-赖希林（Bruno Reichlin）在一篇很不错的文章中指出，因为隐藏了前景和部分天空，湖畔之家的水平长窗有一种压平景观的趋向。而这实际上使得室内空间更加亲密。景观在某个当下是真实的，但也是虚幻的，像一幅打印的画面。如果使用了竖向或者通高的窗户，你将会看到地面和更多的天空，这样你会有完整的透视景深，而且，在某种程度上，你会更多的感觉到外界。

湖畔之家是柯布西耶母亲的住宅。她并不愿意生活在一个完全暴露并一直挑战她的生活习惯的住宅中。她需要的是一个正常的、舒适的建筑，能够容纳她的老家具、一只狗和一只猫。这正是为何湖畔之家体现的是似乎不起眼的设计意图。它貌似是一座庸常的、近乎普通的建筑，但同时也是出类拔萃的建筑作品。这又一次证明了，庸常是创新的条件。

除了壮观的周边环境和框起它的窗户之外，建筑本身有何特别之处？

在这座住宅和柯布西耶的全部作品中，我欣赏他在空间上和物质上对于不同参考的大量运用。首先，它将众多不同的时段浓缩在一起。作为对湖畔之家的扩建，数年后他为自己建造的卧室是一个极富代表性的例子。这个微小的空间使用了漆成灰蓝色的木头（和远处的景观一致的色彩），在这里有著名的平台、椅子以及小桌子，可以让柯布西耶一边工作一边通过水平向的窗户欣赏湖景。从坐上椅子的那一刻起，你感觉如同安托內罗·达·梅西那（Antonello da Messina）笔下的圣·杰罗姆（San Girolamo）正望向湖面。一开始，这个房间似乎已经存在了好几个世纪。然而你仔细观察，你看到窗户的比例和水平的屋顶——这是现代建筑的主要发明。

你意识到这样一个紧凑的空间同时容纳了过去和现在，传统和完全前卫的元素。

在这座住宅里有很多耐人寻味的元素，例如在住宅正面围墙底部带台阶的开口，可以让狗对着汽车和人们吠叫。在另外一端，紧邻通向露台的楼梯设置了一个小型的悬挑平台，猫可以在上面看湖景。一座拥有专供动物使用设施的住宅无疑是相当特别的，强调了亲密的气氛和对家庭生活的礼赞。柯布西耶并不是一名功能主义者，而是一名现代人，所以他认为功能需要被安置于特定的空间内。另一方面，可以看到他经常试图去抵触这一原则，至少试图运用混杂的手法。例如在萨伏伊别墅的入口处有一个洗手池，位置很奇怪。在湖畔之家里，同样也有一处小洗手池设置在餐厅中，配有门和镜子。镜子的高度对于人脸过低，所以这样的设计其实是为了增强房间的空间感，抑或强调这一事实：通过开一扇小门，空间得以改变。这样的组合成为了空间中的一首诗、一首俳句：与一面大部分时间注意不到的镜子的不期而遇，以及一个在餐厅中的洗手池。你会感受到每一平方厘米都被仔细考虑来发掘表达的可能性。

在学生时期，我曾经在参观雷姆客库哈斯设计的鹿特丹美术馆时有相同的体验。所有的细节看上去都经过了思考。没有东西是用无聊的、不假思索的方式完成的。标识在地板上，栏杆扶手悬挂于天花板而不是立于地面，有的房间是倾斜的，楼板可以是透明的和悬挂着的，种种。

所有的东西都有一些扭曲。我在这里看到了库哈斯和柯布西耶之间的联结：他们的建筑都充盈着微观的叙事性：建筑建立在慷慨之上。

我认为这种设计方法能够帮助我们的身体和头脑保持活力。当代的空间是非常舒适的。你会非常容易就变成一个无动于衷的沙发土豆。你拥有一切，只需要去充满食物和冰块的厨房，其余不用做任何事情。因此，我认为好的建筑建立了一种将你带回有意识状态的方式，一种类似于在自然环境中的动物的状态，时刻面临着危险。显然建筑并不应是危险的，但它应该创造一个更强大的现实，并唤起一些迹象，让你保持清醒，质疑你的生活方式。某种意义上，好的建筑有一点像药物，它更加有趣和有意义地关注现实生活。

很多人认为柯布西耶的建筑，包括湖畔之家，是纯粹主义，甚至可能是粗野主义的。除了您刚才提到作品中运用的参考，这座建筑是简单的、纯净的、抽象的，大部分是灰色和白色，作为主要色彩区域的基底。有些人甚至认为它是冰冷的。这一点有没有困扰到您？

有些人或许认为柯布的建筑是朴素的，或者说是不友好的。我能理解为何人们这样说。然而，实际上柯布西耶本人正是如此。他伏于小桌子上书写重要的著作。他不是那种需要一张大桌子和豪华办公椅的首席执行官。他只需要一张椅子和一片可以在上面写作的木头。如果你有机会拜访他在巴黎的公寓，你会看到那张他伏于其上写就大部分书的桌子，一张非常谦逊的桌子。看一看他在其中去世的小木屋（Cabanon）也是极其简陋的。在建造那里的时候，他已经是世界之巅的建筑师了。

毋庸置疑他当时已是在世最重要的建筑师。他完全可以做很多，但他选择只建造这样一间小棚屋，与充满朋友的餐馆直接连接，通过裸体作画与游泳度过时间，别无他物。非常重要的是我们要明白，这个建筑是由一个建筑师制作的，他对什么是必要的，什么不是，什么是有价值的，什么没有，有着某种程度上的诚实见解。如果将他与今天建筑舞台上的主要角色相比，他是完全不一样的。他是那样一种人，“所见即所得”。我非常欣赏他的这一点品质。

另一件关于你的问题，和人们在面对勒-柯布西耶的建筑时会产生的约束感的事情，是精神上的灵活性的问题。当建造住宅时，人们通常并不清楚他们灵活使用几乎任何类型空间的潜力。往往客户想知道他的网球拍会精确地放在哪个位置。而实际上作为建筑师这并不是我们应当思考的问题，因为也许明天客户就会停止训练网球，或者他会开始练习曲棍球怎么办？挂钩会变大。那么之前特别设计的网球拍架该作何用？大部分人通常会通过功能模式来理解空间，他们并没有勇气询问你如何做一个让人更开心的住宅或者一个和羊毛一样轻盈的住宅。平底锅放在厨房的哪里对他们是更重要的问题，尽管建筑师知道并不是。但是同样地，所谓的朴素与简洁是对建筑是基于内置的复杂性这一事实的强调：它在视觉上保持简洁，但总是可以在其中发现新的空间纬度、事物之间新的联系，而这种看似简单的东西正是建筑的本质。

现在让我们从另外一个视角来看。住宅实际上将多样的活动用建筑元素表达出来。正如您所言，您将此视作积极的方面。那么什么时候您会觉得有些过度？一个人在住宅里承载的细节或姿态的极限是什么，才会令人感到厌烦？

有一次我参观了一座位于根特（Ghent）郊区的住宅，类似于根特的比佛利山庄地区。拥有这座住宅的夫妇曾经在市中心拥有一套极佳的17或18世纪公寓。公寓里充斥着古画、艺术品和漂亮的家具。在某个时刻，他们找到了一名建筑师，告诉他他们打算卖掉所有物品来盖一栋现代风格的别墅，同时建筑师将亲自选择放在别墅里的每一样物件。显然地，他挑选了所有物品，甚至包括烟灰缸和墙上的艺术品。如果是我来做这些决定我会发狂。怎会有办法为别人选择合适的艺术品？如果你不能为自己挑选艺术品，那么你就不需要艺术品。我认为这是一个将居住空间转换成了展示空间的走偏的例子。

另外一个极端是当建筑师提出没有用途、没有功能、只是可自由使用的区域，这同样会带来问题。我认为湖畔之家是在中间地带，它非常平衡。这座建筑处理真实的生活和真实的物件，并不追求完美。它由普通的东西组成，大部分的家具是柯布母亲原有的古典家具。

基于此，我看到了湖畔之家与路易客康的费舍住宅（Fisher House）之间的相似性。我在数年之前参观过费舍住宅，如今费舍夫妇仍然居住在内。他们都是友善温暖的人。每三周他们开放一次参观，不管来客是一车建筑师或只是一名学生——如我当时一样，你需要的只是提前充分地知会他们，然后一切就安排妥当。

那扇著名的转角窗在照片里背后总是空的。显然这并不符合现实。在窗后有物件、雕塑，那是他们在墨西哥度蜜月时购入的或是其他，但这所有一切并没有降低建筑的品质。这确实是一座明显满足你作为建筑师的思想和智识野心的住宅，但最终你会去那里和你的家人生活在其中，不用考虑建筑问题，它本身就运作得很好。

设想你满身疲惫地下班回家，只想小酌一杯，听着音乐放空自己。你并不总是希望去欣赏屋内的雕塑。如果你住在伟大的作品之中，那很棒，你非常幸运，但你不会想要这个伟大的作品占据着你的脑海或者整个生活。正是因为你可以忘了建筑并且只是生活在那里，它成为了伟大的作品。最重要的提示永远在第二位出现，而不是首位。

我认为柯布西耶的目标不是建造神圣的事物，而是让日常的生活变得很酷。这是关于建筑如何将品质带入每天的生活之中的。我并不是说生活在一个装载着你所相信的价值观的空间里不重要。我只是想强调，如果它被置于首要条件，以一种示范性的方式，那它就会成为困住你的陷阱。当建筑在大叫“看，我是一件伟大的作品”的时候，我就会对它失去兴趣。终归，我会很开心的访问它一次，像它是一座博物馆。一座好的住宅的目标必须是能够提供轻松的生活方式，而不是让人一直被例外所提醒。日常的生活所需的简单性当然不会排除复杂性。我可以给你另外一个艺术世界的例子。我爱《格尔尼卡（Guernica）》这幅画，但我不想和它一起生活在我的客厅里，我会被它弄得精疲力竭。能考虑到这一点是非常重要的。你的住宅是否支配了你的生活？它是否将你变换成雅克·塔蒂（Jacques Tati）的电影《我的舅舅（Mon Oncle）》中的角色？部分当然是，但它任然需要和庸常相关联。这才是真正的区别。

你是否在自己的设计作品中运用过湖畔之家中的比例系统？

我们从未试图在一整个建筑中运用同一套比例系统——例如模数系统。瓦奇尼（Vacchini） 这样做了，他在自己的作品中使用了模数，甚至在剖面上重现了他的符号。我从未如此做过。不管怎样，我仍然认为比例是我们拥有的最重要的表达工具之一。在工作室中，如果我看到了一幅比例良好的图纸，我们计算它的比例，往往得出这是一个古典比例的变体。就我个人而言，我十分喜爱正方形对角线的比例（1:1.41）。这是非常美丽的比例，至少我认为。我并不会将使用这些古典比例置于设计的优先级，但是我十分清楚它们的存在。

柯布西耶阐释道，在他的建筑中，比例系统决定所有。举例而言，在拉图雷特修道院中他发明了“不可言喻的空间”的概念。解释为在某个时刻，当空间的所有元素被某种制度或事物之间的关系系统所规范和定义时，空间就会开始辐射，从而到达了所谓“不可言喻的空间”的状态。阅读这些你会说：又是建筑师的扯淡！但是在拉图雷特修道院中，确实能拥有一种非常独特的体验。就元素而言，它与别的建筑并无不同——楼梯，不同的标高以及在粗混凝土盒子内的一些色彩，但一些特别的事情的确发生了。

关于比例，另一个奇妙之处是它有其作用，介入于所有的项目中。设想你在做一个项目，你总是在与一系列的可测量数据打交道，例如造价、面积、材料数量和功能，但同时你也在处理完全不可测量的数据——如美学和感受等等。在可测量和不可测量的数据汇合的交叉点，调和的结果是比例，是在测量值或者事物之间的比率。从定义上来说，比例是量度之间的关系，有时这样有时那样。柯布西耶完美地解释了精确地理解这些关于比例的决定是如何让建筑开口说话的。比例要么让你害怕，要么让你发笑。

在文章开头我提到过柯布西耶代表了我所认为的建筑师应该成为的人。他控制两个领域——可测量和不可测量——并在平凡无奇的事物中创造美丽。比例问题位于上述论点的交汇之处，所以这或许是为何柯布西耶如此执着于此。

2020年1月23日

Eric Lapierre: Villa „Le Lac” is far less famous than Villa Savoye, the official masterpiece by Le Corbusier, but what I appreciate more in the „Petite Maison” is its modesty and the fact it gives beginners, young architects, a lot of hope. It tells you that a masterpiece can be designed without precious materials or a large scale. It proves that good architecture is like a good book. A fantastic story can be told using just paper and ink. 

The actual size of the house is objectively small - only sixty-four square meters, but the mental picture created is one of a much bigger space. By that, I refer to how the different atmospheres you experience play a role in your overall idea of the house and in your memory. This begins with the garden and the surrounding wall; the garden is very much part of the house and thanks to the entrance loggia and outside lounge it directly relates to the interior and all its functions: the garden is the house. Emphasizing this room like quality, towards the lake, a traditionally proportioned window pierces the garden wall, offering a view outward, into the landscape.

The presence of landscape is crucial; the Alps fall directly into the lake opposite the house and in doing so, transform your perception of scale. You immediately understand that the real limit of the house are the mountains in the distance. Ultimately, over time, how one lives with and observes this rich, dynamic environment is the main topic of the house. It’s beautiful and captivating, not only because of the landscape’s monumentality, but also in the way it continuously changes through each day and season.

I remember a very good text in which Bruno Reichlin noted that the long horizontal window in Villa „Le Lac” tended to flatten the landscape, because it hides the foreground and a part of the sky. This actually makes the interior much more intimate. The landscape is at once real, but also fake, like a printed image. With a vertical or full height window, you would see the ground and more of the sky. You would have the complete depth of field of the perspective, and, in a way, you would feel much more outside. 

It was his mother’s house. She didn’t want to be totally exposed and live in a house that challenged her all the time. She wanted a normal cosy building, with her own old furniture, a dog and a cat. That’s why it’s loaded with seemingly unspectacular intentions. It seems a banal, almost ordinary building, but is as well an exceptional piece of high architecture. Another proof that banality is the condition of newness. 

REGARDLESS OF SPECTACULAR SURROUNDINGS AND THE WINDOW THAT FRAMES IT, WHAT MAKES THE HOUSE ITSELF SPECIAL?

I appreciate, in this house and in Le Corbusier’s oeuvre generally, the huge number of different references conveyed spatially and physically. Firstly, it condenses many different periods of time into one. The bedroom he built for himself as an expansion of the Villa some years later is a pure demonstration of this. It’s a tiny space made of wood painted blue-grey (the same colour as the landscape in the distance), in which you have the famous little platform, chair and a tiny desk that allowed Le Corbusier to work while looking at the lake through a horizontal window. As soon as you sit on that chair, you feel like San Girolamo painted by Ántonello da Messina, looking at the lake. At first it seems that this room existed there for centuries. Then you look carefully, and you see the proportions of the window, the flat roof - main inventions of modern architecture. 

You realise that this very compact space contains the past, the present, conventional and completely avant-garde elements.

There are many intriguing elements in the house, for example the opening in the lower part of the perimeter wall at the front of the house with a stair to allow the dog to bark at cars and people. On the opposite side, next to the stair going up to the terrace you have a little suspended platform, which allows the cat to look at the lake. A house with special devices dedicated to animals; that’s exceptional and really emphasises the atmosphere of intimacy and celebration of family life. Le Corbusier was not a functionalist, but he was a modern man, so he thought that the functions needed to be located in specific spaces. On the other hand, you can see that he often tended to contradict it, or at least blend things together. For instance, in the entrance space of Villa Savoye you have a basin for washing your hands in a strange location. In Villa „Le Lac”, you also have a little wash basin with a door and a mirror in the dining room. It is too low to really check your face, so it’s just to make this room more spacious or to underline that by opening a small door, you can modify the space: a little poem, like a haiku, made of this strange meeting of a mirror, that is invisible most of the time invisible, and a wash basin in a dining room. You have a feeling that each square centimeter has been considered as a possibility for expression. 

As a student, I had the same experience when I first visited Rem Koolhaas’ Kunsthaus in Rotterdam. Every detail of it seemed to have been thought through. Nothing appeared to be done in a boring, automatic way. The signage was on the floor, the handrail was suspended from the ceiling - and not coming from the ground, rooms where sometimes oblique, the floor could be transparent and suspended, and so on.

Everything was a bit twisted. I saw a link between Koolhaas and Le Corbusier. Their buildings are really full of small narratives: architecture rests on generosity. 

I think this method of design helps to keep our bodies and minds active. Contemporary spaces are very comfortable. You can very easily turn into a kind of apathetic couch potato. You have everything, you just go to the kitchen, it’s full of food and ice; you don’t have to do anything. Therefore, I think, good architecture is a way of bringing you into a state of awareness, similar to the one when you were an animal in the natural environment, full of danger. Obviously, architecture should not be dangerous, but it should create a stronger reality and conjure up signs to keep you awake and question how you live. In a way, good architecture is a bit like a drug, it focuses reality in a funnier and more meaningful way. 

MANY CONSIDER LE CORBUSIER’S ARCHITECTURE, INCLUDING VILLA „LE LAC” TO BE PURIST, PERHAPS EVEN BRUTAL. DESPITE THE REFERENCES THAT YOU SAY ARE CONTAINED IN THE WORK, IT IS SIMPLE, CLEAN, ABSTRACT, AND MOSTLY GREY OR WHITE, SAVE FOR THE AREAS PAINTED WITH PRIMARY COLOURS. SOME WOULD EVEN SAY IT’S COLD. DOES THIS BOTHER YOU? 

Some people might think his architecture is austere, or difficult. I understand one can say this. However, Le Corbusier himself was like this. He wrote important books on small desks. He was not the kind of person that needed a big table with a lounge chair, like a CEO. He just needed a chair and a piece of horizontal wood to write on it. If you visit his apartment in Paris, you see the desk on which he wrote the majority of his books. It’s very modest. Have a look at Cabanon where he died, it is again extremely rudimentary. At the time when he built it, he was really on the top of the world.

Without any doubt he was the most important living architect. He could have made many things, but instead he just built this small hut, directly linked to a restaurant full of friends, spending time painting naked, and swimming, nothing more. It is very important to understand that this architecture was made by an architect that had a certain honest opinion of what is necessary and what is not, what is valuable and what is not. If you compare him to the main protagonists of today’s architecture, he was totally different. He was a guy „what you see is what you get”. I really appreciate this quality in him.

Another thing concerning your question, and the impression of austerity one can have while confronted with Le Corbusier’s architecture is the issue of mental flexibility. When you make a house, people are usually not aware of their own potential to fit and adapt to almost any kind of space. Often a client wants to know where exactly his tennis racket will be stored. In reality, as architects, it’s not something we really should be thinking about, because maybe tomorrow he will stop practicing tennis. And what if he starts hockey? The stick is larger, what will you do with your special tennis racket shelf? Functional pattern is the way most people can grasp space. The majority wouldn’t dare to ask you to make a house that will make them feel happier or make a house that would be as light as cool clothes. The place where the pan will be in the kitchen is more important usually. Even though we know it’s not. But also, that supposed austerity and simplicity are ways of underlining that architecture rests always on a kind of imploded complexity: it is visually simple but then you always discover new dimensions of the space, new relationships between things, and this seemingly simplicity is the essence of architecture.

LET’S NOW LOOK AT IT FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE. THE HOUSE IN FACT ARTICULATES DIVERSE ACTIVITIES WITH ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS, AND AS YOU EXPLAINED, YOU SEE IT AS A POSITIVE ASPECT. WHEN DO YOU THINK IT CAN BECOME EXCESSIVE, WHERE IS THE LIMIT OF THE DETAILS OR GESTURES ONE PACKS INTO A HOUSE BEFORE IT GETS ANNOYING? 

I once visited a house in the outskirts of Ghent, a kind of Ghent Beverly Hills. The couple who owned it, used to have a fantastic 17th or 18th century apartment in the center of the city. It was full of old paintings, works of art and beautiful pieces of furniture. At some point, they went to an architect and told him they wanted to sell everything and build a contemporary house, in which he would choose everything inside. Apparently, he did, he chose everything. Even the ashtray, plates, and the works of art on the walls. I would get mad with such decisions. How can you choose the right work of art for someone else? If you are not able to choose a work of art for yourself, then you don’t need it. I think it’s an example of going way too far by transforming a domestic space into a showroom. 

Another extreme is when architects propose no use, no function, just a disposable area. This can also be problematic. I think Villa „Le Lac” is somewhere in between. It is very balanced.  The building works with the real life, with real objects and is not trying to be perfect. It’s also made with ordinary things. The furniture there, was mostly his mother’s original, classical pieces. 

Regarding this, I can see a similarity between Villa „Le Lac” and Fisher House by Louis Kahn. I visited it years ago when it was still inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Fisher. They were really cool, warm people. Every three weeks, they allowed a visit, regardless of if it was a bus of architects or just a single student - as I was. All you had to do, was write to them sufficiently in advance, and it was set. 

The famous corner window is always photographed empty. Obviously, it wasn’t like that in reality. There were objects, sculptures, things they bought in Mexico during their honeymoon or whatever, and all this did not undermine the quality of architecture. It’s really a house that obviously satisfies your mind and intellectual ambitions as an architect, but you could go and live there with your family that eventually, doesn’t mind about architecture and it would work very well. 

Imagine you come back from work, you are tired, you just want to have a drink, listen to a piece of music or just do nothing, relax. You don’t always want to admire the sculpture you live in. If you live in a masterpiece, that’s really cool, you’re really lucky, but you don’t want this masterpiece to occupy your mind for your whole life. It can be a masterpiece by the virtue that you can forget it and just live there. The most important hints are always in a second position, never in pole position.

I think the goal of Le Corbusier was not to build sacred things, it was to make daily life really cool. It was about the quality that architecture can bring to everyday life. I don’t say that it is not important to live in a space loaded with values that you believe in. I just want to stress that if it is made in the first row, in a demonstrative way, then it is like a trap in which you are stuck. When the building screams: „look, I’m a masterpiece” I am not interested in this. Eventually, I am happy to visit it once, as if it was a museum. It has to be the aim of a good house to live in a very light way, not to be constantly reminded about a state of exception. Daily life requires simplicity that doesn’t exclude, of course, complexity.

I will give you another example from the art world. I love Guernica, but I would not want to live with it in my living room. I would be exhausted by it. That’s a very important thing to consider. Does your house dictate how your life should be? Does it transpose you into Jacques Tati’s „Mon Oncle” character or not? Partly of course, but it needs to still be related to banality as well. That’s the real difference.

HAVE YOU TRIED APPLYING THE SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONS IN VILLA „LE LAC” TO YOUR OWN WORK? 

We have never tried to make a whole building with one proportional system - using the Modulor for instance. Vacchini did, he used the Modulor in his buildings, even representing his symbol in the sections. I never did such a thing. Anyway, I still think proportion is one of the most important expressive tools we have. In the office, when I see a well-proportioned drawing, we calculate what it is, and often it’s a classical variant. Personally, I really appreciate the diagonal of a square (1:1.41). It’s a very beautiful proportion. At least I like it. I don’t use these classical proportions as a priority, but I am quite aware of them.

Le Corbusier explains that in his architecture the proportional system defines everything. For instance, for La Tourette Church he invented the concept of „ineffable space”, explaining that at a certain moment when all the elements of the space are regulated and defined by a certain regime or system of relationships between things, the space starts to radiate, and you reach the point of a so called „ineffable space”. You read this and you say: more nonsense from an architect! But, in La Tourette Church, you really have a very specific experience. Elementally, it is not different to many buildings - you have some stairs, different levels and a few colours, all inside a box made of raw concrete, but something really happens there. 

What is also fascinating about proportion is the role it has in ordering all project inputs. When you imagine a project, you deal constantly with a whole range of data that are measurable like the cost, the area, quantities of materials, function, but you also deal with completely non measurable data - the beauty, the feeling etc. The result of the negotiation which occurs at the crossing point between measurable and non-measurable is a proportion, a ratio between measures or things. By definition, it’s a relationship of measures. Sometimes more this way, sometimes more that. Le Corbusier explains perfectly that understanding these decisions precisely enables a building to speak. The proportion will either frighten you or make you laugh. 

I mentioned at the beginning that Le Corbusier represents the idea of who I think an architect should be. It’s a person who controls these two realms - measurable and non-measurable and makes beauty from very prosaic things. Proportion is at the crossing of these arguments, and that’s probably why Le Corbusier involved himself with it so much.

23.01.2020

埃里克·拉皮埃尔: 相比于柯布西耶的“官方”代表作萨伏伊别墅，湖畔之家并没有那么大的名气。但我更为欣赏的是它作为“小房子”（Petite Maison）的谦逊和它带给事业刚起步的年轻建筑师的希望。它告诉人们可以在不使用贵重材料或大尺度的情况下设计出伟大的作品。它证明了好建筑就像一本好书，写作精彩的故事其实只需要纸和墨水即可。

客观上来看，湖畔之家的实际尺寸偏小——只有六十四平米面积，但它所创造的精神图景却扩展到了远大于此的空间。在这里我指的是，你所经历的不同氛围如何在你对住宅的整体想法和你的记忆中发挥作用。这开始于花园和环绕的围墙：花园本身是住宅的重要组成部分，通过入口门廊和室外休息区直接与室内各功能空间联系，花园即为住宅。为了强调这种房间一样的品质，朝着湖景，花园的围墙上开了一个传统比例的窗洞，提供面向外部景观的视野。

景观的存在是其中的关键：在住宅对面，阿尔卑斯山直坠湖中，转换了人对于尺度的感知。你会立刻理解到这幢住宅真正的极限是远处的山峦。从根本上来说，随着时间的推移，人如何观察并居住在这种丰富的动态环境中是这座住宅的主题。这是美丽且迷人的，不仅由于景观的纪念性，也在于它日复一日随着季节变迁持续的变化着。

我回忆起布鲁诺-赖希林（Bruno Reichlin）在一篇很不错的文章中指出，因为隐藏了前景和部分天空，湖畔之家的水平长窗有一种压平景观的趋向。而这实际上使得室内空间更加亲密。景观在某个当下是真实的，但也是虚幻的，像一幅打印的画面。如果使用了竖向或者通高的窗户，你将会看到地面和更多的天空，这样你会有完整的透视景深，而且，在某种程度上，你会更多的感觉到外界。

湖畔之家是柯布西耶母亲的住宅。她并不愿意生活在一个完全暴露并一直挑战她的生活习惯的住宅中。她需要的是一个正常的、舒适的建筑，能够容纳她的老家具、一只狗和一只猫。这正是为何湖畔之家体现的是似乎不起眼的设计意图。它貌似是一座庸常的、近乎普通的建筑，但同时也是出类拔萃的建筑作品。这又一次证明了，庸常是创新的条件。

除了壮观的周边环境和框起它的窗户之外，建筑本身有何特别之处？

在这座住宅和柯布西耶的全部作品中，我欣赏他在空间上和物质上对于不同参考的大量运用。首先，它将众多不同的时段浓缩在一起。作为对湖畔之家的扩建，数年后他为自己建造的卧室是一个极富代表性的例子。这个微小的空间使用了漆成灰蓝色的木头（和远处的景观一致的色彩），在这里有著名的平台、椅子以及小桌子，可以让柯布西耶一边工作一边通过水平向的窗户欣赏湖景。从坐上椅子的那一刻起，你感觉如同安托內罗·达·梅西那（Antonello da Messina）笔下的圣·杰罗姆（San Girolamo）正望向湖面。一开始，这个房间似乎已经存在了好几个世纪。然而你仔细观察，你看到窗户的比例和水平的屋顶——这是现代建筑的主要发明。

你意识到这样一个紧凑的空间同时容纳了过去和现在，传统和完全前卫的元素。

在这座住宅里有很多耐人寻味的元素，例如在住宅正面围墙底部带台阶的开口，可以让狗对着汽车和人们吠叫。在另外一端，紧邻通向露台的楼梯设置了一个小型的悬挑平台，猫可以在上面看湖景。一座拥有专供动物使用设施的住宅无疑是相当特别的，强调了亲密的气氛和对家庭生活的礼赞。柯布西耶并不是一名功能主义者，而是一名现代人，所以他认为功能需要被安置于特定的空间内。另一方面，可以看到他经常试图去抵触这一原则，至少试图运用混杂的手法。例如在萨伏伊别墅的入口处有一个洗手池，位置很奇怪。在湖畔之家里，同样也有一处小洗手池设置在餐厅中，配有门和镜子。镜子的高度对于人脸过低，所以这样的设计其实是为了增强房间的空间感，抑或强调这一事实：通过开一扇小门，空间得以改变。这样的组合成为了空间中的一首诗、一首俳句：与一面大部分时间注意不到的镜子的不期而遇，以及一个在餐厅中的洗手池。你会感受到每一平方厘米都被仔细考虑来发掘表达的可能性。

在学生时期，我曾经在参观雷姆客库哈斯设计的鹿特丹美术馆时有相同的体验。所有的细节看上去都经过了思考。没有东西是用无聊的、不假思索的方式完成的。标识在地板上，栏杆扶手悬挂于天花板而不是立于地面，有的房间是倾斜的，楼板可以是透明的和悬挂着的，种种。

所有的东西都有一些扭曲。我在这里看到了库哈斯和柯布西耶之间的联结：他们的建筑都充盈着微观的叙事性：建筑建立在慷慨之上。

我认为这种设计方法能够帮助我们的身体和头脑保持活力。当代的空间是非常舒适的。你会非常容易就变成一个无动于衷的沙发土豆。你拥有一切，只需要去充满食物和冰块的厨房，其余不用做任何事情。因此，我认为好的建筑建立了一种将你带回有意识状态的方式，一种类似于在自然环境中的动物的状态，时刻面临着危险。显然建筑并不应是危险的，但它应该创造一个更强大的现实，并唤起一些迹象，让你保持清醒，质疑你的生活方式。某种意义上，好的建筑有一点像药物，它更加有趣和有意义地关注现实生活。

很多人认为柯布西耶的建筑，包括湖畔之家，是纯粹主义，甚至可能是粗野主义的。除了您刚才提到作品中运用的参考，这座建筑是简单的、纯净的、抽象的，大部分是灰色和白色，作为主要色彩区域的基底。有些人甚至认为它是冰冷的。这一点有没有困扰到您？

有些人或许认为柯布的建筑是朴素的，或者说是不友好的。我能理解为何人们这样说。然而，实际上柯布西耶本人正是如此。他伏于小桌子上书写重要的著作。他不是那种需要一张大桌子和豪华办公椅的首席执行官。他只需要一张椅子和一片可以在上面写作的木头。如果你有机会拜访他在巴黎的公寓，你会看到那张他伏于其上写就大部分书的桌子，一张非常谦逊的桌子。看一看他在其中去世的小木屋（Cabanon）也是极其简陋的。在建造那里的时候，他已经是世界之巅的建筑师了。

毋庸置疑他当时已是在世最重要的建筑师。他完全可以做很多，但他选择只建造这样一间小棚屋，与充满朋友的餐馆直接连接，通过裸体作画与游泳度过时间，别无他物。非常重要的是我们要明白，这个建筑是由一个建筑师制作的，他对什么是必要的，什么不是，什么是有价值的，什么没有，有着某种程度上的诚实见解。如果将他与今天建筑舞台上的主要角色相比，他是完全不一样的。他是那样一种人，“所见即所得”。我非常欣赏他的这一点品质。

另一件关于你的问题，和人们在面对勒-柯布西耶的建筑时会产生的约束感的事情，是精神上的灵活性的问题。当建造住宅时，人们通常并不清楚他们灵活使用几乎任何类型空间的潜力。往往客户想知道他的网球拍会精确地放在哪个位置。而实际上作为建筑师这并不是我们应当思考的问题，因为也许明天客户就会停止训练网球，或者他会开始练习曲棍球怎么办？挂钩会变大。那么之前特别设计的网球拍架该作何用？大部分人通常会通过功能模式来理解空间，他们并没有勇气询问你如何做一个让人更开心的住宅或者一个和羊毛一样轻盈的住宅。平底锅放在厨房的哪里对他们是更重要的问题，尽管建筑师知道并不是。但是同样地，所谓的朴素与简洁是对建筑是基于内置的复杂性这一事实的强调：它在视觉上保持简洁，但总是可以在其中发现新的空间纬度、事物之间新的联系，而这种看似简单的东西正是建筑的本质。

现在让我们从另外一个视角来看。住宅实际上将多样的活动用建筑元素表达出来。正如您所言，您将此视作积极的方面。那么什么时候您会觉得有些过度？一个人在住宅里承载的细节或姿态的极限是什么，才会令人感到厌烦？

有一次我参观了一座位于根特（Ghent）郊区的住宅，类似于根特的比佛利山庄地区。拥有这座住宅的夫妇曾经在市中心拥有一套极佳的17或18世纪公寓。公寓里充斥着古画、艺术品和漂亮的家具。在某个时刻，他们找到了一名建筑师，告诉他他们打算卖掉所有物品来盖一栋现代风格的别墅，同时建筑师将亲自选择放在别墅里的每一样物件。显然地，他挑选了所有物品，甚至包括烟灰缸和墙上的艺术品。如果是我来做这些决定我会发狂。怎会有办法为别人选择合适的艺术品？如果你不能为自己挑选艺术品，那么你就不需要艺术品。我认为这是一个将居住空间转换成了展示空间的走偏的例子。

另外一个极端是当建筑师提出没有用途、没有功能、只是可自由使用的区域，这同样会带来问题。我认为湖畔之家是在中间地带，它非常平衡。这座建筑处理真实的生活和真实的物件，并不追求完美。它由普通的东西组成，大部分的家具是柯布母亲原有的古典家具。

基于此，我看到了湖畔之家与路易客康的费舍住宅（Fisher House）之间的相似性。我在数年之前参观过费舍住宅，如今费舍夫妇仍然居住在内。他们都是友善温暖的人。每三周他们开放一次参观，不管来客是一车建筑师或只是一名学生——如我当时一样，你需要的只是提前充分地知会他们，然后一切就安排妥当。

那扇著名的转角窗在照片里背后总是空的。显然这并不符合现实。在窗后有物件、雕塑，那是他们在墨西哥度蜜月时购入的或是其他，但这所有一切并没有降低建筑的品质。这确实是一座明显满足你作为建筑师的思想和智识野心的住宅，但最终你会去那里和你的家人生活在其中，不用考虑建筑问题，它本身就运作得很好。

设想你满身疲惫地下班回家，只想小酌一杯，听着音乐放空自己。你并不总是希望去欣赏屋内的雕塑。如果你住在伟大的作品之中，那很棒，你非常幸运，但你不会想要这个伟大的作品占据着你的脑海或者整个生活。正是因为你可以忘了建筑并且只是生活在那里，它成为了伟大的作品。最重要的提示永远在第二位出现，而不是首位。

我认为柯布西耶的目标不是建造神圣的事物，而是让日常的生活变得很酷。这是关于建筑如何将品质带入每天的生活之中的。我并不是说生活在一个装载着你所相信的价值观的空间里不重要。我只是想强调，如果它被置于首要条件，以一种示范性的方式，那它就会成为困住你的陷阱。当建筑在大叫“看，我是一件伟大的作品”的时候，我就会对它失去兴趣。终归，我会很开心的访问它一次，像它是一座博物馆。一座好的住宅的目标必须是能够提供轻松的生活方式，而不是让人一直被例外所提醒。日常的生活所需的简单性当然不会排除复杂性。我可以给你另外一个艺术世界的例子。我爱《格尔尼卡（Guernica）》这幅画，但我不想和它一起生活在我的客厅里，我会被它弄得精疲力竭。能考虑到这一点是非常重要的。你的住宅是否支配了你的生活？它是否将你变换成雅克·塔蒂（Jacques Tati）的电影《我的舅舅（Mon Oncle）》中的角色？部分当然是，但它任然需要和庸常相关联。这才是真正的区别。

你是否在自己的设计作品中运用过湖畔之家中的比例系统？

我们从未试图在一整个建筑中运用同一套比例系统——例如模数系统。瓦奇尼（Vacchini） 这样做了，他在自己的作品中使用了模数，甚至在剖面上重现了他的符号。我从未如此做过。不管怎样，我仍然认为比例是我们拥有的最重要的表达工具之一。在工作室中，如果我看到了一幅比例良好的图纸，我们计算它的比例，往往得出这是一个古典比例的变体。就我个人而言，我十分喜爱正方形对角线的比例（1:1.41）。这是非常美丽的比例，至少我认为。我并不会将使用这些古典比例置于设计的优先级，但是我十分清楚它们的存在。

柯布西耶阐释道，在他的建筑中，比例系统决定所有。举例而言，在拉图雷特修道院中他发明了“不可言喻的空间”的概念。解释为在某个时刻，当空间的所有元素被某种制度或事物之间的关系系统所规范和定义时，空间就会开始辐射，从而到达了所谓“不可言喻的空间”的状态。阅读这些你会说：又是建筑师的扯淡！但是在拉图雷特修道院中，确实能拥有一种非常独特的体验。就元素而言，它与别的建筑并无不同——楼梯，不同的标高以及在粗混凝土盒子内的一些色彩，但一些特别的事情的确发生了。

关于比例，另一个奇妙之处是它有其作用，介入于所有的项目中。设想你在做一个项目，你总是在与一系列的可测量数据打交道，例如造价、面积、材料数量和功能，但同时你也在处理完全不可测量的数据——如美学和感受等等。在可测量和不可测量的数据汇合的交叉点，调和的结果是比例，是在测量值或者事物之间的比率。从定义上来说，比例是量度之间的关系，有时这样有时那样。柯布西耶完美地解释了精确地理解这些关于比例的决定是如何让建筑开口说话的。比例要么让你害怕，要么让你发笑。

在文章开头我提到过柯布西耶代表了我所认为的建筑师应该成为的人。他控制两个领域——可测量和不可测量——并在平凡无奇的事物中创造美丽。比例问题位于上述论点的交汇之处，所以这或许是为何柯布西耶如此执着于此。

2020年1月23日

Éric Lapierre

Éric Lapierre (b. Tarbes, 1966) is architect, teacher, theoretician, writer, and curator based in Paris. He has co-founded Experience in Paris. This award winning firm produces tectonic objects recognized both for their formal quality and their theoretical dimension. Experience projects questioning marvelous as being the ultimate horizon of architectural rationality.

Éric Lapierre teaches in ÉPF Lausanne (he runs the TEXAS chair), in École d’arcitecture Paris-Est, and is guest critic at Harvard GSD. In 2019 he curated Lisbon Architecture Triennial.

www.ericlapierre.com

Éric Lapierre

Éric Lapierre (b. Tarbes, 1966) is architect, teacher, theoretician, writer, and curator based in Paris. He has co-founded Experience in Paris. This award winning firm produces tectonic objects recognized both for their formal quality and their theoretical dimension. Experience projects questioning marvelous as being the ultimate horizon of architectural rationality.

Éric Lapierre teaches in ÉPF Lausanne (he runs the TEXAS chair), in École d’arcitecture Paris-Est, and is guest critic at Harvard GSD. In 2019 he curated Lisbon Architecture Triennial.

www.ericlapierre.com

Éric Lapierre

Éric Lapierre (b. Tarbes, 1966) is architect, teacher, theoretician, writer, and curator based in Paris. He has co-founded Experience in Paris. This award winning firm produces tectonic objects recognized both for their formal quality and their theoretical dimension. Experience projects questioning marvelous as being the ultimate horizon of architectural rationality.

Éric Lapierre teaches in ÉPF Lausanne (he runs the TEXAS chair), in École d’arcitecture Paris-Est, and is guest critic at Harvard GSD. In 2019 he curated Lisbon Architecture Triennial.

www.ericlapierre.com