Room 204.02

The reference point of European cities’ development from the early decades of the twentieth century would come from the figure of Le Corbusier, whose urbanistic designs, oftentimes remaining on paper, put into practice the geometric rigour outlined in Après le Cubisme (After Cubism), the manifesto drafted by Le Corbusier and painter Amédée Ozenfant in 1918. The manifesto worked as a foundational document of the Purist movement and its championing of a new classicism influenced by the aesthetics of modern technology and the rationality of serially manufactured objects. Le Corbusier’s work, moreover, was an example of how modern architecture drew from magazines, exhibitions and the media to divulge and bolster its principles beyond the constructed work.      

Essential to this commitment towards renewal and the avant-garde were the contributions of Bauhaus (1919–1933), the state school of architecture, design and art from the Weimar Republic. This institution would be the place where interdisciplinary experiments were carried out on the use of new techniques and materials to explore the social relations of the contemporary subject with increasingly omnipresent modern technology.