Le Corbusier Planned Paris From Above; Chtcheglov Chose to Drift

Le Corbusier's 1925 Plan Voisin proposed replacing a large section of central Paris with eighteen cruciform office towers rising from an open landscape. The scheme would have erased much of the existing fabric of the Marais and surrounding areas while preserving monuments including the Louvre, Palais-Royal and Place Vendôme.

The proposal responded to congestion and poor sanitary conditions in the French capital. But it also advanced a particular idea of urban life: functions separated, movement organized, and the city legible as a complete system. Residential buildings would sit apart from the business district, all tied together by a hierarchical road network. Plan Voisin was never built. Its principles — the separation of functions, the vertical concentration of buildings, the prioritization of circulation and open space — nonetheless shaped architectural thinking through the development of the Ville Radieuse and the Athens Charter.

Almost three decades later, French philosopher Ivan Chtcheglov looked at the modern city and identified a different problem: boredom. In his Formulary for a New Urbanism, written in 1953 under the pseudonym Gilles Ivain, he called for "new, changeable decors" that could alter with the people living in them.

He was not diplomatic about Le Corbusier. Chtcheglov described his architecture as suitable for "factories and hospitals" and, eventually, prisons, before accusing him of destroying "joy" and "love, passion, freedom."

In place of cities built on Plan Voisin's logic, Chtcheglov imagined architecture that alters moods, generates dreams and changes how people experience their surroundings. He described houses that move with the sun, sliding walls that allow vegetation to enter, and buildings whose appearance changes according to the wishes of their inhabitants. He proposed an entire city divided according to feeling, with a Bizarre Quarter, Happy Quarter, Noble and Tragic Quarter and even a Sinister Quarter.

While Le Corbusier began with the idea that the city can be reorganized according to a rational structure, Chtcheglov was interested in what happens when movement through it is not organized. The Situationists called this wandering the dérive, allowing streets, buildings and changing surroundings to determine where the journey goes. A building or street did not need to serve one purpose. It could change the mood of a walk, pull someone in another direction or make a familiar part of the city feel strange. "The main activity of the inhabitants will be CONTINUOUS DRIFTING," he wrote. The city's landscapes would change from one hour to the next, producing what he called "total disorientation."

Drifting runs against the logic of optimization. The shortest route gets you there faster. Chtcheglov was interested in what you might find by taking the long way. It is difficult to imagine anything further from Plan Voisin: Le Corbusier's city is drawn from above, its functions and circulation worked out in advance. Chtcheglov's city only comes alive once people start wandering through it.

Plan Voisin answered real problems. Paris faced overcrowding and poor sanitation, and modernist architects sought to bring more light, air and open space into the city. But the more completely those problems are solved through planning, the more predetermined the city becomes. If every building has a function, every road a purpose and every movement is accounted for, there is less room for the detours and unexpected uses that make a city feel alive.

Chtcheglov took this further than simply making cities more entertaining. His Sinister Quarter would be unsettling without being dangerous. Elsewhere in his imagined city, there are rooms for dreaming and places intended to bring back a sense of secrecy or exoticism. Le Corbusier wanted to make the city more efficient; Chtcheglov wanted people to wander through it and see what happens. The fastest route may be useful, but it is also predictable — and Plan Voisin leaves little room for the accidents Chtcheglov envisioned at the center of urban life.