PROJECTO DE ARQUITECTURA I – 2015-16
Promenade Architecturale: A Documentation Part I : The Background
Promenade Architecturale
James Stirling's competition entries for museums
in Düsseldorfand Cologne, writes Graham Shane, both
demonstrate a developing concern with circulation. What is
outstanding in these two projects is the collagist juxtaposition of a
vocabulary of neo-classical and contemporary architectural
elements, which become a coherent text only when viewed in
sequence from Stirling's 'preferred route'--the pleasure of the text
depending almost entirely on this promenade architecturale.
"[At] Leicester solid wall, glass, ramp, lift tower, railing and
staircase were sandwiched between raised podium below and
sculpted segregated masses above.
Both Düsseldorf and Cologne employ this vocabulary over larger
fields, with an extended circulation path passing between, above
and below--strong, easily recognised forms that function
symbolically at a city scale. The question is whether or not link
spaces of the complexity of Düsseldorf's foyer will have an internal
poetic coherence for the user, lacking as it does the simplicity of
storyline that contributes so much to Leicester's success.
the "Düsseldorf foyer"
PROMENADE ARCHITECTURAL- LE CORBUSIER
1997.12.13
The notion of promenade architecturale within the history and language of architecture's Modern Movement emanates from Le
Corbusier who employed the phrase specifically when describing the experience of walking through two of his 1920s houses, the
Maisons La Roche-Jeanneret (1923) and the Villa Savoye (1929-31). Both references occur in the Oeuvre Compléte:
"This house [the Maisons La Roche-Jeanneret] will be rather like an architectural promenade. You enter: the architectural
spectacle at once offers itself to the eye. You follow an itinerary and the perspectives develop with great variety, developing a
play of light on the walls or making pools of shadow. Large windows open up views of the exterior where the architectural
unity is reasserted."
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Oeuvre Compléte 1910-1929, p. 60.
"In this house [the Villa Savoye] we are presented with a real architectural promenade, offering prospects which are constantly
changing and unexpected, even astonishing. It is interesting that so much variety has been obtained when from a design
point of view a rigorous scheme of pillars and beams has been adopted. . . . It is by moving about . . . that one can see the
orders of architecture developing."
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Oeuvre Compléte 1929-1934, p. 24.
Furthermore, the words promenade architecturale caption a specific photographic view up the Villa Savoye's exterior ramp towards the
roof-top solarium (Oeuvre Compléte 1929-1934, p. 30).
Apart from the physical design of the two houses described, these textual citings together with the captioned photograph of the Villa
Savoye ramp offer the best, albeit quasi, definition of the promenade architecturale. In plain terms, the promenade commences upon
entering the building, is recognized straight away as an "itinerary" to follow, and travel along the path exposes the building's seemingly
infinite architectural variety. In not so plain terms, the promenade architecturale is the synergistic manifestation of a dynamic spatial
experience, whose total effect is greater than the sum of the effects of the discrete parts of the building--the "rigorous scheme of pillars
and beams" and the ramp--taken independently. Le Corbusier clearly suggests with the captioned photograph, however, that the ramp
itself is nonetheless the promenade architecturale's crucial element, the component that makes the promenade "real."
In the ensuing years since the building and publication of the Villa Savoye, a number of architectural writers and thinkers have
contributed additional layers of meaning to Le Corbusier's promenade architecturale, and, as it happens, each new layer of meaning
emphasizes the significance of the ramp. Like a promenade architecturale itself, the following series of quotations delivers a weaving
path of "constantly changing and unexpected prospects," and each individual passage is thus an incremental step towards a fuller and
deeper understanding of the architectural promenade idea.
"[T]he ramp was designed as the preferred route of what the architect [Le Corbusier] calls the promenade
architecturalethrough the various spaces of the building--a concept which appears to be close to that almost mystical
meaning of the word "axis" that he had employed in Vers un Architecture."
Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age
"An axis is perhaps the first human manifestation; it is the means of every human act. The toddling child moves along an
axis, the man striving in the tempest of life traces for himself an axis. The axis is the regulator of architecture. To establish
order is to begin to work. Architecture is based on axes. The axis is a line of direction leading to an end. In architecture you
must have a destination for your axis. In the Schools they have forgotten this and their axes cross one another in star-shapes,
all leading to infinity, to the undefined, to the unknown, to nowhere, without end or aim. The axes of the School is a recipe and
a dodge.
Arrangement is the grading of axes, and so it is the grading of aims, the classification of intentions.
The architect therefore assigns destinations to his axes. These ends are the wall (the plenum, sensorial sensation) or light
and space (again sensorial sensation)."
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1960), p.173.
Banham augments the definition of the promenade architecturale with two cogent ideas--one is practically self-evident and the other is
cleverly subtle. First, Banham's citing of the analogy between the promenade idea and Le Corbusier's "philosophy" on axes generates a
powerful merger whereby the combination of path and destination takes a paramount position. Second, Banham's phrase "preferred
route" carries a slightly critical tone--although the promenade architecturale is the travel plan of choice, it, nonetheless, cannot exclude
the tangential or marginal course.
"Perhaps the most striking feature of the Villa is the ramp, which lends a simple walk on the roof terrace the aura of a
ceremonial ascent. What is the origin and meaning of the motif? The articulation of the arrival-zones in terms of solemnly
exposed ascents has been a major theme of "high architecture" from Palladio up to the great châteaux of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. In Le Corbusier's case, however, the forms appears to have industrial, that is, machine age overtones
recalling motorized traffic with its roadways in the forms of bridges, ramps, and loops. In Towards a New Architecture he had
published a photograph of the Fiat test track on the roof of their factory in Turin, and in Paris, large elevated access ramps for
taxis were outstanding architectural elements at the old Gare Montparnasse and the Gare de Lyon. All this most have
interested Le Corbusier and there is little doubt that ramps in his houses reflect something of the thrill of fast motorized
circulation within the modern city.
It is this 'preferred route', these sentences, this promenade
architecturale, that distinguishes Stirling's work as architecture
and protects it from the Piranesian chaos. It is this same route that
is so lovingly described, both by Stirling at great length in his
lecture, and in the deadpan text and line drawings that illustrate
these competition entries--and which can be so easily ignored."
Graham Shane, "Cologne in Context" in Architectural Design, no.
11, 1976, pp. 685-7.

Race track on roof of Fiat Factory in Turin

This idea found other, more obvious realizations in later years, The most spectacular is Harvard's Carpenter Center: its ramps
are a sort of miniature version of Boston's Southeast Expressway running through the structure in a bold S-shaped curve,
piercing it like a tunnel, and inviting the pedestrians to take a metaphorical stroll through Corbusier's ideal "ville radieuse."

So much for the explicit machine-age symbolism. But the ramp is also a spectacle of pure form and space, and it has been
praised as such by Giedion who insisted that it is impossible to "comprehend the Villa Savoye by a view from a single point;
quite literally, it is a construction in space-time." Le Corbusier's own comments on space-time are more straightforward: "It is
by moving about . . . that one can see the orders of architecture developing." And once again, as he had done earlier in
connection with the Villa La Roche, the architect speaks of "promenade architecturale," and the vernacular architecture of
North Africa as sources of inspiration.
Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier, elements of a synthesis (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1979), p.87.

In addressing the symbolism of the ramp within the Corbusian oeuvre, von Moos simultaneously increases the holdings of
thepromenade architecturale's definition. Although referring specifically to the ramp within the Villa Savoye, the notions of "ceremonial
ascent," "machine-age overtones recalling motorized traffic," and " a construction in space-time" likewise identify auxiliary
characteristics of the architectural promenade concept. As if it was the instrument of a twentieth-century ritual, the ramp as promenade
architecturale seems capable of somehow manifesting a transcendence, whereby the active participant glides into the realm of the
thoroughly modern. Additionally, von Moos suggests the Late Italian and French Renaissance tradition of articulating "arrival-zones in
terms of solemnly exposed ascents" as the promenade architecturale's most likely historical precedent.

"Having reached the entrance to the monastery [of Ema, which Le Corbusier visited on his first journey to Italy in 1907], the
visitor encounters a long, gently ascending ramp with low steps leading upward in the opposite direction. Going up this ramp
one is looking out through large apertures enclosed with semicircular arches onto the path one has come. Was this the
proto-type, the model--retained in the memory--for the ramp in the Villa Savoye and for all other ramps in Le Corbusier's later
work?

It was not merely the ramp as such that we discovered here but its special formation as a path which is open to the outside
permitting the visitor to look back to whence he has just come. In other words, it is the ramp as architectonic
promenade which so cogently suggests the comparison with the Villa Savoye . . .

The entrance to the [Villa Savoye], the beginning of the upward path through the house, and the terminal point of this path,
and finally the vista point, from which one looks out from the building onto the landscape, are all situated above one another.
...

Man's movement through space became the guiding principle of a new and different architecture, not just movement in and
through space but also in the alternation between movement and being stationary. Thus the ramp in the Villa Savoye not only
leads from one place to another, it also connects places that are harmoniously balanced within themselves. It does not
simply lead through the building but has a beginning and an end, and when one end is reached it begins to lead us once
more to another place."
Jürgen Joedicke, "The Ramp as Architectonic Promenade in Le Corbusier's Work" in Daidalus, 1984, June, p. 104-108.

Joedicke presents a fairly convincing case when suggesting the entrance ramp of the Monastery of Ema as the leading precedent for
the promenade architecturale, especially with regard to the inside/outside nature of the ramp and the overall ability of the path to reflect
upon itself. These qualities are well evident at the Villa Savoye, where Joedicke further notes the stacked correspondence between the
beginning and end of the route through the building. This relationship between the path and its point of termination immediately recalls
Le Corbusier's own thoughts concerning the "axis" and the architect's requirement in providing the axis with a "destination."
Consequently, with the convergence of beginning and end, the definition of the Corbusian promenade architecturale comes to full
circle.

The practice of promenade architecturale within twentieth-century architecture does not end with Le Corbusier, however. As already
marginally noted, the architecture of James Stirling also exhibits traits attributable to the promenade idea, as does a specific project by
Rem Koolhaas. Each of the following quotations examines the presence of the promenade architecturalewithin the building designs of
these two architects, and thus adds a few more steps, along with some new twists, to the established course.

"Although the movement route has been thoroughly

assimilated in twentieth-century architecture as a strategic
device, the term promenade architecturale cannot be used in
describing the work of other than a handful of architects.
The inevitable Corbusian associations raise the level of
expectation beyond that usually associated with a
movement route, suggesting an integration of circulation
and form resulting in an experiential dimension of unusual
richness and subtlety. . . . From the beginning, circulation
was an important generator in [James] Stirling's designs . . .
In [the Cambridge History Faculty Building], thepromenade
architecturale becomes the conduit for a dynamic visual
experience . . . As in the [V]illa [Savoye], the ramps [of the
Olivetti Training School at Haslemere] act as a
contemplative device, their gentle ascent under a glazed
'vault' giving access to space, sunlight and greenery,
symbolizing that liberation of the spirit epitomised by Le
Corbusier's work of the 1920s. As in the villa, the promenade
architecturale gradually unfolds to reveal a visual sequence
containing enclosure and exposure, with spaces and
volumes compacted into a geometrical composite . . . In all
three [German Museums: Nordrhine Westphalia; Wallraf-
Richartz; Staatsgalerie], thepromenade
architecturale emanates from an analysis of the complex
texture of the city, resonances of which are evoked by
metaphor and allusion and by a juxtaposition of forms that
combine visual surprises with vitality and grandeur. . . . In
[the Staatsgalerie], James Stirling'spromenade
architecturale reaches its joyous and most profound
fulfillment, transcending his earlier logic in an affirmation of
"[P]ushed by having to produce a huge library [in Paris]with
minimum financing, [Rem Koolhaas] suddenly thought of
exploiting the fold, a method of design I have already
mentioned. [The architect] folded and cut up sheets of paper
and this led him to a new movement system where the
library is both a continuous linear route and a set of near-
horizontal planes. The trick is that much of the library floor
has a tilt: not so much that books on a trolley roll away, but
just enough to move from floor to floor. In effect, the
building is an enormous ramp with various surprising
events superposed along the route. The idea has some
precedents--the 'architectural promenade' of the
seventeenth-century French hôtel, the programmed walk
through an English landscape garden, Frank Lloyd
Wright'sGuggenheim Museum, which also has an
organizational ramp as a route of exploration--but Koolhaas'
invention is different. He makes the whole floor a ramp and
weaves through it a grid of columns and randomized
incidents. This, once again, is the method of superposition.
Different layers of meaning are strained through each other
without any narrative, or priority. This is different from the
controlled promenade architecturale -- for instance Le
Corbusier's Mundaneum project--because it refuses to
privilege one interpretation over another."
Charles Jencks, The Architecture of the Jumping Universe(New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), p. 88.
 the role of architecture as being to provide man with an
experiential foothold in the world."
Geoffrey Baker, "James Stirling and the promenade
architecturale" in The Architectural Review, 1992, Dec., pp. 72-
75.

"The promenade architecturale surges across the

[Staatsgalerie] complex in a magical mystery tour that
resonates with memories of city structuring. In this scenario
associations are transformed and decoded so that, for
example, the traditional rotunda acts not as a point of
culmination (as in the Pantheon or in Schinkel's Altes
Museum) but as a dynamic participant in an elaborate
dialogue between inside and outside and between an ideal
and reality."
Geoffrey Baker, "Stuttgart Promenade" in The Architectural
Review, 1992, Dec., pp. 76.

Baker's descriptions of the "movement routes" throughout Stirling's buildings and projects are unquestionably a positive affirmation of
the promenade architecturale as defined thus far, whereas Jencks' description of Koolhaas' Bibliothègues Jessieu presents a negation
of the Corbusian promenade ideal. Both historians clearly hold a thorough and accurate understanding of the promenade architecturale,
yet neither of their analyses are completely satisfactory nor conclusive. In his general study, Baker correctly notes the long standing
importance of circulation within Stirling's designs, and furthermore recognizes Stirling's steady development of the circulation route in
conjunction with specific built forms that carry both functional and symbolic significance. What Baker does not note, however, is whether
Stirling ever intentionally directed his circulation routes towards specific "destinations." Jencks, on the other hand, stresses Koolhaas'
total elimination of the "narrative and priority" of the promenade architecturale within his library design, and thus the idea of path and
destination is altogether antithetical to the library's overriding design concept. Could it be that the combined notions of "axis" and
"destination" which Le Corbusier held in such high regard at the beginning of the twentieth-century are precisely the concepts now lost
to architects at the end of the same century? Did the promenade architecturale indeed "lead us once more to another place?"

"Get carefully out of your car and consider where you are. You may be standing on a sloping floor. The space in which you
stand is ambiguous and endless. Where does Level D end and Level E begin, and why? And are you indoors or outdoors?

Every element of traditional humanistic architectural space--the walls, the floor, the ceiling--is ambiguous, askew or both. The
parking garage subverts all architectural expectations.

But they are built routinely, and we use them with scarcely a second thought. The spatial experience of the parking garage
may actually be more consonant with how most people experience the contemporary environment of highways, interchanges,
electronic media and computers than their experience with traditional buildings. Most architecture is solid and static. Parking
garages make room for dynamism. And each of the cars is a private realm that has entered the place but is essentially
unaffected by it. The classical principles of architecture seem not to apply. In our world, the renaissance man -- standing firm,
heroic, contemplative but ready to act - would probably get run over. . . .

We needn't find [parking garages] beautiful. But perhaps they do contain the seeds of great things to come."
Thomas Hine, "Ramps give a slant on design" in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 11, 1994, sec. N, p. 1.

In calling attention to the modern parking garage, Hine presents an eloquent and very reasonable answer to what the "other place" at
the end of the promenade architecturale might be. There is, however, one specific building design that provides a better answer to
the promenade architecturale question--Le Corbusier's Palais des Congrès. Designed as the European Parliament in Strasbourg the
year before Le Corbusier died, the building has not received critical attention simply because it remained unexecuted, yet, not only does
it relate directly to the Villa Savoye, it is also the culmination of Le Corbusier'spromenade architecturale ideal.

roofscape of the Palais des Congrès

Referência bibliográfica: Excerto de (1ª página net) http://www.quondam.com/31/3171.htm