Nikolas Pevsner, A History of Building Types (London: Thames & Hudson, 1976), 149-158. Most helpful in preparing this paper were Irina Davidovici’s essay “H: Hospital-as-City: The Healthcare Architecture of Herzog & de Meuron,” in gta papers 5 (2021): 118-131; and a thorough visit to the exhibition Soutenir, Ville, Architecture et Soin, Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris, 2022. I am grateful to Adam Jasper for offering me this opportunity to return to the subject of my book Erste Hilfe: Architekturdiskurs nach 1940: Eine Schweizer Spurensuche (Zurich: gta Verlag, 2021), esp. 95-185.
Hubert Damisch, “Noah’s Ark,” AA Files 72 (2016): 115-126; see also Hubert Damisch, Noah’s Ark: Essays on Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016).
The Flandre, reproduced in Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture (Paris: Vincent Fréal, 1923), 65, was 140m, the Unité d’habitation in Marseille, which is often compared to an ocean liner, is 138m long.
Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, “Arche Noah,” in Kupfer-Bibel, in welcher die Physica Sacra oder geheiligte Natur-Wissenscaft derer in der Heil: Schrift vorkommenden natürlichen Sachen deutlich erklärt (...), 1731; see von Moos, Erste Hilfe, 95-98.
I cannot presently locate the exact source for this quote. Meanwhile, see Bruno Fortier, “L’architecture de l’hopital,” in B. Barret, A. Kriegl, A. Thalami et.al., Les machines à guérir (Aux origines de l’hôpital moderne), (Paris: Institut de l’environnement, 1976), 71-86.
Le Corbusier, Urbanisme, (Paris: Vincent Fréal, 1925), 157-184.
Sigfried Giedion, Befreites Wohnen 14, (Leipzig: Orell Füssli, 1929). For more references on heliotherapy and housing reform in Switzerland see von Moos, Erste Hilfe, 112-13. For a broader view of the biopolitics of modern architecture, see Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Biopolitics and the Emergence of Modern Architecture )New York: Temple Hoyne Buell Center / Princeton Architectural Press, 2009) and Beatriz Colomina, X-Ray Architecture (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2019).
Sylvie Kahan, Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winaretta Singer Princesse De Polignac (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2003), 256.
Kahan, Music’s Modern Muse, 256; 257.
Kahan, Music’s Modern Muse, 271; 308.
Jean-Louis Cohen, Le Corbusier et la mystique de l’URSS (Paris: Pierre Mardaga, 1987), 154-158; and Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2009), esp.148-155.
The first comprehensive study is by Brian Brace Taylor, Le Corbusier: La Cité De Refuge, ed. Bernard Huet (Paris: L’équerre, 1980); the most complete is Gilles Ragot and Olivier Chadoin, La Cité de Refuge, Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, L’usine à guérir (Paris: Editions du Patrimoine, 2016).
See Gilles Ragot’s detailed account of the controversies regarding the glass wall in Ragot and Chadoin, La Cité de Refuge, 79-93; 100-107. At the time of the opening, the air conditioning did not function; only in 1935 did Le Corbusier agree to the opening of 4 sliding windows in the day-care center and another 37 in the glass wall below.
Ragot and Chadoin, La Cité de Refuge, 34-36; see also Le Corbusier, Précisions sur un état présent de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme (Paris: Vincent Fréal, 1930), 123-126.
Colomina, X-Ray Architecture, 9.
For a history of the housing slab see Florian Urban, Tower and Slab: Histories of Global Mass Housing, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). For a brief overview of “slab bashing,” see my “The Monumentality of the Matchbox: On ‘Slabs’ and Politics in the Cold War,” in Re-Humanizing Architecture: New Forms of Community, 1950-1970, eds. Akos Moravánsky and Judith Hopfengärtner (Basel: de Gruyter, 2016); and Ákos Moravánszky et al., East West Central: Re-Building Europe 1950-1990 (Basel: de Gruyter, 2017), 255-282.
The critique of functionalist planning became mainstream in architectural criticism by 1970, thanks to books like Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961); Alexander Mitscherlich, Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1971); or Peter Blake, Form Follows Fiasco: Why Modern Architecture Hasn’t Worked (Boston / Toronto: Little Brown & Co., 1974), among many others. However, the erosion of functionalist dogma began within CIAM as early as 1953, and in some quarters a decade before; see below, notes 31, 36.
Annmarie Adams and David Theodore, “Separate and Together: The General Hospital and the Twentieth-Century City,” gta papers 5 (2021), 109-117; 109.
Christine Binswanger, gta Invites: Healthcare, May 5, 2020, ➝.
Gerhard Mack, Herzog & de Meuron: Das Gesamtwerk Band 4. 1997-2001 (Basel / Boston / Berlin: Birkhäuser, 2009), 92-97.
Davidovici, “H: Hospital-as-City,” 127.
The shape of the plan appears to be borrowed from the Laban Dance Center in London, completed in 2003; see Davidovici, “H: Hospital-as-City,” 130.
Willy Boesiger, ed., Le Corbusier: Oeuvre complète, 1957-1965 (Zurich: Les éditions d’ architecture Zurich, 1965), 140-151; Valeria Farinati, H VEN LC Hôpital de Venise Le Corbusier 1963-70 (Venice / Mendrisio: IUAV / Archivio del moderno Accademia di architettura, 1999); Amadeo Petrilli, Il testamento di Le Corbusier. Il progetto per l’ospedale di Venezia (Venice: Marsilio, 1999); Hashim Sarkis (ed.), Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital (Cambridge, MA, 2001).
Pablo Allard, “Bridge over Venice: Speculations on Cross-Fertilization of Ideas between Team 10 and Le Corbusier (after a conversation with Guillermo Jullian de la Fuente),” in Sarkis, Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital, 18-35; 30. I am not able to locate the precise source for the Le Corbusier quote.
Allard, “Bridge Over Venice,” 29.
Cynthia Fleury, ed., Soutenir. Ville, Architecture et Soin (Paris: Pavillon de l’Arsenal / SCAU, 2022).
See in particular Adams and Leonhard, “Separate and Together.”
Stanislaus von Moos, “Le Corbusier, Tourism, and the Myth of Venice,” in Liber amicorum Max Risselada, eds. Dirk van Gameren and Dirk van de Heuvel (Delft: Delft University of Technology / Dept. of Architecture), 46-67.
Allard, “Bridge over Venice,” 29.
For a detailed account of van Eyck’s and other younger CIAM members’ proposed reform of modernist planning strategies, see Eric Mumford, “The Emergence of Mat or Field Buildings,” in Sarkis, Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital, 48-65.
Ibid., 60.
Planning the children’s hospital began in 2014; the building was completed 2024. For references, see above, notes 1, 18-21, and for illustrations, see Herzog & de Meuron (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2024), 130-135; and Axel Simon et.al., “Die Ich-mach-dich-gesund-Stadt,” in Hochparterre 1-2 (2025): 12-21.
Seminal examples are the “Plywood House” in Bottmingen, Switzerland (1984-85) or the Apartment Building along a Party Wall at Hebelstrasse in Basel (1984-88); see Stanislaus von Moos and Arthur Rüegg, Fünfundzwanzig x Herzog & de Meuron (Göttingen: Steidl, 2024), 128-147.
The Swiss National Fair, colloquially referred to as “Landi” in Switzerland, was held in Zurich in 1939. It consisted almost entirely of finely detailed wood-frame pavilions. Critics raved about the rich variety of latticework, grids, surface paneling, etc. as a way of avoiding the “machine”-like anonymity of the “technical style” and as a means of providing diversity and “human scale.” See in particular Peter Meyer in “Architektur der Landesausstellung: kritische Besprechung,” in Das Werk 26, no. 11 (1939): 321-352, esp. 330-339.
See Sonja Hildebrand, Bruno Maurer, Werner Oechslin, eds., Haefeli Moser Steiger: Die Architekten der Schweizer Moderne (Zurich: gta Verlag, 2007), 305-13. The architects’ team (AKZ) included August Arter, Martin Risch, Hermann Fietz, Max Ernst Haefeli, Werner M. Moser, Rudolf Steiger, Robert Landolt, Gottlieb Leuenberger, Jakob Flückiger, Josef Schütz, and Hermann Weideli; of these Werner M. Moser and Rudolf Steiger were founding members of CIAM.
G. E. Kidder Smith, The New Architecture of Europe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961), 298.
As the 1939 national exhibition was open at the outbreak of World War II, its rustic allure came to play its part in what many thought to be the Swiss way towards modernity. See von Moos, Erste Hilfe, 299-307.
See Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), 85-103.