Function, representativeness and spatial implications of form modelling in Le Corbusier’s architecture

Le Corbusier's design process is structured into two distinct phases when the functional programme is somewhat complex: the first, in which simple volumes capable of housing the building's various uses are chosen, as well as the connections that must be established between them, and the second, of a more intuitive and emotional nature, in which some of them are modelled to achieve artistic and singular forms, with curved geometry, which stand out among those with an orthogonal matrix. In this way, a kind of duality is established, which we could call rationalist-intuitive, which would be added to other already well-known pairings such as, for example, masculinefeminine (Fernández Galiano) or public-private (Colomina).The origin of these artistic forms is in the first villas of La Chaux-de-Fonds where, still with a simple character and clearly indebted to certain episodes in the history of architecture, they appear next to a single main box. From here, in accordance with the successive changes in Le Corbusier's interests, both pictorial and architectural, we see them evolve and take on new meanings and increasingly complex roles in the development of the designs. The influence of cubism and his determined commitment to industry, first and foremost, and then to nature, enabled him to explore the possibilities of a particular formal language with which to compose his works based on this duality of cubic and artistic forms.Following a temporal order, this article studies some of the artistic forms used by Le Corbusier in his architecture, analysing both their functional, spatial, perceptual and representative implications, as well as the way and timing in which they appear, either at the beginning or in an intermediate phase of the ideation process.