วันเสาร์ที่ 9 กุมภาพันธ์ พ.ศ. 2556

Toward a New Architecture + PlayTime by Jacques Tati



Le Corbusier declares the aesthetic of functional objective over ‘style’. He claims that human eyes are mean to appreciate simplicity of basic form. Style of different periods was all plastic beauty. He claims that every human has the same necessity, but what about emotional desire? His revolution for ‘perfection’ is quite confusing. How can there be revolution when human does not have a desire to change or to be different?

Le Corbusier praise how automobile is suitable to be a paragon of architecture. Because automobile is standardized form when it is made. It is mass-produced, yet still be able to be refined.   

PlayTime reflects the ideal Le Corbu’s city, where everything is mass production, and so human is. In the movie PlayTime the director, Jacque Tati, excessively conveyed how the ideal innovated modernist world could be.

The city from the movie is surprisingly Paris, a whole new picture of Paris. Where there are no more prominent attractions that would identify Paris in the way we view Paris as. The city is filled with rows of same very modern looking buildings; buildings with glass walls and steel structure with same height and same facade. These buildings have the iconic principle of modernist; revealing inside and outside, unclear threshold (clear glass walls), only functional elements are used (no ornaments), honest materials are used, etc. The environment of the city is uniformed. Even other cities that appear on posters have the same type of building.

No significant style that will distinguish different type of people. They all wear the same thing or ‘international style’ to be said. Races cannot be easily differentiate, even when they speak, the languages sound the same (probably French, German, and English; the director might try to put it this way to confused the audience). Their gestures and movements are patterned. When they all look the same, people are confused. Someone would be mistaken to another person. Calm and orderly atmosphere in the movie actually gives very chaotic feeling for human emotions. Nobody could possibly feel at ease living this kind of lifestyle.

The image of the movie is ideal modernistic city and lifestyle; very uniformed, communistic. It is almost likely to me a Nazi style of living, where people are controlled to have the same needs and satisfied by same mass-produced products. Le Corbusier would have pictured this kind of city when he came up with Radiant City. Even though, the movie is a bit too extreme in a way that the city could actually be built. 


Korapin A.

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