Modulor

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The Modulor is an anthropometric scale of proportions devised by the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965).

History

Le Corbusier developed the Modulor in the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, the work of Leone Battista Alberti, and other attempts to discover mathematical proportions in the human body and then to use that knowledge to improve both the appearance and function of architecture. The system is based on human measurements, the double unit, the Fibonacci numbers, and the golden ratio. Le Corbusier described it as a "range of harmonious measurements to suit the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and to mechanical things."

Le Corbusier published Le Modulor in 1948, followed by Modulor 2 in 1955. These works were first published in English as The Modulor in 1954 and Modulor 2 (Let the User Speak Next) in 1958.

Le Corbusier used his Modulor scale in the design of many buildings, including Notre Dame du Haute and buildings in Chandigarh. In the construction of the first Unité d'Habitation apartment building, in Marseilles, a version was cast in concrete near the entrance.

Graphic representation

Facsimiles of Le Corbusier's books, each cover showing the sinuous shaded curves of the Modulor.

The graphic representation of the Modulor, a stylized human figure with one arm raised, stands next to two vertical measurements, a red series based on the figure's navel height (1.08m in the original version, 1.13m in the revised version) then segmented according to Phi, and a blue series based on the figure's entire height, double the navel height (2.16m in the original version, 2.26m in the revised), segmented similarly. A spiral, graphically developed between the red and blue segments, seems to mimic the volume of the human figure.

Criticism

Critics of the Modulor have raised concerns with the system. For one, the height of the figure appears to be arbitrary, perhaps chosen for mathematical convenience. Also, in the words of Robin Evans, the female body "was only belatedly considered and rejected as a source of proportional harmony" (Evans 1995, quoted in Ostwald 2001, 146).

Trivia

• A picture of the Modulor appears on the current Swiss 10 CHF banknote dedicated to Le Corbusier.

See also

• Body proportions
• Rudolf Wittkower
• Vitruvian Man
• Anthropometry
• Ergonomics
• Rule of thumb
• List of strange units of measurement
• Preferred number, especially the section about Renard series, which covers a mathematical approach on evenly distributed numbers using geometric sequences, for use in constructing houses or devices.

Sources

• Evans, Robin. 1995. The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0262050498
• Ostwald, Michael. 2001. "The Modulor and Modulor 2 by Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret), 2 volumes. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2000" [book review]. Nexus Network Journal 3, no. 1:145–48.