The exhibition Drawing Le Corbusier is a joint project with Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris and the special support of its director, Madame Brigitte Bouvier. Drawing Le Corbusier aims to foster a dialogue between the architectural legacy of Casa Curutchet and other buildings by Le Corbusier through the personal perspective of Sergei Tchoban’s drawings.
For Le Corbusier, drawing was a way of thinking about architecture and of making visible what cannot always be expressed in words. At a time when digital logics and artificial intelligence dominate the discipline, Sergei Tchoban reclaims the practice of hand drawing as one of the most relevant tools of architectural thought. He traces a journey connecting Europe, Asia, and America, with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding through the drawings of Le Corbusier’s work.
Casa Curutchet connects the international principles of the Modern Movement with the architectural and cultural reality of Argentina. Le Corbusier introduced – perhaps anticipating changes in the local urban logic – a new modern conception of space. The five points of Modern Architecture outlined in his architectural manifesto – the free plan, pilotis, the free façade, horizontal windows, and the roof garden – are present in Casa Curutchet. At the same time, it incorporates nature as part of the spatial experience and, together, these principles turn Casa Curutchet into a synthesis of his architectural thinking.
Sergei Tchoban discovers and explores Le Corbusier’s design philosophy in a unique and personal way: through the practice of hand drawing. In his journey, Tchoban explores different geographies and moments in Le Corbusier’s career: from the geometric precision of Maison La Roche in Paris, Villa Savoye in Poissy, and the Pavillon Suisse at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, to the free and sculptural forms of the Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut in Ronchamp and Cité Radieuse (Unité d’Habitation) in Marseille. Rather than illustrating a linear evolution, his drawings allow us to recognize how Le Corbusier’s architectural elements reappear, evolve and respond to different contexts.
Focusing on the details and elements that, at the same time, find their expression in Casa Curutchet, Tchoban draws and reflects on the tension between geometry and bionic, the encounter between straight lines and curved forms, the sequence of spaces and paths, the transition between interior and exterior, and the role of light, colour, shadow, and materiality. In his drawings, he also explores with particular attention the way in which concrete becomes a tactile surface, capable of creating atmospheres and acquiring an almost sculptural expression.
Following the aim of the Fondation Le Corbusier to promote the legacy and knowledge of the work of Le Corbusier, Tchoban invites us on a journey to understand and explore Le Corbusier’s architectural œuvre through his own lens, and to recognize the architectural principles that are also found in Casa Curutchet. His drawings indicate where to look and which details to pause over. A journey to understand how ideas take shape, evolve over time, and how hand drawing continues to be, for an architect, a way of understanding the great legacy of Le Corbusier.
Curator: Agustina Pascotta