Immeuble-villas de 1922 e as variantes cartusianas

Abstract

Le Corbusier advocates the influence of a monastery in his collective housing. He refers to a Charterhouse in Galluzzo, in the Florence’s outskirts, known as Certosa di Val d’Ema: a monastery which had been founded in 1342 by Niccolò Acciaioli and that Le Corbusier visits during his initiatic travels into the world of architecture and decorative arts – in 1907 and 1911. From the formal standpoint, several critics and historians have been mentioning the likeness of the Corbusian collective housing with the Charterhouse of Florence. However, a first analysis of the files of the Foundation Le Corbusier, has allowed to learn something new: that the architect’s knowledge on the carthusian monasteries was not only based on the experience of a singular monastery. A typological study of this set of charterhouses examined by Le Corbusier has permitted to verify a series of matches between the immeuble-villas project and carthusian order architecture, which had not yet been outlined.