Art: Horizontal or Vertical?

France’s Architect Le Corbusier, the prophet of vertical living who thinks that even Manhattan skyscrapers are too small, came in for some criticism last week in London’s Economist. His familiar prescription for overflow populations from ever-growing cities is the super apartment house, a kind of human hive (he has just finished a 20-floor prototype at Marseille, placing 1,500 people on a 450-by-66-ft. plot). The alternative, says the Economist, is the sprawling suburb, “the village green multiplied by unplanned expansion” that all too easily turns into an “amorphous and soulless mess … the suburb which, proverbially, the Devil made.” But Le Corbusier’s solution, a hangover from the “walled stronghold and the cave-settlement,” can be even more diabolic. It has advantages: e.g., it reduces commuting distance to the city, makes such amenities as washing machines and parks cheaper because they are used by more people. But, “no expanse of parkland made available by vertical concentration, no crèche on the 18th floor, will make up for the handkerchief of private garden . . . The privileges of … gathering up a tearful toddler within a few seconds of his tumble at play, of quieting a squabble . . . without leaving the milk to boil over may seem trivial to architects; by mothers they are valued much above communal laundries.”