Le Modulor 1956

Curator: First impressions: there’s something undeniably optimistic, even playful, in the combination of colours and shapes. What do you make of it? Editor: I see that. But to truly grasp this artwork, Le Corbusier's "Le Modulor" from 1956, a mixed-media piece, you have to situate it in his broader architectural and theoretical work. It’s hard to separate it from that. Curator: Ah, yes, "Modulor", the architect's vision for a universal system of proportions rooted in the human form. It’s like he’s distilling a person into something almost elemental, a mathematical poem, isn't it? Editor: Precisely. And the implications of such a system are complex. Consider how the Modulor was meant to standardize design, yet standardization often means a disregard for diverse bodies, a privileging of the norm. What does it mean to create a “universal” standard from a specific body? Curator: That dark, slender figure... Almost like a hieroglyph or a shadow puppet dancing across a gridded stage. I love how it seems caught between the abstract world of geometry and the more organic forms swirling around it. Do you think of these swirling shapes as liberating, as the answer to the geometric structures? Editor: The red and blue tones lend a dynamism that prevents the composition from feeling sterile, agreed. However, I interpret the stark contrast between the rigidity of the grid and the more fluid shapes as representing the tensions between control and freedom. The waves down at the bottom especially give me that reading, a sea ready to swallow the grid, maybe? It's about negotiating the terms under which we build and inhabit our spaces. How can the built environment adapt to human needs and vice-versa, especially given we are all different? Curator: Such an architectural artwork almost forces us to consider that which we are used to moving through everyday. How often do we question those walls, that geometry? Editor: Exactly, and "Le Modulor" encourages that questioning by embedding within it these social, ethical questions concerning our environment. Ultimately it asks: who gets to determine what is standard and at what cost? It serves as an invitation, or perhaps an indictment, to constantly evaluate how our designed spaces affect, even dictate, our lives. Curator: Beautifully put. It seems so many discussions on a future designed and envisioned by so many can start with the colours on one canvas. Editor: Absolutely. Every stroke a statement and an invitation.