Description

FIRST EDITION of this pamphlet, illustrated with numerous diagrams, designed to promote the Voisin Plan to the authorities of the Vichy regime.
SIGNED AUTOGRAPH CONSIGNMENT René Belin, who was Minister of Labour between 14 July 1940 and 18 April 1942:

To Mr Belin,
Minister and Secretary of State,
this small contribution to the truth about town planning at a time when some serious decisions could be taken.
With respect and deepest sympathy
Le Corbusier
Vichy February 1941

From 23 February 1941, René Belin held this post as well as that of industrial production manager, an essential role according to Le Corbusier, who insisted that "large-scale industry takes over construction" (p. 6)

In his book Le Corbusier, a French fascistXavier de Jarcy makes the connection between Le Corbusier's fascist sympathies and his urbanist dreams".reinforced concrete"City factsant-hills with an austere and haughty aesthetic in the service of a new civilisation of work". Appointed in 1940 as town planning advisor to the Vichy government, as projects to clean up insalubrious block no. 16 (4th arrondissement of Paris) got under way, Le Corbusier had high hopes, which he summed up in Destiny of Paris in the form of a project for slum n°6 (Faubourg Saint Antoine) designed according to his Ville Radieuse model:

[I wrote it in the autumn of 1939, during the first three months of the war. This book implied victory and set out the programme for a vital part of our necessary major undertakings. It will appear, without a word of change, after the defeat, because defeat, in the line of events, is nothing more than a misfortune instead of an opportunity. [I] continue here, in a straight line towards the aim of these lines, which is to show that the fate of Paris has just been put at stake for reasons of housing and town planning. Now that the government has decided to start work immediately on the first 'insalubrious block' in Paris, the time has come to make a choice, according to which the direction will be chosen; and this direction will determine the fate of Paris" (p. 9).

The change of government represents, in the words of Le Corbusier, "a real miracle"For several years now, the authorities had been rejecting his plan to redevelop the right bank of Paris, first presented at the 1925 Decorative Arts Exhibition. Known as the Plan Voisin, this project proposed a linear reorganisation of urban space, driven by the development of means of transport and the involvement of the "city".large industry"The architect imagined a business district stretching from the Gare de l'Est railway station to the Champs Élysées roundabout. The architect imagined a 240-hectare business district stretching from Gare de l'Est to the Champs Élysées roundabout, bounded to the south by the Seine and to the west by Rue Vieille du Temple. At the centre is a group of 18 cruciform skyscrapers 200 metres high. To implement the Plan Voisin, which he envisaged as the starting point for the redevelopment of the whole of France, Le Corbusier simply proposed razing a large part of "old Paris", preserving only a few vestiges.

Tradition? It's a chain that goes on forever, always a step forward, always an addition. It never stands still, and never returns or retreats. Time never moves backwards, and the works of the city have always expressed time (p. 11).

An optimist, Le Corbusier concludes the book with this appeal:

In October 1940, a decision of principle could lead modern society, in the realisation of its technical elements, to the very point where the Authority had masterfully decided to lead the country.

Despite Le Corbusier's efforts to find support, the regime opted for conservation; even his urban development plan for Algiers was rejected in June 1942. Le Corbusier left Vichy a month later.

In the post-war period, Le Corbusier persisted: in 1958, at the age of 70, he submitted two pages devoted to the "fate of Paris" to André Malraux for mediation. Malraux in turn took up the defence of heritage conservation, a position he would assert with the "Loi Malraux". Although Le Corbusier's theories did not transform the capital, they did have a major influence on the development of its outlying "grands ensembles".

Uncommon with dispatch.