Figure and Experience
the labyrinth and le Corbusier's World Museum
Le Corbusier calls up the idea of the promenade by analogy (to 'Arab architecture' and the 'symphony') but the common denominator of these accounts remains the point of view of a strolling spectator and their account of the apprehension of space. This point of view literally becomes the agency of the description of architectural space (its experiential dimension) reiterated time and again in Le Corbusier's writings. Yet who is this spectator and what is their point of view? How is this affecting our (any person's) experience? It has been suggested that the promenade, as a point of view, is simply that of our daily experience; a 'natural' aspect of our behaviour. However in the work of Le Corbusier the promenade cannot simply be reduced to such a claim. The promenade that Le Corbusier devises for his buildings is not first of all any person's experience of a building, it is necessarily a constructed one; an experience imagined in a particular way by the architect prior to any person's arrival at the building. So despite the appeals made to confirm the 'naturalness' of the point of view of a promenade it should be acknowledged that the relation of any person's temporal experience (of the building) to the promenade (as constructed by the work of the architect) is a problematic one.
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