A snapshot of Central Park that encapsulates two of Le Corbusier’s core ideals.

Throughout the course much of the material has been very interesting however what I found to be most interesting was Le Corbusier’s Radiant City. The push towards skyscrapers and large parks was fascinating and it resonated with some of my travels on the East Coast. I always appreciated the architectural mastery of the skyscraper but I never knew how much cultural and social influence they had as well. The way in which they maximized population while minimizing space was something I never thought of a true purpose of the skyscraper. Even the criticism to Le Corbusier’s work I found interesting with many arguing that these parks that he implements are in fact much more dangerous than the slums they replaced. However one critique that I have not found much reading on is that of a Marxist critique and I wanted to give my own critique through a Marxist lens. From a Marxist point of view the skyscraper is a literal manifestation of the bourgeois being placed on a higher level than the proletariat. The CEO’s and upper management is literally above the rest of the workers looking down upon them as to assert their dominance as having more power through financial means. This applies to residential skyscrapers as well in the way that the penthouse is usually the most expensive unit on the top of the building and once again through financial means someone can be literally on top of the peoples of lesser means. Le Corbusier’s ideas are fascinating even though some of them can be seen as damaging and causing more problems than they solve, however even through the problems it cannot be denied that his ideas were revolutionary and influenced urban planning greatly in the latter half of the 20^th century.

– Zach Coates

Champs Élysées from the Arc de Triomphe

In the past few years I have travelled extensively throughout Europe and have enjoyed a great number of experiences that have shaped me into the person that I am. However one of the most memorable was travelling through Paris and experiencing the many aspects of the city that make it so unique. Through this course I have learned that the majority of these unique aspects came from the mind of Georges-Eugene Haussmann. Looking back I can vividly remember the wide, straight boulevards that emanated from a single location. One of the most distinct is the Champs-Elysées that emanates from the Arc de Triomphe. This boulevard emanating from a central location highlights every aspect of Haussmann’s modernization. It is quite wide with tall buildings lining the street that have almost identical facades. Also the street has many café’s and shops that made it seem very busy and not as historical as some areas of Paris. I was quite struck by this because before travelling to Paris I was staying just outside of Paris in a small community named Enghien Les-Bains where all the modernization of Paris was absent. In this town there were no wide boulevards, and instead there were narrow winding streets that made it very difficult to make your way around this relatively small town. I was amazed at how the efforts by Haussmann to modernize Paris had made such a significant impact on the character of the city. Instead of the jumbled narrow streets of small towns outside of Paris there were wide easily distinguishable roads that made navigating this massive city quite easy.