Travel Project VORed|19112014. Applied Study on Le Corbusier’s Journey to the East Trails

How do you educate yourself to become an architect in the 21st century? In the contemporary era dominated by mass media and the visual globalization the old learning process of assimilation and creation suffers being strongly influenced by the loan of the decontextualized elements. Therefore, we return to the 19th century architecture school’s formation tradition, to the canonical phenomenon along the initiation trails. Our story of the architect training through aesthetic analysis is diverted 100 years ago, resuming the practical application of Le Corbusier’s journey through Italy. This study implements the aesthetic process observations along his travel notebooks, reconstructing a similar path, as a practice for the first grade architecture students.

The methodology follows the definition of the aesthetic process’ steps, the principles of the architecture mapping’s composition. It defines the models and builds the system according to which the educational process is implemented. The study area is restricted to the Italic peninsula, cumulating the same points as noted by the architect along with the similar stylistic objectives. The analysis resumes the aesthetic stages described by Le Corbusier, it reconstructs the different typologies of the observed as a trail’s foundation and relates the distinct steps in assimilating the specific categories of the observed objects. The key of the aesthetic process is enclosed in the identity of the architectural object as observed, seen, assimilated through visual loan or memorized, imagined and recreated. The main aim is to reconstruct the formation process of an architect, analogue to Le Corbusier’s pathway. By focusing the assimilation on the process of seeing, observing, imagining, we target to orientate the educational process towards an active assimilation and a responsible future creation.

Thus, the study builds itself as an active story of the famous journey to the East, a story rooted in the past and with currently reflexes, a story of the architectural objects seen beyond the observer's temporal affiliation. Time travel is simultaneously a dialogue between the becoming architects and Le Corbusier, as well as a story - the story of the creative adaptation and the progressive imagination.