Housing and Innovation Technique and Domestic Space in the Residential Works by Pierre Jeanneret, a Contemporary Analysis for Design Housing Solutions

Under the name Housing and innovation: Technique and domestic space in the residential works by Pierre Jeanneret, a contemporary analysis for design housing solutions, the doctoral thesis focused on the research carried out by a forgotten modern architect and his quest to solve the domestic habitat in different geographical and emergency contexts is presented, with the aim of contributing and enriching contemporary research on prototypes, techniques and tools for new residential proposals that respond to contemporary socioeconomic and climatic conditions, pursuing what Walter Benjamin wrote: "Nothing that has ever happened can be taken for lost", since the new is accompanied by the redemption of everything past 1.

Pierre Jeanneret: The great unknown

Considering that there are many works that can be highlighted as part of the legacy of the modern movement, the work of Pierre Jeanneret stands out for possessing sufficient qualities to justify the contemporary review that is proposed. A review that deepens the residential works developed by the architect outside the Atelier 35 rue de Sèvres, mostly unknown and little studied, whose research in various fields of housing, typological, technological, economic and cultural, contributed to the construction of the domestic habitat of the twentieth century. In addition, Pierre Jeanneret gives the image of the true creator, of the man thirsty for constant discoveries. He looks around, invents and proposes with the generosity of those who live intensely. His whole life is a search for truth. To unravel, to understand, to find new answers.

Time-frame: Approach to the residential work of Pierre Jeanneret

What is known of Pierre Jeanneret's work is related, for the most part, to the works carried out in association with Le Corbusier. An extensive production that began in 1922 and ended in 1940, as a result of the war, resuming again in late 1950 with the commission for Chandigarh. Of these two stages a long bibliographical reflection can be found which, for the most part, focuses on the figure of Le Corbusier, leaving Pierre Jeanneret as the operational and technical executor of the projects. Even worse, of the decade after the separation, between 1940 and 1950, his production is unknown, a period little documented that has only left record in the collaborations that he made with other architects and designers such as Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé; but that represented a stage of experimentation and conceptual deepening on the meaning and form of domestic space.

Now, with the above in mind, how can we determine P. Jeanneret's contribution to the construction of the modern habitat and thus its implementation in contemporary residential research if we do not know his residential work in depth? It becomes inevitable to reconstruct and know the work of P. Jeanneret before making any formal or technical analysis of the projects, reconstructing them in such a way as to see the research period as a holistic process in order to extract the elements, systems or technical or architectural themes that contribute to contemporary design, as Josep Quetglas puts it: "The act of seeing does not consist in the passive and automatic reception of a fixed and established image in front of us, but in the active process of elaborating, approaching, separating, building relationships. The eyes receive an impact, and the memory sets off in search of possible links, producers of meaning" 2.

Hypothesis: About innovation and technic

As the title of the thesis indicates, the research wants to stipulate the innovative and technical character of P. Jeanneret's residential projects seeking to discern that it was orchestrated as a process of heuristic projection. In order to do so, it is necessary to determine what is meant when we talk about innovation and technique, starting with the meaning and etymology in order to begin to understand. In one hand, to innovate is to create or alter something, to introduce a novelty; its own Latin etymological root indicates it: "in" (to penetrate, to be inside) and "novus" (the new). The definition resonates in the words of Alvaro Siza: "Architects do not invent anything they just transform what already exists". But what does exist and what was new in the work of P. Jeanneret? It will one of the questions the thesis want to afront. In the other hand, technique, from the Greek, derives from the word tekton, carpenter or builder. It can be understood, if the intent is not specified, as Bruno Reichlin explains it in three different ways: the frist one, “la costruzione intesa nel suo aspetto materiale, e quindi la struttura e il suo guscio, i materiali e i dispositivi tecnici che si collegano a essa, le installazioni come pure le modalità di fabbricazione e il procedimento di messa in opera”. The second one, “l’immagine “tecnica” dell’opera, vale a dire ciò che nell’opera compiuta è dato di vedere e comprendere della sua costruzione. (…) indicata con il termine “tectonica”. And the last one, “il complesso dei saperi, dei metodi e degli strumenti di cui gli architetti (…) si sono dati per occuparsi in modo razionale ed efficace della concezione, e quindi dell’innovazione e della creazione, architettonica” (…)” 3.

Following this order of ideas, the thesis is structured from the four main periods of the residential work of P. Jeanneret, the first, his training and collaboration in the atelier 35 rue de Sèvres between 1922 and 1940 (fig. 1). The second, with a greater burden of research and exploration to the resolution of the residential unit, industrialization and housing for the masses between 1937 and 1945 (fig. 2). The third, the search for a local character of architecture, starting from an exploration that began before the split with Le Corbusier and carried forward with the construction of villas and chalets during 1940-1951, and finally, the design and construction of the city of Chandigarh, during 1951 and 1965 (fig. 3), with the formulation of about thirty residential models that were part of the main body of the city.

Each of the periods will be analyzed following the structure drawn from the idea of technique: the first, the case studies: the contextualization of the period, the reconstruction and description of the residential projects from the planimetry, the drawing is important, especially when it comes to architecture, to represent - to transmit and explain - as John Berger would say: "The design is the autobiographical documentation of the discovery of an event: seen, remembered or imagined" 4. The second, the technique, understood as the technical devices that make up the building, its materiality, structure, operation and installation, all of them at the mercy of the domestic space, or in the words of Marcel Breuer: "Space is not plastic, static, positive, projecting. It is hollow, negative, retiring. It is never complete and finite. It is in motion, connected to the next space and to the next -and to the infinite space. It is materially defined by slabs of masonry or wood or what have you, by structural frames, by a dome or by a sheet of glass." 5