News arrived yesterday that Álvaro Siza Vieira has been chosen as the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition that will take place later on this year in Venice. We will have time to look at his work in future posts, in the meantime, to celebrate this architectural piece of news, let's look at an interesting comparison between a building by Le Corbusier and Jil Sander's Spring/Summer 2013 menswear collection.
The building in question is the Notre-Dame-du-Haut Chapel in Ronchamp, France, and the comparison is not only conceptual, but also physical, with specific architectural features in this building - namely the windows - resembling some colours and graphic elements in the collection.
Regulated by strict mathematical and geometrical forms, the chapel at Ronchamp is shaped like a neolithic construction with an ample roof and undulating walls. The structure is made of concrete and rubble infill, concealed under layers of thick white gunnite. When Le Corbusier designed it, he tried to explore the vital relation between the human body and the architecture that surrounds it. The chapel was built on an ancient place of sun worship and this seems to be reflected also in the brilliant colours of the glass windows decorated with Le Corbusier's painted images that punctuate its interior.
The windows are actually the focus of the building with their deep set, coloured glass that casts an eerie haze over the main seating area. There is a contrast in a way between the colourful windows and the materials used to build the church with its square slab altar and rough walls.
In a way there is a symmetry between this building and Jil Sander's collection: the latter marked the return of the German designer to fashion after an eight-year absence and opened with squarish pristine and formal jackets and sleeveless coats as severe as the exterior of this building, and often paired with voluminously ample shorts. The knitwear pieces were among the most interesting designs with jumpers and cardigans featuring Mondrian-like stripes inspired by German abstract painter Blinky Palermo and American minimalist Robert Mangold.
It was possible to detect that slightly architectural Le Corbusier influence in the palette employed for the knitwear and in the yellow or cobalt blue outerwear. The graphic motifs on the designs also called to mind the structure of the chapel windows and the colourful effects they produce when they are hit by a ray of sunshine.
Somehow you almost feel that, for this collection, it is valid the same quotation used by the Board of La Biennale di Venezia, as motivation for the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Álvaro Siza Vieira: "I am equal in size to whatever I see, not hemmed in by the size I am" (Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet). It looks like Jil Sander's new man is indeed at ease in the game of proportions and ample squarish silhouettes alternated to streamlined ones that its original founder created for this season.
Pics of Notre-Dame-du-Haut, Ronchamp, courtesy of Frank Boyle
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