Insights into the daily life of Le Corbusier: the Agendas in the Fondation Le Corbusier

[EN] The resources available for research at the Fondation Le Corbusier are many and varied. Among these, the agendas (diaries) offer particularly intriguing insights into the public and private life of Le Corbusier. These diaries present a number of difficulties to the researcher: the notes are often difficult to read and even more difficult to interpret. The organisation of the diaries has to be understood. The pages of the diaries are undated. Establishing the approximate dates for each page presents a challenge that can only be overcome by reference to a wide range of other documentation. This paper offers suggestions for how to analyse and interpret this difficult material. With a number of worked examples, an indication is given of some of the insights that can be obtained from mining this data.[ES] Los recursos disponibles para la investigación en la Fundación Le Corbusier son muchos y variados. Entre ellos, las agendas (diarios) ofrecen una visión particularmente interesante de la vida pública y privada de Le Corbusier. Estos diarios presentan una serie de dificultades para el investigador: las notas son a menudo difíciles de leer y aún más difíciles de interpretar. La organización de los diarios debe ser comprendida. Las páginas de los diarios no tienen fecha. Establecer las fechas aproximadas de cada página representa un desafío que sólo puede superarse mediante las referencias de una amplia gama de otra documentación. Este documento ofrece sugerencias sobre cómo analizar e interpretar este difícil material. Con una serie de ejemplos trabajados, se da una indicación de algunos de los conocimientos que pueden obtenerse de la extracción de estos datos.[FR] La Fondation Le Corbusier offre au chercheur(e) une richese de sources archivistiques. Parmi elles, les agendas proposent des indications intéressantes et révélatrices sur la vie privée et publique de Le Cobusier. Ces documents présentent, par contre, des difficultés au chercheur(e). La lecture n'est pas facile et encore plus difficile à interpreter. Les feuillets ne portent pas de dates, comme un agenda normal. Attribuer une date à chaque page nécessite une recherche complexe dans la documentation de la Fondation. Ce texte propose quelques solutions pour arriver à analyser ce matériel, avec quelques cas études et quelques trou-vailles intéressantes.Benton, T. (2020). Insights into the daily life of Le Corbusier: the Agendas in the Fondation Le Corbusier. LC. Revue de recherches sur Le Corbusier. 1(2):9-22. https://doi.org/10.4995/lc.2020.14333OJS92212Benton, Tim. "From Jeanneret to Le Corbusier: rusting iron, bricks and coal and the modern Utopia." Massilia nº 2 (2003): 28-39.Benton, Tim. «Le Corbusier e il vernacolare: Le Sextant à Les Mathes 1935». Le Case per artisti sull'Isola Comacina, 22-43. A. Canziani. Como: NodoLibri, 2010.Benton, Tim. Les Villas parisiennes de Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, 1920-1930. Paris: Editions de la Villette, 2007 (First edition 1984).Benton, Tim. LC foto: Le Corbusier: secret photographer. Baden, London: Lars Müller, Springer distributor, 2013.Benton, Tim. Le Corbusier conférencier. Paris: Le Moniteur, 2007.Brooks, H. Allen. Le Corbusier's formative years: CharlesEdouard Jeanneret at La Chaux-de-Fonds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.Burriel Bielza, Luis and Giuliano Gresleri. Le Corbusier la passion des cartes. Bruxelles: Mardaga, 2013.Gresleri, Giuliano. Le Corbusier, viaggio in Oriente: gli inediti di Charles Edouard Jeanneret, fotografo e scrittore. Venezia; Paris: Marsilio; Fondation Le Corbusier, 1985.Le Corbusier, et al. Album La Roche [with an essay by Stanislaus von Moos translated by Irene von Moos]. Paris: Gallimard-Electa, 1996.Pauly, Danièle, and Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier: albums d'Afrique du Nord: voyages au M'Zab 1931 et 1933. Bruxelles, Paris: Archives d'architecture moderne éditions; Fondation Le Corbusier, 2013Pauly, Danièle, et al. Le Corbusier catalogue raisonné des dessins Tome I Années de formation et premiers voyages, 1902-1916. Bruxelles: Archives d'architecture moderne éditions; Fondation Le Corbusier, 2019. (Avec la collaboration d'Isabelle Godineau et de Gauthier Bolle)Taylor, Brian Brace. Le Corbusier la Cité de refuge Paris 1929-1933. Paris: L'Equerre, 1981

Milieu, spirit, flesh and fusion in Le Corbusier’s life and work

How can a study of Le Corbusier's post-war work - the Poème de l'angle droit and Modulor 1 and 2 - throw light on his earlier preoccupations. These works are retrospective and confessional. They are obsessed with the question 'By what right may I create?' The former work looks for answers in experience and the latter in the 'divine' world of mathematics. From at least 1906, when he bought and devoured Edouard Schoré's Les grands initiés, Le Corbusier had a strong sense of predestination and a conviction that suffering was a necessary part of the voyage to enlightenment. His dualism, the belief in the separation of the spiritual and material worlds, encouraged him to view mathematics as part of the 'hidden world' of the spirit. His problem, in the research leading up to Modulor 1, was how to reconcile divine proportion and human experience. He invariably described the passage from the material to the spiritual worlds in terms of physical processes - smoking, simmering, brewing, giving birth. This idea, clearly described in one of his lectures in 1929, and his frequent discussion of 'cosmic' forces and symbolism during the 1930s, indicates that these ideas were well entrenched before the war

Inter-patch movement in an experimental system: the effects of life history and the environment

An important process for the persistence of populations subjected to habitat loss and fragmentation is the dispersal of individuals between habitat patches. Dispersal involves emigration from a habitat patch, movement between patches through the surrounding landscape, and immigration into a new suitable habitat patch. Both landscape and physical condition of the disperser are known to influence dispersal ability, although disentangling these effects can often be difficult in the wild. In one of the first studies of its kind, we used an invertebrate model system to investigate how dispersal success is affected by the interaction between the habitat condition, as determined by food availability, and life history characteristics (which are also influenced by food availability). Dispersal of juvenile and adult mites (male and female) from either high food or low food natal patches were tested separately in connected three patch systems where the intervening habitat patches were suitable (food supplied) or unsuitable (no food supplied). We found that dispersal success was reduced when low food habitat patches were coupled to colonising patches via unsuitable intervening patches. Larger body size was shown to be a good predictor of dispersal success, particularly when the intervening landscape is unsuitable. Our results suggest that there is an interaction between habitat fragmentation and habitat suitability in determining dispersal success: if patches degrade in suitability and this affects the ability to disperse successfully then the effective connectance across landscapes may be lowered. Understanding these consequences will be important in informing our understanding of how species, and the communities in which they are embedded, may potentially respond to habitat fragmentation

Junior Recital

List of performers and performances

A review of the literature and knowledge of standards and certification systems in agricultural production and farming systems (NRI working paper series on sustainability standards No. 2)

In this review we closely follow the terms of reference set by RESOLV, with respect to the standards summarised below in Table 1.2, specifically: organic, GlobalGAP, Fairtrade, the Sustainable Agriculture Network standard (known as SAN, and sometimes referred to as the Rainforest Alliance (RA) standard), and Utz Certified), plus two newer standards – the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS) standards. In most of the text the discussion focuses on the first five of these standards according to the availability of literature and the length of time that the standards have been in operation (RTRS only published its standard in June 2010 with its first certification in June 2011; RSPO Principles were agreed in 2005 followed by the criteria and indicators agreed 2007 and the first certification took place in 2008). So in section 1 we focus on the market for certified agricultural products exploring trends in supply and demand including reflections on how consumers and companies influence these trends. In section 2 we begin by discussing the evolving methodologies in use to assess impacts of standards and standards systems. Informed by this methodological understanding, we provide a summary of key findings from a variety of studies on particular standards or groups of standards in agriculture. In section 3 we consider the relative effectiveness of certification systems both in relation to each other and compared to other approaches to improving ‘sustainability performance’. Following this in section 4 we discuss communication of the standards to the public and public awareness of different standards. Here we explore the complex relationship with public regulation and also consider ways other than standards which may facilitate improvements. The concluding section summarises the key findings and presents our analysis of the gaps in knowledge that exist. We propose a research agenda that will enhance our understanding of standards and certification systems operating in agriculture, particularly with respect to how they meet their objectives and broader impacts, intended and unintended

Age and size at maturity: sex, environmental variability and developmental thresholds

In most organisms, transitions between different life-history stages occur later and at smaller sizes as growth conditions deteriorate. Day and Rowe recently proposed that this pattern could be explained by the existence of developmental thresholds (minimum sizes or levels of condition below which transitions are unable to proceed). The developmental-threshold model predicts that the reaction norm of age and size at maturity will rotate in an anticlockwise manner from positive to a shallow negative slope if: (i) initial body size or condition is reduced; and/or (ii) some individuals encounter poor growth conditions at increasingly early developmental stages. We tested these predictions by rearing replicated populations of soil mites Sancassania berlesei (Michael) under different growth conditions. High-food environments produced a vertical relationship between age and size at maturity. The slope became increasingly shallow as food was reduced. By contrast, high food in the maternal environment reduced the slope of the reaction norm of age and size at maturity, whereas low food increased it. Overall, the reaction norm of age and size at maturity in S. berlesei was significantly nonlinear and differed for males and females. We describe how growth conditions, mother's environment and sex determine age and size at maturity in S. berlesei

Environmental tipping points and food system dynamics: Main report

First paragraph: Environmental tipping points occur when there are step changes in the way the biophysical world works – whether loss of soil fertility, collapse of a fishing stock, or sudden changes in weather patterns, such as those that caused the grasslands in North Africa to become deserts, 6000 years ago. These non-linear shifts arise following a critical degree of change, resulting from either many small cumulative changes or one large shock, “tipping” the system over a threshold and into a new stable state. Entering an alternative stable state is associated with a change to system function, usually being difficult to reverse or “tip” back into the original state. Increasingly we recognise that human-environment interactions are affecting the likelihood that critical thresholds for tipping points will be crossed, leading to step-changes in the provision of environmental goods and services, and impacting upon food security