tracing the meaning of machine in Space is The Machine


Le Corbusier 1923 ... a house is a machine for living in ...

Index: 16, 56, 377, 404

p. 16. Hillier refuted Scruton's idea that the meaning of architecture is shared by observers (us participating daily) vernacularly. The background of his refutation is that it won't explain *innovations/ambitious aspirations* made by major architectural innovators (examples are Palladio and Le Corbusier).

p. 56. Again, refutation to Scruton, when he said that architecture could never have a *theory* because architecture can never be universal (theory arises from the clain of universality). Hillier use the essence of science as background, that theories are analytic, not intentionally normative. Scientific theory is a rational construct intended to capture the lawfulness of how the world is, not a set of guidelines as to how it should be. Theories are descriptions of how the world is, not prescription of how it ought to be. That in Palladio's and Le Corbusier's, one could find such descriptions, ie. generic principles underlying an approach to design.

p. 377 Hillier analyses metaphor of the machine, and rejects paradigm of the machine. The definition taken for a machine is that an organisation of matter that transforms other matter through its operation. Le Corbusier did not mean the machine as formal analogue for the organisation of house, but the metaphor of a style. Using Le Corbusier's exploration of plan, Hillier constructs an argument that a plan is important part of architecture because space organised by a plan is the ultimate expression of architectural creativity. The generic principle of Le Corbusier is the axis, ie. the organisation of a building is organisation of its axis, ie. the sequences of experience. organisation of space, ie. a plan is a machine in a sense of a specific sequences of experience, known or identified by observer as particular style of its architect

p. 404 footnote to p. 377