Towards a New Architecture book club questions

1. 1.

   Corbusier's equation of beauty with functional logic has been influential and contested. Do you find it persuasive? Can you think of designed objects that are beautiful for reasons that have nothing to do with function?

2. 2.

   The book was written partly as an attack on the architecture profession. Is there a field you know well where a similar attack — on tradition versus function — would be valid today?

3. 3.

   He treats ships, cars, and aircraft as models for architecture. What are the limits of that analogy? Is a house actually like a machine?

4. 4.

   The 'machine for living in' became a slogan used to justify housing projects that caused enormous social harm. Does the failure of those applications invalidate the original idea?

5. 5.

   Corbusier's universalism — the claim that primary forms have cross-cultural emotional weight — has been challenged on historical and anthropological grounds. How seriously should we take it?

6. 6.

   His critique of ornament echoes Adolf Loos's 'Ornament and Crime' from 1913. Is that critique still valid in contemporary design? Has ornament been rehabilitated?

7. 7.

   The Parthenon recurs throughout the book as a model of dimensional precision. What does it mean to use a Greek temple as the ideal for a theory of industrial modernity?

8. 8.

   The book was a manifesto as much as an argument. What are the risks of thinking about architecture — or any discipline — through the frame of the manifesto?

9. 9.

   Corbusier's urbanism led, in the hands of his followers, to demolishing historic neighborhoods to build towers. Who bears responsibility: the theorist or the practitioners who applied the theory?

10. 10.

    Looking at architecture built under his influence — from Chandigarh to social housing blocks across Europe — how do you evaluate the balance of aesthetic success and human failure?

11. 11.

    What would a contemporary equivalent of this book look like? Which design field most needs the kind of confrontation with industry and function that Corbusier was proposing?

12. 12.

    He believed architecture could prevent revolution. Do you think formal and spatial design has real social and political power — or is that a kind of architectural overreach?

How to run the discussion

• Pick six to eight, not all of them. An hour of real discussion covers fewer questions than anyone expects, and racing the list is what makes a book club feel like homework.
• Open with what people noticed, not what they concluded. Asking for a verdict first hardens opinions before anyone has heard each other.
• Let the disagreement run. The questions below that split a room are the ones worth the time; the ones everyone answers the same way can be skipped.
• Ask the quiet person a specific question. A direct, narrow question is far easier to answer than an open invitation to contribute.