by Misa Hayashi

Once upon a time when most common people were farmers, fishers and hunters, there was no concept of ‘leisure,’ however, with the arrival of the ‘Industrial Revolution,’ people’s lives or lifestyles have changed dramatically. As working hours were set, people began spending two large blocks of time, i.e., a block of time ‘working’ at work and another block of time ‘eating and sleeping’ after going home. Hence the extra time created between the two blocks of ‘time’ as well as the free time born on weekends, together, came to be called ‘leisure.’

Besides, the 19th century was also the period of epidemic diseases, as Europe suffered from the widespread outbreak of infectious diseases. The instantaneous spread of contagious diseases among the urban dwellers living in an unsanitary condition in an abominably poor environment raised the awareness of health. Consequently, it came to be recommended as part of medical practice to those people with high consciousness for their health, to begin breathing clean air, and to exercise by swimming in the sea and climbing in the mountains and so forth.

Eventually, as people spent their ‘leisure’ time, rather than considering it as performing medical practice, people began to take it more as changing their pace and to enjoy to go on trips, to actively exercise and to be engaged in various sports. Accordingly, the remarkable change in the lifestyles of people from the late 19th century to the early 20th century had promoted the provision of variety of sports facilities and the houses that could accommodate new lifestyles. Wearing thick glasses and having a bit nervous face, in terms of a general impression, Le Corbusier did seem to cast an image of a person who did not really like exercising a lot, but on the contrary, in fact, he actually loved to train his body to exercise. Likewise, it was also little known about him that he enjoyed playing basketball daily, challenging in bicycle racing and always spending the day swimming in the sea every summer.

In 1896, the Summer Olympics put forward by the French nobility (Barron of) Pierre de Coubertin was held for the first time in modern history in Athens, Greece. In the first games of Olympics, 43 events in 8 sport categories including athletics, swimming, tennis, gymnastics including weightlifting, wrestling, cycling, fencing and shooting were held with 241 athletes from 14 countries. Thereafter, the Summer Olympics would be held every four years. When major sporting events such as the Olympics or the Soccer (Football) World Cup would take place, it was natural that, like it or not, we would all be drawn to those competitions. And certainly, Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret were no exception to that.

The 1936 Summer Olympics was held in Berlin, under the command of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. The filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was commissioned to film this Summer Olympics, and thusly, it became well known from the images captured in her documentary film (released in 1938) about the main stadium and its design, the production of opening ceremony and so forth. It is unlikely that Le Corbusier had actually seen the Olympics on site, nevertheless, most probably, he did see the footages of her documentary film and read the associated articles. Besides, he must have had chances to watch various sporting events prior to the Olympics, as he visited collage sport facilities during his trip to the U.S. in 1935. Moreover, during his field trip (in1935) in Zuín (in today’s Czech Republic), Le Corbusier also observed a Bata shoe company’s employee athletic meet. And his cousin Pierre Jeanneret visited and participated in a major festival in Garches, France. Accordingly, Le Corbusier and Jeanneret not only found the attraction to the sports themselves but also became interested in creating a place where a large number of people would gather. So, immediately in 1936, they began a project, ‘A Stadium with A Capacity of 100,000 Spectators’ as a festival space. As such, Le Corbusier considered this project to be important not merely as a huge sports facility but also meaningful in the pursuit of being a new form of public assembly, wherefore many pages were devoted in his ‘Œuvre Compléte (Complete Works)’. Consequently, the stadium was designed with a stage and a large screen in order to accommodate not only a various sporting events such as athletics, soccer (football) or comprehensive multiple sports meets but also such non-sporting events as presenting stage plays, screening movies or holding lectures, as well as accommodating applications such as hosting very large-scale national events. Thus, the design feature of this stadium enabled it to be utilized in multitudinous ways by assuming various different operations in advance.

Additionally, it could be said that it boasted a highly original design such as attested in a very large shell-like overall form with its canopy awning-like roof being suspended by wire structure as a device to effectively shield the glare of the direct sunlight for the spectators. After examining several probable sites on the outskirts of Paris, the plausible sites were narrow-downed to 3 sites, Gennevilliers, Gentilly and the Bois de Vincennes respectively. First, Gennevilliers was located in the area on the western side of Paris along the Seine River where he also included a plan for having boat race events. And second, Gentilly was located further south of the area near the ‘Cité universitaire’ in the southern side of Paris. However, Gentilly, where the site faced the Montscouris Park and linked to the southern highway, was the smallest of the 3 sites. Then the third, the Bois de Vincennes site offered not only a larger area but also there were a pre-existing bicycle bowl and a stadium, so the plan was to integrate those facilities in the usage plan. The Bois de Vincennes site was also located near the area proposed in 1932 reserved for its pavilions in the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Moreover, the Bois de Vincennes site was the area where, since 1925, Le Corbusier articulated for the east-west axis in his urban design proposal for Paris, in which a plan to provide roads and railways there was included. It was actually Pierre Jeanneret who had compiled this project. Nevertheless, Le Corbusier appealed the completed proposal plan to the President (of France) and the Mayor (of Paris), etc., and presented and introduced the plan in his diorama exhibited in the Pavillon des Temps Nouveaux (Pavilion of New Times) at the 1937 Paris International Exposition.

Subsequently, Le Corbusier designed stadiums many times over, but only two had been realized. One of the two that was built was the Firminy-Vert Stadium (1964-1968) in Firminy, a town in Loire region in central France. Along with the ‘Maison de la Culture (Cultural House)’ and the ‘Saint-Pierre Church,’ the stadium was constructed as part of the Firminy redevelopment plan on a slope site that connected the historic center and the new town of Firminy. The depressed bottom part of the site was adopted for the track of athletics, and the spectator stand was designed and built to take advantage of the natural topographical inclination of the site. While the rocky area on the opposite side of the stand is left intact as is, the ‘Maison de la Culture (Cultural House)’ standing behind overhangs the rocky sloped area. The ‘Saint-Pierre Church’ and the indoor swimming pool facility stand right behind the stand. The indoor swimming facility was actually designed by André Wogenscky, an apprentice of Le Corbusier. By the way, the other stadium that was built is the ‘Bagdad Gymnasium (formerly Saddam Hussein Gymnasium)’ in Bagdad, Iraq which Le Corbusier started the design in 1956 and onward. While the detail is uncertain, it stands today as completed, and it is also listed on the official website of the Fondation Le Corbusier.

Le Corbusier not just designed the stadium as a standalone facility, but indeed he also designed a complex of various sports facilities large and small along with the stadium as a whole to be incorporated into his architecture to form an important element of urban components. In the sketches of his housing projects, Le Corbusier placed the exercise equipment on the terrace of the dwelling unit, showing that the occupants could train the body even at home. In the design proposal he presented in 1922, the collective housing project ‘Immeubles-Villas,’ the courtyard space in the center of the building was dedicated as the exercise ground. Likewise, in the ‘Unité d’habitation,’ he designed exercise facilities on the roof such as a swimming pool, track and exercise gym. Rather than as a single facility, Le Corbusier had repeatedly proposed creating a complex of exercise facilities to be incorporated into the building so as to provide places where sports would become more proximate for the occupants to participate. Looking at his urban design proposals, for example, in the ‘Urban Design on the Left Bank of the Scheldt, Antwerp, Belgium’ (1933), a large stadium and a ground were located in the riverside area. Also in the proposed plan of ‘1937 Unsanitary Area No.6 in Paris,’ the open or empty spaces created by the zigzag type formation of the collective housing units placement were designed to be converted to the green and ground spaces. In his manifesto book, ‘La Ville radieuse (The Radiant City),’ Le Corbusier advocated a healthy city with full of sun, space and greenery, and consequently, in which he envisioned stadiums and sports facilities to be regarded as among the important elements of the city.