Matheus Gorovitz
City and Citizenship:
A contribution to the study of the modern city considered a work of art
Chandigarh and Brasilia

Matheus Gorovitz is architect and professor in FAUUnB
Department of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Brasilia, Brazil;

Key words: City/Citizenship/Esthetics

Before the appearance of a work of art,
One has not the slightest notion of its possibilities.

Goethe (Letter to Schiller - January 6, 1798)

1. The city as a work of art (abstract)
Chandigarh and Brasilia are product of artistic imagination, they both refer to the world not as it is, but as what it should be. The degree of integrity or the social disintegration of the context which originates them is not determinant (Wind, 1988: pp. 27- 41). (1)
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(1.) The technical-funtional performance and the adaptation of the design to the particular practical, psichological, physical and sociological contingencies, needs and convenience of the users will not be the aim of the verification of this work.
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Described here as works of art they will be so qualified for being beautiful. As significant shapes of a human totality are, in fact, autonomous; a decoding will not depend on external factors but on the disposition of the design. The idea of autonomous will contain the idea of beautiful, and self-asserting as a factor of sociability is the postulate which fundaments the notion of modernity.

By promoting inter-subjectivity, Chandigarh and Brasilia, each in its own way, either by the "esprit de géométrie" or by the "esprit de finesse" contribute to the establishment of the condition of a possibility of citizenship in the plane of artistic creation and within the framework of modernity, this is the thesis hereupon exposed.

2. Metaphysics of subjectivity
The thesis of autonomy as basis to modernity implies in the negation of metaphysics, in other words, the assumption of the preexistence of a value which imposes itself as a norm of behavior, transcendent to the existence of a being as an individual.

Upon rereading Nietzsche, Heidegger recognizes a contradiction in the voluntary and ethical character of modern viewpoint. Illuminism, viewing liberty and auto-determination subordinates will to an end, preserving the metaphysical character for, a notion of humanity placed as absolute would impose itself as a postulate, as " a feeling that lives within the hearts of all men" (Kant, 1990: 97).

The key question is how to conciliate the universal value, true for all, without reifying the identity of the individual, the plenitude of the subjective, sensitive, volitional, and rational human capabilities. The projects here analyzed are postures in the face of such contradictions. Methodologically, it is due to begin by pointing out the similarities and the differences in the design. In both, a system of axis, the neighborhood unit and a regulating trace are structural factors.

3. The axes
The principle of segregation of the pedestrian and the car, common to both projects, implies in the suppression of the corridor - street, aim expressed by Le Corbusier when he referred to the "7V" system adopted in Chandigarh:

The rule of the 7V by which the pedestrian's march can be separated from the mechanical speeds (Corbusier, 1951).

The corridor-street gives place to the axes as one of the spatial principles of urban structuring.

Once the practical aims are attained, that is, to make the flux that link the activity sectors viable, the circulation routes form an axial system that organizes plastically the parts. The axes marks, both in Chandigarh as well as in Brasilia, the volitional character; a gesture of auto-determination made explicit by the architects:

Basically, it was born of the primary gesture of one who signalizes or takes possession of a place: two axes crossing at right angle; or else, the very sign of the Cross (Costa, 1991: 78). The axis is perhaps the first human manifestation; it is the instrument to any human act.The child who hesitates tends in the direction of the axis, the man who fights in the tempest of his life draws an axis for himself. The axis is the organizer of architecture. (Le Corbusier, 1995: 151).


3.1 Brasilia
The system of axes in Brasilia identifies the principal functions: the monumental axis, the residential axis and the urban center; on the other hand, the 7V system consists of a homogeneous framework which neutralizes the functional differences. The activity sectors of Chandigarh, except the Capitol, are organized, without distinction, within the area defined by the axes. In one the axial principle is subordinated by the programmatic contingency, while in the other the program is accommodated in the geometrical principle.

As one circulates on the axes in Brasilia, one notices its specificity: the residential axis is arched and framed by "a wide belt densely covered with trees", the monumental axis organized symmetrically by perspective, and the urban center by the inflexion signaled in the crossing of the two axes by high buildings. We can read in the report of the pilot plan:

The creation of these blocks, in other words, tree-lined contours in great quadrilaterals, had at first, as first objective, to articulate the residential scale to the monumental scale, and this way guarantee the general disposition of the urban structure (...] The importance attributed to these great green quadrilaterals results in that, aside from contributing to the safe-guarding of the blocks, they guarantee, by their mass size and dimension, the integration of the residential scale in the monumental scale ( ... ] so much more that the final objective is maintain the horizontal plane in these six kilometers in those six kilometers on each side, so that the urban center may be defined in height in the crossing of the axes (Costa, 1991: pp. 23 e 24).

3.2 Chandigarh
Distinct is the image made along the motorized axes (V1, V2 e V3), deliberately arranged so that these routes are not in reference to any visual frame capable of , by particularizing them, interfering in the noumenical mode of reading of the system. In opposition to the scenery of Brasilia, which reveals its variety along the axes, Le Corbusier creates a barrier which neutralizes the singularity of the scenery for those who circulate along V1, V2 e V3 (the routes of motorized circulation). There is no interface between the road flux and the other urban functions, camouflaged by the continuous presence of the wall which surrounds the habitation sector along all its perimeter, or that of the Capitol safeguarded by artificial hills. The "Edict of Chandigarh", the regulation code for constructions engraved on a commemorative tablet on the margin of the dam decrees:

A wall shall seal the V3 roads from the sectors (ANQ: p 26);

This way the traffic is situated on the outside of the sectors; the sectors are circled by 4 road ways enclosed by walls without any opening. And this (unheard of in modern urbanism, it is decisive) was adopted in Chandigarh: no residential (or house) door opens to these arteries of fast traffic (Le Corbusier, 1951).

The non-hierarchic mode, along with the homogenized sectors and viewings make an abstract geometrical-mathematical image privileging intelligibility, in contrast with the sensorial apprehension of Brasilia. The arrangements below corroborate and reinforce the potential of this mode of interaction with the urban space:

- The "Leisure Valley", exclusively pedestrian, the only link between the centers of collective interest (cultural, urban and civic centers) do not interfere with the integrity of the grid, situated on a lower level, on a depression due to erosion.

- The alteration of the first project of the Capitol, which substituted the secretariat block for the present shorter one, eliminating a vestige of visual reference to preserve the conceptual character. Such arrangement is corroborated by the artificial hills and the "Waters Boulevard ", landscape resources introduced deliberately to segregate visually the Capitol from the rest of the city.

- The inflection of V2 disqualifies, in opposition to the solution found in Brasilia, one of the axes going in direction to the Capitol , as a counterpart, not one of its monuments is in reference to the axis of access.

The neighbourhood unit
The presence of a module which is generator of the urban net, the residential unit, is common to both projects. The sector in Chandigarh and the super block in Brasilia. This device has two aims: practical and aesthetic. Initially it is thought of as a framework of domestic life. The physical-spatial arrangement is of functional and technical order, it attends the quotidian needs and conveniences - "contenant de la vie familiale" - as Le Corbusier refers himself to them. As practical device, the shape is heteronomous, the reason for its shape is its performance.

As aesthetic device it is an autonomous manifestation, plastic factor of the articulation of its parts; a pattern that, multiplied, it generates and organizes the urban net harmoniously, in other words, it determines, by the co-modulation, the integrity between the parts and these with the whole awarding it a systemic character. In the condition of an organized structure, as a system - a group of inter-agent elements coordinated among each other - becomes intelligible. It is important to recognize the unit, for it is in the perceiving of this concrete single entity that the whole can be reconstituted conceptually and/or by the senses. The double character utilitarian and esthetic is reminded to us by Lucio Costa in his report of the pilot plan in reference to the super blocks:

This layout has the double advantage of guaranteeing orderly urbanization even where the density, type, pattern or architectonic quality of the buildings varies, and of giving the inhabitants tree-lined strips in which to walk or take leisure, other than the open spaces foreseen within the blocks themselves (Costa, 1991: 82).

It is important to note that this mode of composing based on the unit is analogical to the modern thought, where the individual is the constitutive factor of the collective. The whole (collective) preserving the particular (individual) reaffirms the principle of unity in diversity - the human totality (individual/gender), and which the work of art has as prerogative to be able to express.

4.1 The cell
Corbusier borrows from biology the term which he designs to the sector - the cell - the basic structural unit of living beings. He gives the dimensioning of the sector (800m X 1200m) universal value:

Adopting a harmonious proportion rich in combinations (...) being 800m X 1200m. This way the "Sector" born from an ancestral geometry and still valid established in the past by the steps of man, ox and the horse, but from here on appropriated to mechanical speeds (Le Corbusier, 1951).

The 15 sectors hold, aside from the residential areas, the commercial center, the cultural sector, the hotel sector and the university campus. Only the civic center, the market and the industrial sector are out of the grid.

The population of the sector varies between 5000 to 20000 inhabitants, or else, occupation densities of 50 to 210 inhabitants/ha grouped in nucleuses of 750 inhabitants. Spread in lots of 100m2 per family and within a square of 140 meters per side. The project of "Maison du Péon" illustrates the way in which Le Corbusier conceived a village of 750 inhabitants.

A type of small independent village. The solution is extended to all parts of the city, the poor neighborhoods as well as the rich (Le Corbusier, 1953, p.158).

4.2 Super-block
In Brasilia the common minimum denominator is the super block dimensioned 3000 to 4000 inhabitants, this way, justifying the establishment of a school and a kindergarten.

The neighborhood unit, constituted of four super blocks, therefore 12000 inhabitants, stops being the nucleus of promotion of conviviality around the school and around the equipment of the neighborhood, to reinforce the interaction with the city through its re-dimensioning of the local equipment. Situating them along the principal road system and not in the center of the unit in a introverted mode, it reformulates the proposal made by Clarence Perry and Henry Wright in 1929 for Radburn, adopted in the majority of the new English cities. (Gorovitz, 1991: pp. 45-52).

The dimension of 250 by 250 meters, in various ways determined by the density adopted, 500 inhabits/ha, permits comfortable access to the school through unobstructed routes by the pillars. The conjunct is surrounded by a twenty-meter strip of trees of big-size species (only in a few blocks was adopteed this guidance to distinguish each block by vegetal species).

The segregation between the motorized traffic and the pedestrian transit does not acquire, as in Chandigarh, doctrinaire orientation. In super blocks and in the other sectors the conviviality of the pedestrian and the driver are, as the architect would say, domesticated:

With the general network for automotive traffic thus established, independent paths for local pedestrian traffic were created both in the central and the residential districts, ensuring free circulation. This separation of automotive and pedestrian traffic was not, however, carried to systematic and unnatural extremes, for it must be remembered that nowadays, the automobile is no longer man's irreconcilable enemy: it has been domesticated and is now, so to speak, one of the family. It only becomes "dehumanized" and reacquires its menacing and hostile aspect to pedestrians when incorporated in the anonymous mass of traffic. A certain degree of separation is therefore necessary, but under certain circumstances and for mutual convenience coexistence is at times indispensable (Costa, 1991: 79).

The module, which originated from the practical aims, takes aesthetic proportions as it organizes the unit of the residential sector integrating it through a logical-geometrical sequence.

- 4 blocks compose a neighborhood unit;

- 8 lined neighborhood units form a segment of the wing identified by the odd hundreds, and mirrored by the residential axis of the blocks with even numbers.

- The conjunct of 8 units of neighborhood, or 32 super blocks - the wing - described above, is mirrored along the monumental axis. The south and the north wings are organized in this way.

The arched shape in contrast with the hieratic feature of the monumental axis, appropriate for the civic activities, distinguishes the colloquial nature from the residential sector. These physical-spatial frameworks distinguish the solemn mode of interaction (abstract-conceptual) from the commonplace (sensorial- phenomenal ) evidencing the three human scales that structure the city: monumental colloquial and gregarious (Gorovitz, 1985).

5. The regulating trace
The regulating trace, associated to the unit systems and the axes, reiterates the autonomy of the conjunct, enabling the decoding of the work of art and its apprehension as a totality structured concretely by relating the parts between each other through a geometrical framework.

5.1 Chandigarh
Through the following arrangements we can verify the regulating trace:

- Rectification of the Mayer plan awarding it the axial character and accommodating it to a geometry dimensioned by the rule of the Modulor, referred to by Le Corbusier as a guidance instrument for the whole sketch of the city:

A special mention must be made in favor of the Modulor which permitted to organize all dimensions harmoniously and with extraordinary assurance in the course of two years of work (Le Corbusier 1951).

- The proportion adopted for the sector 800 X 1200 is an aureate rectangle.

- The dimension adopted for the cell-sector: 800 X1200 determines a square of 4000 m. of side when grouped together: 5 modules in one sense (5 X 800 = 4000) and 3 and 1/3 ( 3 +1/3X1200 = 4000) on the other;

- The master plan of the Capitol is organized by a sequence of virtual squares, intention expressed by Le Corbusier:

Four obelisks (or any other shape) will establish in plain nature the angles of a square of 800 meters; four others will mark the square of 400 meters containing the buildings of the Secretariat, the Congress and the Knowledge Museum. The Supreme Court Palace occupies the second square of 400 meters to the east. (Le Corbusier, 1951)

- The area in which the "Maison du Péon" lies is a square of 140 X140 meters;

- The Supreme court reflected on the surface of a small lake reproduces a double square:

The conjunct markedly drawn is reflected, when the wind stops, in a perfect mirror which duplicates the image in 100% (Le Corbusier, 1951).

5.2 Brasilia
The geometry of the regulating trace is present:

- In the determination of the two axes that cross each other orthogonally;

- In the arching of the axis to accommodate it to an equilateral triangle; according to the architect for plastic and practical reasons:

It was then sought to adapt this sign to the local topography, the natural drainage of the area, to the best possible orientation: one of the axes was curved in order to make it fit into the equilateral triangle which limits the urbanized area (Costa, 1991, p. 78).

- In the symmetry of the wings, of the ministry esplanade, of the commercial, bank, hotel and leisure districts, and the local commerce streets;

- In the square of the super - block;

- In the equilateral triangle that circumscribes the plan of the Three Powers Square, thus described by Lucio Costa:

The most outstanding buildings are those which will house the fundamental powers, and because these are three in number, and autonomous, the equilateral triangle seemed the elementary form most appropriated to enclose them (Costa, 1991: 79).

In both capitals the nomenclature of the roads reiterates intelligibility. In Brasilia the geographic link (N/S/W/L), and in Chandigarh the internal logic (7V system), to which Le Corbusier explains:

Digression: The eight "V" created in Chandigarh an extraordinarily clear vocabulary in all discussions related to the urbanism of the city. When one says, "Republic Avenue" or "Lotus Street" there is no notion evoked. On the other hand, if one says: "A V2 Republic" or "V5 of Lotus", everything becomes explicit; instantly one understands the nature of the roadway, its importance in the city, etc. (Le Corbusier, 1951).

6. The city and its image
In its objective exteriority, the conformities described predispose as esthetic manifestation, each in its own way, to the formation of images constructed by the subject in his reception process: "An act of constructive perception" according to Jauss, qualifying the work as a mode of legitimization of the subject - creator or receptor:

The work of art and exists as such while it demands an interpretation and works through the multiplicity of signification (...) It is precisely in this indetermination that the effectiveness of the work is measured (...) The aesthetic values and in general the "essence" of the work of art is not manifested unless it is in a succession of different images created by perception, and are not discernible as permanent substance (Jauss, 1978: pp. 43,124,130).

The subjective component of the aesthetic phenomenon does not exclude the horizon of expectation preexistent to the mode of reception, Jauss observes:

All new reception is developed based on an expected or preexistent sense, whose confirmation or not reveals its implications and triggers the process of re-interpretation (Jauss, 1978, p. 124).

This predisposition is the object of the comments that follow.

7.1 Brasilia
Brasilia predisposes an immediate apprehension, a non-mediated image as of Chandigarh where the course of perception of the whole work is from particular to general. Lucio Costa determines a general framework that by hierarchy, perspective and symmetry, brings together in one the diversity of the civic, residential and entertainment sectors. Image which rises from:

- Synchrony - the parts that compose the space are perceived in a simultaneous manner, concomitance favored by the rapidity of the motorized displacement;

- Pregnancy - the synchronicity and the sensory-motor interaction contribute for the physical-spatial structure to favor the creation of an emblematic image, distinctive and unique, easily remembered;

- Finitude, hierarchy and anistropy - both the monumental axis as the residential axis are limited and develop linearly in a predominant direction. The displacement, along the course with a determined beginning and end imply a sequence and a finitude. The monumental axis is signaled by the bifurcated tower of the Congress in one extremity and by the Television Tower in the other. The group of central buildings signalizes the beginning of the wings by being taller.

- Polymorphism: the different arrangement of the sectors (residential, monumental and of entertainment) are made explicit to the user that moves along the principal axes.

- Variabilility : the perspectival arrangement provokes a persistence in the landscape that as it shows along the displacement, promotes the formation of an image pregnant and distinctive of the city.

This sensorial apprehension of the vectored and anisotropic spaces is reiterated by linear time. The phenomena are altered with the passage of the finite living time in contrast with the cosmic and infinite cyclical time (referring to eternity) as in Chandigarh. Movement is here considered an esthetic resource; beauty in mobility is qualified by the grace and eurhythmics. The lexical item grace makes it clear:

Fluidity and lightness of slender profiles, the elegance of the curves, multiplication of empty spaces, substitution of mass in favor of volume and maximum incidence of light (Souriau, 1999, p. 801).

7. 2 Chandigarh
Differing from the "aerial and highway capital" of Lucio Costa, Le Corbusier priorizes the pedestrian: at the Capitol, in the V5,V6,V7, at the "Leisure Valley" and at the commercial center - "pedestrian paradise"; excluding the V4 where the motorized traffic is shared with the pedestrian, Le Corbusier qualifies the nature of this road principle:

In Chandigarh one moves out of the cars (...)One walks among people, trees and flowers (...)Walking half an hour or more, men and women erect. Happiness of walking, without getting tired in Chandigarh, marching city and not of vehicles. The pedestrian is alone in V4 and V7. (Frampton, 1997: 150)

The unaccelarated routes of the pedestrian have the following arrangement:

- Diachrony - the construction of the image of the city as a whole is made diachronically: by successive and partial impressions captured in displacements. This reconstruction, intelligible and anamnesic of the whole, instrumented by pedestrian usage is eminently individual and, in the absence of hierarchy, the routes on foot are product of particular choice, the exclusive criterion is personal convenience. By moving along the net which has no referential marks, the individual, when motorized, decides his route in a rational autonomous form and in this elective process personalizes it. The diachronic appreciation comes from the distinction of the parts without privileging any of them by conspicuity, hierarchy or directionality, for two reasons: First, the subordination of the parts would imply in privileging a peculiar way of reception, promoting an image of an archetype, which would reify the subject. Second, it is through the identification of the part as a monad that the conjunct is reconstructed.

- Isomorphy - the links of motorized traffic are distinguished because they always provide the same viewing - homogenized and non-hierarchical. The V1/ V2 /V3 are articulated by immense empty round turns areas.

- Polycentrism - both cities are polycentric. In Brasilia, the urban center and the administrative center are linked visually by the monumental axis, independently from the displacements. In Chandigarh the linkage is guaranteed by the "Leisure Valley" giving continuity between the Capitol, the Cultural and University sectors, the Commercial and Entertainment districts through a mnemonic reconstitution of the fragments lived in the paths taken on foot. It is through these images that the conjunct is constructed.

- Mobility - as in a labyrinth, the open form of the spatial daedalian web, unlimited and isotropic, without preferential direction (different from Brasilia, therefore), predisposes, thanks to the non-hierarchical road system, an unlimited variety of routes, a form of appropriation that corresponds to the passage of cyclical time, non-temporal, cosmic, universal and absolute.

- Ubiquity - The net promotes the consciousness of being able to see all its parts simultaneously due to the similarity and the recurence of the undifferent situations, which are diverse from the hierarchic space structure referenced to one or more poles, experienced in univocal and differentiated mode.

8. About the city as artistic language
The recognition of the image (subjective) created from the tangible phenomenon (objective) - the work of art - awakens a consciousness of it as support (significant) of meaning. Instrumented this way by a language the subject can communicate. The work of art, in this case study of the city, in fomenting inter-subjectivity aims at a social dimension of the individual and, last of all, citizenship.

The end of art has always been to widen awareness by promoting dialogue. In the modern optics, a consciousness does not preexist as a factor of determination of the social being. Cohesion before tributary of common values determined by cosmogonic systems, now resides in the transcendence of values imminent to the individual; the concrete existence of the individual is the condition of the possibility of the collective, of his social consciousness.

In face of the new view of liberty, that Rousseau situates as capacity to emancipate of all determination natural or historical, we can asks ourselves: which values could this infinite liberty refere to? This is the challenge that the moral or modern man should face. (Ferry, 1990: p.336) Such illuminist wording, of kantian origin, suggests the following central problem to modern art: how to avoid that "common sense", generated by the beauty of the work of art, reify subjectivity, therefore, negating it. The question can be formulated as such: how to maintain the idea of a possible universality of taste without permitting that common sense negate subjectivity (Ferry, 1998: pp. 51-53).

How can the uninterested action determine which direction this selflessness should take? How to award an aim without reifying the subjective character? It is about determining which are the "moral" aims that an action of free will proposes to put in practice. We set out the question of universality of the common wealth, of the "general interest".

From the subjective point of view, autonomy implies in an uninterested action, the moral of duty rules above all opposing our inclination of our selfish nature to imperative rules. From the objective point of view, the term suggests a double connotation: objective is an end and at the same time all that is not subjective: that which is true not only to me but to the others as well. The end of our actions becomes real under a universal law, valid for all, but that modernity distinguishes from religious ethics because of the fact that this law is a law or reason originated by the autonomy of the individual.

Chandigarh and Brasilia point out two paths to construct sociability based on the subjective prerogatives that distinguishes the individual.

8.1 Chandigarh
We identify in the thought of Le Corbusier a notion of the sublime described by Schiller:

We call sublime an object in front of whose representation our physical nature feels its limits, at the same time that our rational nature feels superiority, its independence from all restrictions: an object in front of which we are physically weaker, while morally we heighten above it by the ideas. Only as sensitive beings are we dependent; while rational beings we are free (Schiller, 1997: 39).

Chandigarh celebrates by the esthetics of the sublime a consciousness of reconciliation of nature and spirit by the capacitating that is proper to the individual - the will for power. In this way it becomes objective:

One can risk the hypothesis that great emotive works, works of art, are born from the happy integration of passion and knowledge (Le Corbusier, 1980: 44).

The moral liberty, the sovereignty of the spirit over the body, is expressed through the feeling of dignity:

The city must give happiness and enable the manifestation of dignity (Le Corbusier, 1980: 100).

The infinite space, decentralized, multi-focused , anti-perspective, referenced to the cyclical time, promotes a diversity of ways of appropriation. This spatial open arrangement, by favoring polyvalence of interpretations, awakens the consciousness of individuality. Le Corbusier avoids in Chandigarh, as in its painting the euclidian perspective, which presupposes the oberver situated in a fixed position. Nietzche translates this conviction:

The world has become infinite to us in the sense that we cannot refuse the possibility of lending itself to an infinite number of interpretations (...) there are no facts, only interpretations (Ferry 1998: pp. 90, 234).

Space is not contemplated as a sensory and finite entity, as in Brasilia. The abstract character, intangible and sublimated, transported to the plane of spirituality, it celebrates volition, a way of affirming liberty that distinguishes the human being as an individual. The supremacy of the spirit upon the changes, considered aggressions to human destiny, and in face of which stands dignity:

The disorder which multiplies itself is offensive: it humiliates our self-esteem and hurts our dignity (Le Corbusier, 1980: 102).

History is considered a constraint to the supremacy of the spirit, like the natural contingencies and the sedimented tradition. Nietzsche's argument:

Teaching man that the future of man is his will, that he depends on a human will, prepare him for great risks and vast tentative to liquidate this horrible kingdom of non-sense and of chance which until now takes the name of History (Schlechta, 1960: pp. 63-64).

History loses its value of example and, being considered a contingency and not a dialectic synthesis between contradictory situations, it must submit itself to the will of power. At the end of his book "Urbanisme", Le Corbusier, when he refers to Luis XIV as "a homage to a great urbanist", reveals this line of thought:

This tyrant conceived immense tasks and realized them. His glory radiates throughout the whole country. He knew how to say : "I want it!" or "this is my pleasure" (Le Corbusier, 1980:285).

Liberated from the constraints of history, the imagination is guided in mathematical rigor, in the organic and biological causality, in the mechanical rationality and in the technical efficiency of the machine, so as not to lose itself.

Economic and social progress originates from technical problems conducted by a good solution (Le Corbusier, 1980: 283).

Le Corbusier's doctrine echoes in Nietzsche's:

The greatness of an artist is not measured by the "good felings" that stimulate him, it resides in the capacity to dominate chaos which exists in ourselves, to force self chaos take shape; turning itself logical, simple, without error, mathematical, to construct a law, this is the great ambition (...) The beautification and the consequence of a great force, the beautification as expression of the victorious will, of a more intense coordination, of a harmonization of all violent desires, of an infallible perpendicular balance. The logical and geometrical simplification is a consequence of the enlargement of the force (Ferry, 1990: 246).

8.2 Brasilia
The project of Brasilia has as lead the conjugation of the individual and collective interests, not the agreement between the dionistic and apolinic impulses. Contradiction expressed by Lucio Costa:

The interests of man as an individual not always coincide with the interests of that same man as a collective being; it is then the job of the urbanist to try to solve, in as much as possible this fundamental contradiction (Costa, 1962: 50).

As in the corbusian doctrine, the uninterested action legitimate the condition of the individual in social interchange. Not that determined heteronomically by affective ties, anchored in tradition, or by religious, ethnical, national or familial community feelings (Ferry, 1996: 95). The virtuous conduct is not evaluated as indulgence or piety, behavior that tributary exclusively of the feeling lose its universality. On the other hand, virtue cannot be mediated by the social contract, as proposes the general will of Rousseau's, since its universality would reify the uninterested action.

The universality and the transcendence of subjectivity, now resides, not in corbusian dignity, but in the authenticity: the possibility of being himself, once he is truthful, it has, as a corollary, the installation of a dialogue in which truth is tributary, it presupposes an interlocutor. Here as is by Corbusier, the sensitive universe must bend to the intelligible universe, not by will of power, but by the force of dialogue. Of the dialectic confrontation between concrete historical alternatives comes the truth. According to Ferry:

If the socratic method takes up via dialogue, it is better to refute the position of the adversary trying to attain a superior truth, of the idea (of the intelligible) (Ferry, 1998: 87).

Within this frame where the referential is history, the actualization of it signalizes a condition to the possibility of the exercise of liberty. Lucio Costa synthesizes in these terms such posture:

The best form of predicting is by looking behind (Costa, 1962: 114)

The multiple historical typology incorporated in the project of Brasilia contrasts with the only tribute made by Le Corbusier to history: a referential to a physical dimension borrowed from Boulevard of Champs Elisées.

The emancipated action in manifesting itself, be it by dignity or by authenticity, have as implication the right to the difference, the recognition of otherness. These libertarian versants within the rationalist and empiricist of illuminism are recognized by Argan as metaphysical and historical (Argan,1989: pp. 11-31).

Both view the promotion of dialogue as a way of founding citizenship. For Corbusier dignity echoing in a fellow being deserves respect and in this relation dignity-respect emanates the dialogue. For Lucio Costa the feeling of authenticity in the consciousness of the willfulness of the acts, their counterpart is the responsibility. Authenticity and responsibility are protagonists of a dialogue in search for veracity. Truth is the dialogue. The rest, making a parody of Shakespeare, is silence.

9. About the Sublime and Beauty under the guise of conclusion
Chandigarh expresses metabolism between society and nature, in Brasilia, in the terms of Lukaks, "the submittal of ature to the necessities of a concrete human community, both at the level reached in this territory in each case as at its human aims effectively realized in this process" (Lukacs, 1967: p.57).
The way in which the notion of scale appears in the projects reiterates the views of the world exposed. In the Edict de Chandigarh we can read:

Human scale: the city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature (...) Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach (ANQ: p. 25).

For Lucio Costa the notion of the scale is tributary of the historical and cultural synthesis:

Brasilia was conceived precisely for man and this in function of three different scales because the so called human scale is relative. The Italian of the Renaissance, for example, would feel diminished if the door to his house was less than 5 meters high. This way the game of the tree scales will characterize and give sense to Brasilia when the city really begins to exist (Costa, 1962: 343).

When he discusses about the feelings of beauty and the sublime, Kant sets out categories that hold to the reading of the projects here confronted:

The sublime qualities incite the esteem, the beauty qualities love (...) Win over passion by principles is sublime (...) The fundament of a pleasant sociability is beautiful (...) The beauty of all actions consists principally in the fact of seeming to have been made without any effort, and the overcoming of the difficulties, provoking admiration, corresponds to the sublime (Kant, 1990: pp. 85, 93, 96,122).

The way in which the Civic Center interacts with the city is revealing:

In Brasilia it is a hegemonic and subliminal presence, sensorialy at hand and independent from displacements, in Chandigarh it is peripheral and its access proceeds from a deliberate decision as pure concrete will of a planned action.

The introductory drawing to the project of Chandigarh "naissance d'une capitale" (Le Corbusier, 1953: 113) reminds us of the sublime atmosphere of the work of Caspar David Friedrich.

Le Corbusier: Naissance d'une capitale - Caspar David Friedrich: Woman at dawn

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April 2005