Project 02, 2nd Edition Modern Construction Case Studies - Precedent: Pavillon Le Corbusier, Zurich designed by Le Corbusier
ectonic Assemblies and Phenomenological Space: Reinterpreting the Modernist Ethic in Project 02
Project 02 positions itself within the ongoing theoretical and material legacy of architectural modernism, not as an act of stylistic mimicry, but as a critical extension of its social and tectonic commitments. Drawing on the Pavillon Le Corbusier in Zurich as a conceptual precedent, the project explores how spatial, structural, and experiential logics might converge in the pursuit of architecture as public service.
The Pavillon exemplifies the modernist ambition to synthesize the arts into a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total artwork where architecture, sculpture, painting, and furniture are unified under a singular authorial vision. Le Corbusier’s use of a broad roof canopy does more than cover space—it articulates a formal and symbolic gesture of gathering. This act of architectural framing positions the building not merely as object, but as a field of inhabitation. The canopy reads as both tectonic and phenomenological: a constructed horizon that simultaneously shelters and spatializes experience.
Project 02—a transport hub proposed for Jeddah—engages this lineage while deliberately reframing its material and spatial implications. Rather than adopting the monumentality often associated with infrastructural typologies, the design foregrounds an architecture of assemblage. A composite steel frame, articulated through an array of small-scale elements, replaces the traditional reliance on large structural spans and oversized members. This refusal to simply scale up a domestic typology into an infrastructural shell resists both aesthetic flattening and spatial reductivism.
The result is a structural system that acts not only as support, but as a generator of spatial complexity. In contrast to models where vast interior volumes are retrospectively subdivided by non-structural partitions, Project 02 proposes a framework where spatial differentiation is inherent to the tectonic logic itself. This approach recalls Frampton’s argument for a tectonic culture, in which the expressive and ethical dimensions of construction are inseparable from its technical execution (Frampton, 1995). Here, tectonics is not a decorative afterthought but a means of disclosing how space is made, inhabited, and valued.
From a phenomenological perspective, the spatial conditions produced by this differentiated frame structure heighten the embodied experience of passage, pause, and transition. Rather than abstracted zones of circulation, the transport hub becomes a sequence of atmospheres—spaces whose character emerges through material articulation and light modulation. In this, the project aligns with Pallasmaa’s emphasis on the multisensory, embodied dimensions of architecture (Pallasmaa, 2005), as well as Sanford Kwinter’s exploration of dynamic systems and the temporal, affective qualities of built environments. Kwinter’s notion that form arises through continuous negotiation—between structure, movement, and perception—illuminates the project’s spatial logic as a choreography of human experience rather than a fixed composition.
Crucially, this project is not concerned with public luxury, but with public dignity. In embracing elegance over excess, Project 02 channels the ethical imperative at the core of the modernist project: that architecture, when grounded in constructional honesty and spatial generosity, can serve the collective good. It is a continuation of the belief that building well is, in itself, a social act—a proposition as urgent today as it was in the early twentieth century.
References
Frampton, Kenneth. Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture.
Kwinter, Sanford. Architectures of Time: Toward a Theory of the Event in Modernist Culture.
Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses.
