Dear Ivo, thank you for reading and taking the time to share your insights on this matter. I have Odger's anthology on the "primitive" and use it in my architectural history courses. I have found it extremely useful. I have also read most Lévi-Strauss works you cite, as well as Lévy Bruhl's Fonctions mentales, and the Malinoswky, mostly in English, but I am delighted to have them now in their original language. Thanks also for the book by Radclife-Brown. That one is new for me. Thank you!!! 

But I keep wondering what Le Corbusier meant by "moyens", the most important of which is discussed a few pages later in Vers une architecture: what Le Corbusier calls "tracés régulateurs", which he describes as "une satisfaction d'ordre spirituel"... "une mathématique sensible". This is evidently the most important "moyen" in his discussion of architecture in that book, whether or not "primitif", and remarks that "l'homme très primitif" uses those "tracés régulateurs" to make his work easier. These "tracés" are conceptual, abstract, a regular system of measurement that makes the design and building of a house less "arbitraire". But the abstract "moyen" must find a material partner for building: this very primitive man must find what to use as a ruler, and thus his foot, his leg or his arm will enable him to make regular measurements. So, "l'idée est constante, en puissance dès le début." If follows that this very primitive man is not primitive at all: he has "invented" a code of measurement he has to apply by a primitive means: the foot, the arm, the leg. The idea is powerful from the start, though his tool is "primitive." I would have to conclude that the next stage in building (or in any other activity) will be to improve the tool to make it correspond to the idea. This argument is neither anthropologically correct, nor historically correct, but an a priori argument having to do with explaining that tools will be invented after a necessity comes up, triggers an idea in the brain and provoques its "incarnation" in a material instrument that will never be as perfect as the idea, but will be sufficient. The "strong" idea will lead to perfecting the tool that will carry the idea into the world of things. Thus, Corbu seems to believe that the so-called "primitive man" was never primitive but always intelligent enough to devise a method and create a tool to make the method useful.

If we think for a moment about the Terra Amata house, with its hole on the rooftop, not exactly above the fire but farther into the structure, some ideas come up: lighting a fire inside the house is dangerous, as people can die of asphyxia or the roof can catch fire and burn. At some point, the roof, in fact, caught fire and a hole was burned there. The dwellers saw that ever since the fire burnt that hole, breeze started coming into the house through the door and air stream that exited through the roof always filling the house with fresh air and somehow preventing the rain from coming in through the hole on the roof (actually, because air passing over the fire warms and rises, and, while going up, evaporates the rain coming in through the hole). The Terra Amata dwellers discovered thermal dynamics (a "strong" idea) and were able to use that intuitive knowledge by just feeling on their face the wind rushing through the house and watching the rain disappear when it was about to come in! The Terra Amata guys were tremendously clever. Could it be that eventually everybody in the Terra Amata community worked a hole on the roof of their house to keep warm, dry and fresh at the same time? To sum up, Le Corbusier's phrase posed in my question would explain the process of the Terra Amata's invention —a heat sink?— by just letting the fire, the roof and the hole become a "machine" that was not primitive at all, but a show of resourcefulness. 

Dear Ivo, Le Corbusier's phrase is brilliant and is sincere in saying that there are no primitive humans. The Terra Amata heat sink is not "pre-industrial" because t it works to perfection, it is "simple", easy to build and "hands-free".  Pure intelligence. Of course,  Adrian Forty in his essay "Primitive. The Word and Concept" (Odgers, Primitive, pp. 3-14) connected the phrase I am discussing with the fishermen Le Corbusier mentioned in a another book: Une Maison un palais. My reading of the phrase is quite different. Sorry for the typos. I sort of got carried away. It is 3:00 am in San Juan, Puerto Rico, right now. My eyes are tired. Time to go to sleep. Good night, Ivo!

Dear Dietrich, thank you for your article. I already downloaded it. I expect to read it today.

I am absolutely fascinated by this. Lilliana, thank you for sharing this with me as it related very closely with my own inquiry. I will be reading these resources as well. 

Dear Dietrich, you are right: your article presents excellent examples of Le Corbusier's thesis about "primitive resources". The process by which, rear the end of the article, the archaeological team strives to explain the use of the different materials and the purpose of the feasts also points to how hard is the challenge of interpreting the role of materials and substances in a past social context while trying not to think based on a present context: beer is not for getting drunk but for making barley less toxic, for example. Thank you for sharing this interesting and eloquent text. Would love to read more.

I am also doing research on the development of ornament. Any articles, documents or books you can suggest about object or body ornament bridging the Paleolithic and the Neolithic will be extremely helpful and very much appreciated. No hurry. I can wait. 

Dear Wolfgang, I kind of lost your drift in the last two paragraphs of your most recent comment. Could you explain further, please?

Thank you, Wolfgang! Nice weekend!

Dear colleagues,

Vitruvius also used the term primitive hut to explain the origin of architecture. I agree that Corbu refers to the pre-industrial architecture. Specifically to classical architecture, governed by the right angle and anthropometric measurement system. See the Poem of the Right Angle and the introduction of his Modulor system.

Indeed, these primitive resources, also called Fabrorum Geometry or Sacred Geometry, were used in the Past. According to my research, it is an ancient and universal system for sizing parts of the architecture, according sides and diagonals of only one square.

Francisco, welcome! I agree with most of your statement, but Corbu had the chance to be more specific and decided not no. My guess is that his concept of "moyen" is not exhausted by my own example: the "tracé régulateur". His book Vers une architecture gives us the chance to extend the idea of "moyen" to conceptual tools, for example. In many ways, Corbu himself shows preindustrial preferences and indirectly saves the day in terms of suggesting that there is no such a thing as "progress" in architecture, thus  structures, designs, materials and tools can be intelligent and useful regardless their "antiquity" or "modernity". I used the t"racé régulateur" as example because is an abstract idea, a "strong idea", "puissant", literally. 

Interesting. In a lot of primitive societies, prehistoric and today, huts are round rather than square or rectangular. Still, while not having read Le Corbusier, from an anthropological stand point I would imagine that he was talking about human's ability to put 2 and 2 together, regardless of how "primitive" the environment. This is especially true in times of need. The leap from rock shelter or cave to lean-to is not that great. In fact, in wooded environments there are many conifers in which the lower limbs touch the ground, thereby providing ready-made shelter. I'm sure what Le Corbusier was talking about was what would happen if you placed less primitive building materials in front of early man. For example, a primitive lean-to using a fallen tree and branches covered with fronds or leaves is one type of early shelter. What would happen if you put sheets of plywood or tin roofing were the "primitive" could find it? How long would it take for him to get the idea that leaning those items up against the fallen tree would provide better shelter from the elements and predators than what he is using? I think he is saying that man's thinking is only impeded by the materials that are at hand.

I absolutely agree with you, James. Thank you for pitching in!

It bears noting that the meanings of some key words have changed.  "Industry" once meant "ingenuity", "sharpness of mind", at a time when the mind was considered a "machine", hence the 18th-century word "machination", that used to mean "plan" or "planning". Eventually, "industry" and "machine" became, thanks to the "industrial revolution", the mass production of objects by way of an apparatus that could move on its own and make objects under the supervision of an "operator". Both "pre-industrial" and "industrial" are late-modern words with specific meanings. Le Corbusier uses neither in the context of the phrase I have invited you to comment on. When Corbu says "l'idée est constante, en puissance dès le début" [the idea is constant, strong from the start", he is not specifying whether he is talking about pre-industrial or industrial "moyens" ["means"]: he is talking about the intellectual or conceptual strength of the "man" idea vis à vis his material reality, what you aptly call "the materials at hand". 

Le Corbusier had strong cultural|iconographical connections with painting, particularly with symbolist and surrealist paintings of ruins - ruined buildings and cities surrounded by wild forests. Böcklin, Ernst were strongly rooted in his imagination. This is why he often reflects on "primitive": he wants to take back architecture to first buildings, both temples|monuments and "houses" or villas. That is: to take back architecture to "primitive [symbolical|magical] resources" that have gone lost through civilization. It's not simply an issue of style, but a philosphical|anthropological (and political|social) one. I wrote upon: here's the link. With my best regards Michele Dantini

Chapter Le Corbusier Earthworks. Arte, architettura, mito naturale

Dear Michele, I was enticed by your publication. Would it be possible to read the full article? Your post shows only one page, and I feel what you suggest in this page it very pertinent! Thank you!!!

You're right, dear Lilliana Here's the full text. English translation is waited for. I hope you can read italian. ciao!

Michele, you are most generous. I can read it in Italian. Thank you!!!

Pages 30 to 35 are empty. Is that right?

It's right. My essay ends at p. 23. Have a good read! Michele

Thanks, Michele!!!

I agree, what really has changed is technology, human beings haven't change the tools have.

I completey agree with Corbusier. The more we find out about all our different ancestors, the more we see we should not underestimate them, as has been done before in a very arrogant and imperialistic manner. Hopefully this old way of looking down at other cultures, People and times is changing now more and more.

Only by this new way, we can find to more tolerance, brotherhood and help for the survival of this planet and its nature.

read Savage Though by Levi-Strauss chapter on the Science of the concrete. The idea of primitive is based on our positivism and not on true research perhaps this is what Corbu had in mind by primitive resources.

As an anthropologist I use the terms "primitive" or "derived" in order to describe biological and cultural traits that are "unchanged" or "changed". In teaching I illustrate this by using a skeletal horse leg (monodactyly) and comparing it with my primate hand (pentadactyly). With respect to the digits! horses are more evolved (changed) than primates (unchanged). and as a bonus students can see Darwin's evidence for "change" in the two reduced lateral digits on the horse leg.   Now with respect to cultural traits we need to be very careful in judging a people, a culture, by their material accomplishments (technology). Native Australians have a genealogy system that nearly defies "modern" interpretation. And remember that the Khoisan People have developed ingenious social devices like "insulting the meat" which keeps individuals from becoming "social monsters"  which are created in "modern" societies- especially here in the States.

I agree with you, Carlos. As is the case with Lévi-Strauss' La Pensée sauvage, Corbu is not detracting from "the primitive" but explaining why there are no real  primitives. Lévi Strauss uses a different argument than Corbu but has the same thing in mind. Magical thinking is not "backward", but a kind of thought, an outlook on the world. You might me interested un Norbert Elias' impressive essay Sobre el tiempo (México FCE, 1989) (Über die Zeit, 1984) where he studies how be came to understand that time is not "time" but an order of things that we infer from nature, and that, as such, is subject to reinterpretation. The same thing can happen to Corbu's idea of "moyens" (resources) or the idea of space... 

The term homo sapiens sapiens

refers to modern man that goes back at least to 40,000 BP. Springer shows, at the Science Museum, that they are represented by in-migrating Africans. We all have similar brain sizes and function in similar ways. So if our remote ancestors are primitive then we all are in our time!

I agree. That concept today can be associated with the degree of ruralness which many destinations are trying to embrace or showcase.

What concept, Deepak? "Means"?

I mean- the primitive concept.

Dear Deepak, thank you for the clarification. Your intuition is true, we are surrounded everywhere by a "false primitivism". I had not thought of that! Great intuition! Thank you!!! But Le Corbusier is not referring to deliberate primitiveness, as in tourism, but to the intelligence of humanity in having great ideas for which we still do not have the ideal tool, and we keep on until we find it. Le Corbusier thought that humanity was actually never "primitive" but only lacking in resources or means. Our ideas are aways ahead of our means. Thanks!

Dear all,

I sincerely feel Le Corbusier refers to the changes that caused the adoption of the international metric system  (SI) in the field of architecture, and loss of design systems/tools that had been used until then.

Specifically, I think he refers to the old anthropometric system, as he justified at Le Modulor I to proposing its harmonic measurement system.

According to my research (see my publications) for millennia a secret sizing system, based on sides and diagonals of square, were commonly used. This is a truly harmonic system (it uses the root of two ratio, not the divine proportion as proposed Le Corbusier).

I gather Le Corbusier knew of the existence of this system, but did not know its precise nature.

He longs the system of human sizes used to built temples, palaces and houses in the Past.

Dear Francisco Javier, I understand your position, but the chapter in which Le Corbusier states the phrase I quote in my question deals directly with means or resources ('moyens"), and his interest is in stating that humankind has always been intelligent, bearers of "strong ideas" from "the start". Hence, humans have never been "primitive", whereas human means have always lagged behind their "strong ideas". An example could be the one I quoted in my previous comment up here: "le tracé regulateur", a means of measurement he comments on in the same book, Vers une architecture, some pages later. But I think that Corbu was talking in general about all means, not just measurement. Do you think that if what he had meant were systems of measurement, his statement about "primitive" resources —and not primitive men— would be false?

Thank you for the references. I will look them up! 

Dear Lilliana,

Primitive man discovered and experimented with the circle. The earliest buildings are circular.

After using the circle the man discovered the right angle, and the binary division of any length. From the first city-states the right angle has dominated all architectural forms (Catal Huyuk). It is a very strong idea from the beginning.

Then a modular system for construction was developed. Not only is a measurement system, it is a design system. It is used sides and diagonals of a square reference. With this tool can get dimensionally controlled buildings with dynamic designs (so called Ad Quadratum classical proportion).

My research detects this system in the modular composition of numerous historic buildings. The system and other common rules of composition were fully developed in the Painted Temple of Tell Uqair (proto-literary period).

I can not explain why it has not been known before this primitive resource. I guess that was the first gremial secret, and that there were others many derivatives.

I guess these knowledge and resources were forgotten after the adoption of the international metric system.

I guess Corbu sensed this system,and wanted it back (or replace).

Dear Frasncisco Javier, I understand your point perfectly and I agree on the vital importance of measurement, but most human developments do not have to do with measurement, the discovery of fire, for example, or the intuition that led to agriculture. It s not that I am eliminating measurement from the repertoire of "means" or "resources", but it is not the only one. Culture, in general, goes way beyond measure. That is why I think that Le Corbusier was also going way beyond measurement when he said "There are primitive means" vis à vis a "strong idea". One thing I must say. I am delighted to learn from you about measurement. I have a mayor in mathematics (theoretical basically) and I always missed the importance of math in real life. That was 40 years ago. Can you recommend some readings with regard to this subject? I'd be most grateful! I have a splendid book that I can recommend: Norbert Elias, Sobre el tiempo (México: Fondo de Cultura Edonómica, 1989). Elias studies the long process whereby we came to measure time. Saludos y gracias!

On the other hand, Francisco Javier, at my Architecture school we are teaching students to make as-built plans of many institutional historic buildings and usually typology settles many questions, especially as to measurements. We are planing to make as-built plans in diverse examples of "vernacular" or "regional" architecture, especially dwellings, where typology rests more on materials, program, site, and orientation, than on the coherence of measurements along a certain type. I do think measurement is fundamental to define a  building type, together with these other "elements", as Koolhaas has renamed them in his latest publication. I got today in the mail a beautiful book by Giulia Foscari titled Elements of Venice (2014, published as part of the 14th architectural bienniale) based on Koolhaas "elements". Of course, Venice is an enormous challenge to typology: too many cultures existing together in such a small piece of land, changing along time, East and West, rich and poor, remodeled many times or not once, etc. In Venice the coherence of a measurement system is almost impossible because site is awkward, to say the least, and will usually accept a set of proportions rather than anything else. Most dwellings have tried to maintain a certain program, but sites are too irregular. I think we will find Foscari's book useful for our "regional" architecture experiment in Puerto Rico. Best regards!

Thank you for reference, and interest in measurements and mathematics. I really like the book of Witold Kula "Measures and Men", where the significance of the measure in the past stands.

There are many publications on mathematics and geometry in architecture, such as "Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice" by Robert Lawlor.

However the measurement of classical architecture has always been a great mystery, because it can not be explained by rational mathematics.

So all studies of architecture of the past forgotten a very important issue as the measure (scale), and are limited to typological studies (form).

Clearly the admiration of Corbu by primitive resources in architecture: The 4 right angles of the referential cross, that place of all proportions with which "represent space and measure it." The verticality of the menhir with the horizontality of the sea. It is a strong primitive idea.

I think Corbu was also aware that a system of human measures was used in the past, and wanted it back. So his proposal Le Modulor.

Honestly, I think my book is the most comprehensive about the issues of the measurement of architecture, but it is in Spanish.

http://digibug.ugr.es/bitstream/10481/31355/1/23717713.pdf

Regards

Francisco Javier, thank you for those references. Spanish is my first language. I'd love to read your book on this matter. Thanks for the link!

Notice: Several forums have noticed someone down voting answers. These down votes start from the top and slowly work their way down the posts. It appears to be either a malicious person or computer program responsible. I have requested ResearchGate to look into it.

I do not see that this has occurred on this forum. However, I suggest everyone keep a lookout and notify ResearchGate if it does occur. It is one thing to down vote an answer that is totally irrelevant to a question, it is another to do it just because you don't like the answer or because you can.

Thank you, dear James. You are very kind to alert us!