Abject bodies and dusty veils: Maison La Roche in 7Acts
| dc.contributor.advisor | O'Shaughnessy, Jason | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Cremin, Kieran | |
| dc.contributor.author | Kumar, Sonika | en |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-09-17T15:07:53Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-09-17T15:07:53Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-12-19 | |
| dc.date.submitted | 2025-12-19 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This thesis examines Maison La Roche (Le Corbusier, Paris, 1923–25) through the cosmological and metaphysical lens of Poème de l’angle droit, Le Corbusier’s symbolic text drawing-poem from the 1955. Divided into seven chapters, the thesis follows the structure of Poème de l’angle droit’s seven themes; each chapter corresponding to one cosmological idea. But the choice of seven isn’t just structural, it’s symbolic. Across myth, literature, and critical theory, the number seven signals transformation. Chapters move through architectural and metaphysical zones: Using the abject body of fragments from red dust on plastic sheeting in a renovated gallery to a dumbwaiter shaft that becomes a vertical channel of erasure; from mirrors and milk bottles that sterilize the gaze to plumbing and sculleries that repress the body; from ghostly stairs and smudges to initiatory paper-screens and fictional rites. Maison La Roche (1923–25), designed by Le Corbusier for the art collector Raoul La Roche, is part house and part gallery. It merges the spatial experiments of the Modernist aesthetic with the architect’s vision of the ‘machine for living.’ But beneath its formal clarity lies a complex network of voids, thresholds, servant routes, and optical devices -mechanisms that regulate visibility, movement, and control. The house is studied not in its original state, but during a phase of restoration, when its surfaces were exposed, and interrupted. Observing the building in this transitional condition when carrying out a fieldwork visit to it in 2025, revealed systems and traces not visible in canonical photographs or earlier scholarship. Dust, coverings, protective plastics, and uncovered scars made the house readable as a living, changing organism rather than a sealed modernist icon. Analysing the villa in this suspended, in between state allowed forms of reading of it that seem impossible in the valorised version of it that is often produced through conventional architectural scholarship. Le Corbusier’s Poème de l’angle droit (1955) serves as both conceptual backbone and methodological apparatus to this thesis. The Poem functions as a cosmological system: a hybrid text-image constellation that outlines Le Corbusier’s philosophy of matter, spirit, geometry, and human existence. Its seven themes trace a ritual movement from the earthly to the metaphysical, mapping how the world is purified, ordered, transformed, and offered back. The Poem distils Le Corbusier’s thinking on perception, the body, light, colour, and the sacred dimension of everyday space. It is his most explicit articulation of architecture as a metaphysical act rather than a technical one. To unpack this, the thesis introduces a method called ‘Cosmogrammic Architecture’, a hybrid approach combining symbolic reading, metaphysical drawing,architectural theory, and fictional narrative. Drawing on Julia Kristeva, Marcel Duchamp, John Hejduk, and Beatriz Colomina, the thesis frames Maison La Roche not as a neutral vessel but as an active agent that transforms, filters, or removes the impure. While earlier studies focus on its typological innovation, Purist geometry, or its place in the modernist canon, this thesis departs from those readings by grounding its analysis in the villa’s exposed, interrupted, and partially dismantled restorative condition. The core proposition of this thesis is that Le Corbusier has developed an architecture that deliberately challenges the normative conventions and idea of house as setting - shifting it through a series of spatial, materials, and perceptual actions towards a mythopoetic reality. It is not merely a modernist house gallery, but a cosmogram: a ritualized metaphysical diagram that conceals labour, hides shame, sterilizes space, and filters perception all through white walls, silent voids, and geometric control. This erasure isn’t just functional or aesthetic. It’s symbolic. The house doesn’t simply house objects or people, it transforms them, purifies them, or removes them. What’s impure is removed. What can’t be purified is hidden. | |
| dc.description.status | Not peer reviewed | en |
| dc.description.version | Accepted Version | en |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en |
| dc.identifier.citation | Kumar, S. 2025. Abject bodies and dusty veils: Maison La Roche in 7Acts. MRes Thesis, University College Cork. | |
| dc.identifier.endpage | 220 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10468/19285 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.publisher | University College Cork | en |
| dc.rights | © 2025, Sonika Kumar. | |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | |
| dc.subject | LeCorbusier | |
| dc.subject | Masion LaRoche | |
| dc.subject | Dumbwaiter | |
| dc.subject | Cosmogramm | |
| dc.subject | Poem of right angle | |
| dc.subject | Modernist architecture | |
| dc.title | Abject bodies and dusty veils: Maison La Roche in 7Acts | |
| dc.type | Masters thesis (Research) | en |
| dc.type.qualificationlevel | Masters | en |
| dc.type.qualificationname | MSc - Master of Science | en |
