SKETCHING IN THE WAKE (LITERALLY) OF LECORBUSIER

The Topkapi Palace as seen from the east.  LeCorbusier

I felt LeCorbusier’s presence in Turkey. And this was before I realized that Turkey was an inspiration for him. I always knew that his travels in Greece were formative to his self education. It turns out that he went to Turkey during this same 7 month sojourn. I felt his presence, for example, in the tall interior light wells in the Harem of the Topkapi Palace. At the top of the lightwells were small dots of glass which let in a subdued yet great light quality. I felt his presence in the mosques; compare the basic circular form of the Byzantine mosque with the central circular form of the Secretariat in India. I also felt his presence in the carved out caves that served as the monasteries for Byzantine Monks. The sculptural and plastic qualities of these cave churches, some with carved light wells, made me think of Corb.

This is Corb’s sketch done most assuredly from a boat in the east Marmara Sea. He sketched from a boat the roofscape of the kitchen of the Topkapi Palace; this is where he made his famous statement urging urban planners to pay close attention to Silhouettes. When you are on a boat moving from the Marmara sea to the Bosporous, you cannot help but be fascinated with the kitchen roofscape.

In this study, we have extolled the virtues and explained that it is now ok to draw from photographic images. Let’s compare the old way, as represented by Corb’s sketch above, with the new way.

While on that same boat ride, I was also captivated by the very interesting forms of the Topkapi kitchen. At first glance, it was almost unbelievable they way the domes and the chimneys marched along. How could there be this many chimneys? At any rate, I snapped this photo with my phone.

Then, later, I did this drawing of the kitchen roofscape. The view from the water is much more informative than the view from the Palace courtyard. Also complicating matters was the fact that the kitchen area in the Palace was closed for renovations. So I could not get inside to understand how this complex roofscape was working with the functions below. Despite those limitations, with some assumptions and not too sophisticated guesswork, I was able to construct this transparent image of the kitchen roofscape using solely the photo that I took.

So here we have a direct comparison of two methods. Is this a fair comparison? Did one method yield a substantially different understanding? Do you think that I lost anything when I drew from a photographic image?