Villa Savoye and Le Corbusier's Five Points of Architecture

Almost every apartment building in an Indian city owes something to a white house in a meadow outside Paris. The stilt floor where cars are parked, the partitions that a family can knock down because the columns carry the load, the long horizontal windows, the terrace garden on the roof — all of these were argued for, in one compact manifesto, by the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier in the 1920s, and demonstrated most completely at Villa Savoye in Poissy, completed in 1931.

Indian builders adopted these ideas so thoroughly that they are now invisible, which is exactly why they are worth studying. The five points were developed for a temperate, rainy European climate and a new technology — the reinforced concrete frame. Transplanted to Surat, Mumbai or Delhi without thought, they produce familiar failures: windy, unused stilt floors; long, unshaded windows that bake rooms in the afternoon; roof gardens that leak into the flat below; and free plans that turn into a maze of columns and beams. Even Villa Savoye itself had trouble with leaks soon after it was built.

This article explains what Villa Savoye is, what each of the five points means and why the concrete frame made them possible, how Le Corbusier himself adapted them in India, and how a homeowner or builder can use each point today with the climate corrections that Indian conditions demand.

Le Corbusier and the road to the five points

Le Corbusier was born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in 1887 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, and adopted his famous pseudonym in the early 1920s after settling in Paris. With his cousin and long-time partner Pierre Jeanneret he set out to reinvent the house for the industrial age. In 1914–15 he developed the Dom-ino system: a skeleton of thin reinforced concrete slabs carried on a few slender columns, with a stair connecting the floors. The diagram looks ordinary today — it is essentially the frame of every Indian apartment building — but its implication was radical. If the columns and slabs carry the load, the walls no longer have to.

In 1923 he published Vers une architecture, translated into English as Towards a New Architecture, which contained his much-quoted line that a house is a machine for living in. Over the following years, working through a series of villas around Paris, he condensed the consequences of the concrete frame into five points of a new architecture, which he set out in the mid-1920s. Villa Savoye, designed from 1928 and completed in 1931, was the house in which all five came together most completely.

Villa Savoye: the house in the meadow

Villa Savoye stands at Poissy, on the western outskirts of Paris, and was built as a weekend and country house for the Savoye family. It sits in the middle of a grassy clearing, and from a distance it looks like a white box floating above the ground on thin columns. The ground floor is set back behind the line of the columns and painted dark, so that it almost disappears. The curved glass wall of the ground-floor hall is often explained as following the turning path of a car, which could drive under the house, drop its passengers at the door and park in the garage — an early sign of how completely the motor car shaped modern architecture.

Inside, a ramp rises through the centre of the house from the entrance hall to the main living floor and on to the roof, and a spiral stair offers a quicker route. Le Corbusier described moving through the house as an architectural promenade: a sequence of views that unfolds as one climbs. The main living floor wraps around an open terrace — a garden room open to the sky but enclosed by the walls of the house, with the long horizontal window openings continuing around it. On the roof, curved screen walls shelter a solarium. Everything is lifted, opened and framed.

The house's later history is a reminder that icons can be fragile. The Savoye family's letters about water coming through the roof are well known, and after the family left, the building suffered during and after the Second World War. In the late 1950s it came close to demolition before architects and critics campaigned to save it. It was protected and restored by the French state and is today open to the public, and in 2016 it was included in UNESCO's World Heritage listing of The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, alongside the Capitol Complex in Chandigarh.

The five points, one by one

The five points are best understood as five freedoms that the concrete frame gives an architect. In a traditional load-bearing house, the walls carry the floors and roof. They must sit on the ground, stand one above the other on every floor, and be pierced only by openings small enough not to weaken them. Remove the load from the walls, and five things become possible.

1. Pilotis

Pilotis are the slender columns that lift the main body of the building off the ground. At Villa Savoye they free the ground floor for the car, the entrance and service rooms, and make the house appear to float above the meadow. Le Corbusier also argued that lifting buildings would free the ground for gardens and movement, and keep living rooms away from damp ground. In Indian cities, the most familiar descendant is the stilt floor of an apartment building, where cars are parked under the flats.

2. The free plan

Because the columns carry the floors, internal walls can be placed wherever the plan needs them, rather than stacking directly on the walls below. Each floor of Villa Savoye has a different layout. In an Indian flat, this is the reason most internal partitions can be moved during a renovation — as long as they really are partitions and not concrete shear walls, which is a question only the building's structural drawings or an engineer can answer.

3. The free façade

Since the outer walls no longer carry load, the façade can be designed as a skin, independent of the structure. Columns can stand back from the edge of the slab, and the façade can be opened, glazed or closed freely. This is the principle behind every glass curtain wall and every framed façade of brick infill, aluminium windows and cladding.

4. Horizontal ribbon windows

The fenêtre en longueur, or ribbon window, runs horizontally across the façade. Le Corbusier argued that a long, horizontal opening lights a room more evenly than a tall, narrow window and frames the landscape as a panorama. A load-bearing wall could not easily take such a long opening; a framed façade can. At Villa Savoye, the ribbon openings run around all four sides of the main floor, including around the terrace garden.

5. The roof garden

A flat concrete roof, Le Corbusier said, could return to the building the ground its footprint had taken, as a garden or terrace. He also believed that soil and planting would protect the concrete roof from extremes of temperature. At Villa Savoye, the solarium on the roof and the terrace garden on the main floor are the two expressions of this idea.

The five points meet the Indian sun

Le Corbusier's own Indian buildings show how he changed his approach when he met a hot climate. In Chandigarh and Ahmedabad in the 1950s, his buildings acquired deep brise-soleil — concrete grids of fins and shelves in front of the glass — parasol roofs that shade the whole building, and generous verandahs and loggias. The Mill Owners' Association building and Villa Shodhan in Ahmedabad are wrapped in sun-breakers; the High Court in Chandigarh sits under a vast concrete parasol. The free façade and the ribbon window did not disappear, but they moved behind a layer of shade. That adaptation is the most useful lesson the five points offer Indian builders: the freedoms are real, but the climate decides how to use them.

Using the five points in Indian homes today

Stilt floors that people actually use

In many Indian cities the stilt floor exists because bye-laws exclude parking from the floor area count and because it lifts the flats above street noise and flooding. It is the most common Indian pilotis — and often the most neglected space in the building. A good stilt floor is bright, ventilated and secure: an entrance lobby with seating, proper lighting along driving and walking paths, clear separation between cars and people, and, where space allows, a play area or a shaded sitting space for elders. Raising the plinth above the road level by 450–600 mm, with ramps at an easy slope, protects the building in monsoon flooding.

Free plan, with care

The free plan is the reason a 3BHK can become a 2BHK with a large living room, or a closed kitchen can become an open one. But not every wall in a framed building is free. Many residential towers, especially taller ones, use reinforced concrete shear walls to resist wind and earthquakes, and these often look like ordinary walls once plastered. Cutting an opening in a shear wall, a column or a beam can endanger the whole building. Before any wall is removed, the building's structural drawings should be checked and a qualified structural engineer consulted; in housing societies, the society's permission is usually needed too.

Free façade and ribbon windows, with shade

A framed building's freedom to open its façade is an opportunity, not an instruction. In Indian climates, the best modern façades put a layer of shade in front of the glass: a chhajja or projecting slab above south-facing windows, vertical fins or a jaali on east and west faces where the sun is low, and a deep balcony wherever possible. A ribbon window can work beautifully in an Indian home — it gives even light and a wide view — if a continuous ledge or chhajja of 600–900 mm runs above it, and if it faces north or south rather than west.

Roof gardens that do not leak

Villa Savoye's leaks are a warning that every Indian homeowner with a terrace garden should take seriously. A roof garden is a waterproofing problem first and a landscape second. The slab must be laid to falls towards outlets, waterproofed with a proven membrane system, protected by a root barrier and a screed, and topped by a drainage layer and filter fabric before any soil is placed. Planters should be raised or free-draining, overflows provided, and outlets kept accessible for cleaning. Saturated soil weighs far more than dry soil, so a structural engineer must confirm that the slab can carry the planned depth of soil, plants, water and people. The reward is real: a planted roof shades the slab, reduces heat entering the top-floor rooms and gives a family an outdoor room.

Where the five points are going

A century after they were written, the five points are being reread rather than retired. Pilotis are returning as raised ground floors that let water flow underneath in flood-prone areas, and as open, shaded public ground under buildings. The free plan is the basis for flexible housing whose partitions can move as families change. The free façade has become the high-performance envelope, with external shading, insulated walls and better glazing, guided in India by the Energy Conservation Building Code and the residential Eco-Niwas Samhita. And roof gardens have become green roofs, valued for reducing heat on top floors, slowing rainwater and adding greenery to dense cities.

What has changed is the test. In the 1920s the five points were proofs of what the new technology allowed. Today each one must also prove that it works in its climate — that it shades, ventilates, drains and lasts. Le Corbusier himself made that shift in India, and Aaditya Interior's approach to framed houses and flats follows the same order: use the freedom the frame gives, then put the climate first.

Rules for using the five points in India

• Treat the stilt floor as architecture: light, ventilation, security, a proper lobby and a plinth raised above flood level.
• Before removing any wall, check the structural drawings and consult a structural engineer; never cut columns, beams or shear walls.
• Align new partitions with the column and beam grid so that beams do not cut across rooms awkwardly.
• Put shade in front of glass: a 600–900 mm chhajja over south windows, fins or a jaali on east and west.
• Use ribbon windows on north and south faces, with a continuous ledge above; avoid long unshaded west windows.
• Design a roof garden as a waterproofing system first: falls, membrane, root barrier, protection, drainage, then soil.
• Get the slab load checked before planting a terrace; keep soil depth to what the engineer approves.
• Keep outlets and overflows accessible, and inspect them before every monsoon.

Frequently asked questions

What are Le Corbusier's five points of architecture?

Pilotis (columns lifting the building off the ground), the free plan (internal walls independent of the structure), the free façade (external walls designed as a skin), horizontal ribbon windows (long strip windows across the façade) and the roof garden (a flat roof used as a garden or terrace). He set them out in the mid-1920s as consequences of the reinforced concrete frame.

Where is Villa Savoye and when was it built?

Villa Savoye is in Poissy, on the western outskirts of Paris, France. It was designed from 1928 and completed in 1931 for the Savoye family as a weekend house. It is open to visitors and is part of UNESCO's 2016 World Heritage listing of The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier.

Why is Villa Savoye so famous?

Because it is the most complete demonstration of the five points in a single building, and because its elements — the house floating on pilotis, the ramp, the ribbon windows, the terrace garden and the rooftop solarium — became a template for modern architecture worldwide. It is studied in almost every architecture school.

Did Le Corbusier design buildings in India?

Yes. He prepared the master plan of Chandigarh and designed its Capitol Complex in the 1950s and 1960s, and in Ahmedabad he designed the Mill Owners' Association building, the Sanskar Kendra museum, Villa Sarabhai and Villa Shodhan. These buildings adapt the five points to India's climate with deep sun-breakers, parasol roofs and verandahs.

Can a wall in my flat be removed to make an open plan?

Possibly, if it is a non-structural partition. Many flats also have concrete shear walls, columns and beams that must never be cut or removed. Check the building's structural drawings, consult a qualified structural engineer and obtain the housing society's permission before any demolition.