The theoretical and artistic basis of functionalism was formulated by Le Corbusier - an artist, thinker, but above all an architect of extraordinary intellectual and artistic power, which gave decisive impetus to the development of world architecture for four decades. He was born in Switzerland but worked mainly in Paris.
Le Corbusier gained worldwide fame with his works, which were systematically published in 1923 in the magazine "Esprit Nu-vo" (New trends) under the title "Towards architecture", his views on the city, expressed in the book "Urbanism" (Urban Planning, 1925), where he demanded the liberation of city centers for transport, an increase in the area of green spaces, the use of a free building system. His first projects and buildings include a serial single-family house (1914) made of monolithic reinforced concrete, the Citroen house, a villa in Paris (1922) and a house project in which he combined the advantages of an isolated cottage and a large residential building. The exhibition pavilion "Esprit Nouveau" designed by Le Corbusier in the form of a living cell at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts became, together with the pavilion of Soviet constructivism, the only new phenomenon. Le Corbusier's town-planning sketches - cities with 3 million inhabitants (1922) and three years later the "Plan Voisin" reconstruction of the center of Paris, also received wide publicity. Both projects were based on a free plan, it was proposed to use tower houses, and transport transport on several levels.
The second most significant contribution of Le Corbusier is to define the basic principles of functionalist architecture, which he formulated in 1927 in five points: 1) the columns that raise the house above the ground78; 2) roof garden; 3) free plan; 4) horizontal window; 5) free curtain facade. The formulation of these principles was preceded by the development of a reinforced concrete structure scheme, in which Le Corbusier in 1914 reduced the frame system to two tectonic elements: a support and a ceiling. In this way, the form of a functionally organized plan got rid of direct dependence on the solution of the structure and the placement of its elements.
In this sense, the principle of separating the supporting structure from the planning solution is one of the most profound changes that the 20th century made to architecture. Five points and the indicated scheme became not only a definition of the stylistic features of functionalist architecture, but also one of the most concise formulations of recipes for architectural creativity in general.
These principles Le Corbusier used in the solution of two houses at the exhibition of the dwelling in Stuttgart (1927) and the classically simple Villa Savoy in Poissy. Subsequent buildings - a villa in Garches, a pavilion of Swiss students in Paris (1930-1932) and many years of urban planning work on the city plan of Algeria (1930-1942), from the very first version included curvilinear residential buildings, -? also show that Le Corbusier, in contrast to Perret, who understood reinforced concrete purely constructively, uses this material rather as a means to implement his ideas in the field of form, relying on classical compositional rules. He understood architecture as a thoughtful and precise harmony of illuminated volumes.
A significant contribution to the program of functionalist architecture was made by the Bauhaus, whose works and theoretical principles were published in the so-called Bauhausbucher (Bauhaus Books). In the spirit of functionalism, E. Neufert developed the norms of relations and sizes concerning the design of structures and interiors. The main bearer of the ideas of functionalism in Czechoslovakia was the "Club of Architects" and the internationally renowned magazine "Stavba", which had been published since 1921 under the direction of G. Stary. In Slovakia, since 1931, the magazine "Forum of Art, Construction and Interior" has been published. The Stavba magazine mediated local architecture from French, German, Dutch and was one of the first to inform about constructivism in the Soviet Union. The merit of this magazine was the creation in Czechoslovakia of that period of its own architecture program, to which it gave a progressive character from a cultural and social point of view. The meaning was seen in the rationality and orderliness of all human labor. The program of "Stavba" and the Club of Architects (1924) already emphasized the social essence of architecture, which must fully correspond to the meaning and needs of its time. Architects were seen as organizers of life, and creativity, which was focused only on the aesthetic aspects of architecture at the expense of the social, was proposed to be considered false. The main task of architecture was seen in improving the general standard of living.