Le Corbusier and the Architectural Promenade

Architecture is experienced as one roams about in it and walks through it… So true is this that architectural works can be divided into dead and living ones depending on whether the law of ‘roaming through’ has not been observed or whether on the contrary it has been brilliantly obeyed. (Le Corbusier, 1942)

The promenade architecturale - the observer’s pathway through the built space - is a central element of Le Corbusier’s architectural and city planning designs. It is the sequence of images that unfolds before the eyes of the observer as he or she gradually advances through the structure. It is the creation of a hierarchy among the architectural events, a set of instructions for reading the work - the internal circulatory system of architecture. With the help of the promenade architecturale , Le Corbusier created virtuosic imbrications of indoor and outdoor space, fluid spaces that reveal themselves as the visitor progresses. Architecture constitutes the space of processes of movement.