In the center of the green wall to your left, you will discover the Plan Voisin. In 1925, at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, Le Corbusier presented one of his most radical urban proposals: the Plan Voisin.

The name is no coincidence. Le Corbusier was an enthusiastic driver and preferred cars made by Avion Voisin—a company that produced both luxury automobiles and aircraft in the 1920s. At the time, cars and airplanes symbolized a new, dynamic, motorized society. The Plan Voisin represents the first concrete application of an earlier concept: the Ville contemporaine de trois millions d’habitants. Here, Le Corbusier directly applies his idea of a rationally organized metropolis to the historic center of Paris. Large parts of the northern bank of the Seine would be demolished and replaced by a landscape of monumental high-rise buildings. Slender towers, around 220 meters tall, rise within expansive parks. Reactions to this vision were highly controversial from the outset. For many contemporaries, the Plan Voisin represented a promising future: a Paris where cars could circulate freely and generous green spaces would offer a new quality of life. Others, however, saw—and still see—it as a brutal attack on the historic city, a proposal that would have erased Paris without regard for its past.

The perception of this vision depends strongly on how it is represented. The two images in this section illustrate this clearly. At the center, a film visualization presents the Plan Voisin as a dystopian megacity. To the right, a film still by Pierre Chenal stages one of Le Corbusier’s glass towers as a futuristic crystal. You can also see a model of the project in the middle of the room. These representations highlight how visualization shapes our understanding of architecture—whether it appears as a utopian promise or a threatening vision.

But how did Le Corbusier imagine these towers in detail? You can explore this in a small sketch just to the left of the metal bird. (AI-generated translation)

Short guided tour with the curator