In February 1956, Le Corbusier was contacted by Louis Kalff, then the Artistic Director of the Dutch firm Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken NV, who asked him to create a pavilion for his company (not as part of a Dutch national one) for the World’s Fair scheduled for 1958 in Brussels.' Kalff’s rather ingenious idea was to propose that Le Corbusier demonstrate the sound and light possibilities of Philips’ technologies rather than to display any of their actual products. Le Corbusier immediately agreed, finding here the unique opportunity to express artistic preoccupations he had been contemplating most of his creative life. He concentrated entirely on developing his “Poéme électronique,” an eight-minute spectacle of light, sound, images, color, rhythm: a crystallization of his concept of an organic synthesis of all arts. Once he had determined the general form (a black and empty ‘stomach’ or ‘bottle’) with an entry and exit that could accommodate around 500 spectators for each 10-minute performance (leaving two minutes for entry and exit), he delegated the actual architectural design of the pavilion to Xenakis. He asked the composer Edgard Varése* to compose an eight-minute piece of electronic music,’ entirely independent of his own visual ‘scenario’.* He also asked Xenakis to compose the two-minute interlude that was to be played while one set of spectators entered and the previous group exited.
Using a very scant sketch by Le Corbusier, Xenakis set to work in October 1956 and completed his first set of plans by the end of that year.
Never before had engineers and contractors had to deal with an experimental construction exclusively based on self-supporting hyperbolic paraboloids. Indeed, the Philips Pavilion called for no supporting structures, neither inside nor outside the edifice. Xenakis was pushing his chosen material, reinforced concrete, to its extreme limits. At that time, the only manner to verify such propositions was by trial and error, using scale models.
Finally, the Belgian firm Strabed was chosen to build the pavilion. The construction began in June 1957. Strabed’s head engineer, H.C. Duyster collaborated closely with Xenakis and developed some unique processes. For example, the outer shells are actually cast in sand molds on the ground in slabs of approximately 1.5 meter (aprroximately 5 ft) length by only 5 centimeters (approximately 2 in) thick of strongly reinforced concrete. These were mounted one by one by means of a moveable wood scaffolding and were supported by a double network of steel cables of 8 millimeters (approximately 3 in) diameter (3000 cables in all). The highest point of the structure reaches 22 meters (approximately 88.5 ft), the greatest length, 40 meters (approximately 130 ft) and the largest width, 24 meters (approximately 78 ft), creating an inner surface of approximately 500 m? (approximately 5380 sq ft) for a total volume of 7500 m* (approximately 265000 ft’).
Only a total mastery over the chosen material — reinforced concrete — achieved over years of study and experience enabled Xenakis to realize this tour de force.’ Had he not spent endless hours calculating, revising, inventing mathematical solutions, from the Marseille Unité* to developing (with Bernard Lafaille) the ‘shoe-box’ structures in Rezé-lés Nantes,’ etc., he may very easily have been discouraged and convinced by the advice and opinion of most of the contractors on the project — that is was simply impossible. His engineering expertise had already influenced some of the designs coming out of the studio, but this creative attempt, then considered a quantum leap, seemed to defy all better judgement. Although Le Corbusier was often in Chandigarh at the time and was immersed in creating his scenario for his “Poéme électronique” he did fully support Xenakis in all of his efforts to counter such defeatist opinions and encouraged him to prove the design’s feasibility. In the end, not only did it prove feasible, but also when the structure was destroyed in January 1959 after the Exposition (despite unavailing efforts to preserve it), the demolition workers were amazed by the solidity and resistance this 5-cm. shell proved to have.
Liberated from any functional use beyond creating a black space for the ““Poéme électronique,” Xenakis’ design developed into an ‘envelope,’ thereby introducing the concept of volumetric architecture. This volume’s final form elegantly demonstrates the difference between, on the one hand, practical, functional construction and, on the other, creative (although scientific) invention. Ruled surfaces, representing the principal of east effort, provided the spatial (vs. plane) architectural solution. The panoramic screens required for projection of Le Corbusier’s “Poéme électronique“ plus the acoustic solutions required for the diffusion of Varése’s music and Xenakis’ Concret PH interlude) together intimately cover the inner surface, espousing the form itself.
In the following texts —“Le Corbusier’s Electronic Poem" and “The Philips Pavilion at the Dawn of a New Architecture,”— Xenakis rather thoroughly explains not only the process, but also the ‘inner necessity’ of the Philips Pavilion, both from a historic context and as a vision towards the future.’’ Another text by him, quite obviously motivated by this experience, “Notes towards an Electronic Gesture” from 1958 appears later in this volume,'* where Xenakis describes more precisely his own vision of such a spectacle.
In fact, viewed in retrospect, the Philips Pavilion is the first project where Xenakis realizes his ideal of an “artist-conceptor”: someone capable of creating “new abstract and free forms, tending towards complexities, and then towards generalizations on several levels...of organization.”’' This becomes a key idea throughout his mature works.
In this sense, these architectural considerations corresponded more or less precisely with Xenakis’ musical preoccupations around the same time. When asked by Varga about the Philips Pavilion’s significance for him, Xenakis replied, “That was the first time I’d done something completely by myself — something entirely different, with new surface solutions. I had proved for myself that I was able to create something in the field of architecture that hadn’t existed before. In the Philips Pavilion I realized the basic ideas of Metastasis (sic): as in the music, here too I was interested in the question of whether it is possible to get from one point to another without breaking the continuity. In Metastasis this problem led to glissandos, while in the pavilion it resulted in the hyperbolic parabola shapes.’
Because of his experience and expertise, it was also Xenakis’ responsibility to develop, in collaboration with Philips’ own sound engineers, the spatialization of the sound projection, involving some 425 speakers and baffles distributed astutely throughout the Pavilion’s inner surfaces.' This unprecedented complexity certainly constituted a solid background for Xenakis later, when developing his own Polytopes.'? Visually, these speakers evoke the “acoustic diamonds” Xenakis proposed for the church in the La Tourette Monastery, but that were never installed due to budgetary considerations.
As a final touch, Le Corbusier asked Xenakis to design a geometric sculpture, “‘l’ objet mathématique” (‘mathematical object’). “The form of the sculpture developed as a series of outlined geometric solids, nested one within the other. By selectively sheathing and revealing the various surfaces, the sense of interior space was heightened and the viewer’s eye drawn within. At the heart of the piece is a neon rendering of Le Corbusier’s writing announcing the Poéme électronique ... Mounted in the small pools surrounding the pavilion, the colored illumination was reflected in the water, suggesting in some small way, the electronic environment within. A smaller model of the same “mathematical object” is placed at the apex of one of the pavilion’s points (cf. speaker distribution [left]).
Once the final points were refined and determined, the work on site actually went rather smoothly.” However, in the middle of June 1957, “Vincident Xenakis,’ as it became known in the intimate circle of this project, broke out. Although deeply involved and totally responsible for the execution of this project, Xenakis realized that Le Corbusier ‘neglected’ to give his favorite protégé any recognition for his contributions. Betrayed is the only word to describe his feelings. Not only did he voice this to his ‘father confessor’ Hermann Scherchen,” but he later explained to Varga: Then came the Philips Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair, when we quarrelled. [...] In the beginning he was sincerely interested in my designs and liked them. When the monks wanted to see him in connection with the convent,” he referred them to me. “Go to Xenakis, he said, he’s the one who designed it.” He did the same thing with the Philips Pavilion. Later, however, when he saw that my work was
being recognized by other people as well, I think he became jealous. Then he suddenly claimed to have done everything himself. I reproached him for it but he pretended not to have heard. I was shocked and distressed by his behaviour — after all, I admired and loved him, and couldn’t believe him capable of such a thing — and I did something silly: I wrote to Philips and declared that the pavilion was my design. The firm contacted Le Corbusier who replied that he had headed the studio for forty years and that every idea was his, and the Philips Pavilion was no exception. I told him that he was doing to me the same as the architects of the United Nations headquarters in New York had done to him, in stealing his designs. I remember Le Corbusier giving a press conference in his Studio in the early 1950s, when he tried to prove that the general shape oft he building was his idea but that he had lost the plans during his six month stay in New York. Now he was doing the same thing to me, I told him. So he asked me: What do you think you invented? All these shapes are well known! Yes, I said, that’s true. These shapes are well known. But you, too, have used the same flat surfaces and columns and rectangles that architects have been employing for thousands of years. The important thing is not that they have existed before, but how they are being used.
Our discussion, then, was not about whether he had designed the pavilion or not. What he wanted to prove was that my work had no significance. Finally, he wrote an article in Le poéme électronique declaring that the Philips Pavilion was my design.”
Eventually, a compromise was found between all concerned parties. Henceforth, any reference in terms of authorship of the Philips Pavilion should state “Philips — Le Corbusier (collaboration Xenakis) — Varese.” The only exception made to this newly agreed upon rule occurs on the concrete pillar placed at the entrance to the Pavilion, where credits are listed.*’ Le Corbusier’s name appears under “Création du Poeme et Architecture;”Xenakis’ under “Architecture et Interlude Sonore.”
Subsequent to the now-infamous “incident,” which certainly put a chill on the general atmosphere, Xenakis set to work on his two-minute “Interlude,” Concrét PH (actually 2’45” long). Xenakis wanted to work in Philips’ studios in Eindhoven, but Le Corbusier refused to give him a three-week leave to do so.** Philips proposed their studio in Paris, which finally proved less well-equipped than the GRM studio in Paris where Xenakis had already worked.” The piece is composed entirely of recordings of burning charcoal, manipulated electronically. As one critic points out, “Spatialized through the hundreds of speakers, it made people feel as if the whole pavilion was cracking and logsing tension....” Could this have been a reflection of Xenakis’ sentiment at that point? His world and illusions seemed to be crumbling...
The Philips Pavilion opened on April 17, 1958, but due to technical equipment problems for projecting both sound and images, had to be closed, repaired, and was officially inaugurated on May 1, 1958.
The Pavilion encountered an unprecedented public success. Philips estimated that approximately 1,500,000 spectators experienced the Poéme électronique* in the space of a few months!
Although the “incident” mentioned above was certainly the main catalyst for the final break between Le Corbusier and Xenakis, for the latter, the Philips Pavilion represented the beginning of his trailblazing work as an “artist-conceptor.” Today, looking back over his work, we can affirm his definition of such a being both in his ceuvre and in his person: The artist-conceptor will have to be knowledgeable and inventive in such varied domains as mathematics, logic, physics, chemistry, biology, genetics, paleontology (for the evolution of forms), the human sciences and history; in short, a sort of universality, but one based upon, guided by and oriented toward forms and architectures. Moreover, the time has come to establish a new science of ‘general morphology’ which would treat these forms and architectures within these diverse disciplines in their invariant aspects and the laws of their transformations which have, in some cases, existed for millions of years. The backdrop for this new science should be the real condensations of intelligence: in other words, an abstract approach, free from anecdotes of our senses and habits.”