Space Calculated in Seconds

The pavilion designed by Le Corbusier for the Philips Company at the 1958 Brussels World's fair broadcasted a landmark multimedia production. The nearly two million visitors who entered the pavilion were treated not to the usual display of consumer products, but to a dazzling demonstration of cutting-edge technology in the service of the arts. This totally automated spectacle consisted of colour, voice, sound, and images sperimposed in a curvilinear space of concrete, orchestrated by Le Corbusier and his colleagues into a 480-second program. Here, Marc Treib looks at both this collaboration and the significance of the Philips project. Achieving for the first time his interest in using electronic media as a synthesis of the arts, Le Corbusier worked with the filmaker Philippe Agostini, the graphic designer and editor Jean Petit, the architect/composer Iannis Xenakis, and the composer Edgar Varese, whose piece "Poeme electronique" was composed for this project. Treib explains the idea and development of the building design - based on the geometry of the hyperbolic paraboloid - and how this ambitious vision materialized through an innovative system of precast concrete panels, engineer