The Villa Savoye sinks in the Danish fjords

Who knows why Le Corbusier is so targeted by critics and iconoclasts... From Tom Sachs’ exhibition at the 2010 Venice Biennale to the digital collages by Xavier Delory, the work of the Modern Architecture master are recently criticised, deconstructed, and vandalised. Perhaps because in the academies one continues to idolize his work without looking at new ways of doing architecture, maybe because Le Corbu is an icon of a past century, or because of his strong personality (and his glasses).

In the case of the Flooded Modernity installation, conceived by Danish artist Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye is a symbol of Modernity and Enlightenment, representing progress and the power of reason. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Brexit and Trump elections, these principles – and with them many of our securities – are collapsing. The Danish artist reinterprets one of the symbols of modernity, whose 5 principles have inspired the new way of building, and makes it shipwrecked on the Danish coast. The work was conceived on the occasion of Floating Art Festival, an art event held every year in the city of Vejle. Havsteen-Mikkelsen built a sloping part of the house on a 1: 1 scale, a floating wooden structure that seems to sink into the fjords. The installation will move along the coast until September 2, for the duration of the festival. We trust in an ending completed by a Norse funeral.