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This online game gives you the chance to deface Corbu's iconic Villa Savoye

This online game gives you the chance to deface Corbu's iconic Villa Savoye

Modernism made you mad? One remedy might be smashing your Lego model of Villa Savoye into tiny pieces. If you don’t have such a model handy, there’s now a virtual solution to defacing Corbu with an online game called Le Petit Architecte.

Creating an “absolute architectural masterpiece” is no mean feat, but that is what players of Le Petit Architecte are tasked with achieving. In the game, you play as an intern attempting to “improve” Le Corbusier’s design for the Villa Savoye, situated just East of Paris in real life.

The game comes at just over 50 years after Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris’ (Le Corbusier’s) death which has meant that copyright in the majority of European countries (but not the U.S.) covering his work is no longer valid.

Theo Triantafyllidis, a student at UCLA was one of the first to take full advantage of this. Naturally, he came to the conclusion that the first thing anyone would want to do to the Villa Savoye, if given the opportunity, would be to chuck a seemingly endless amount of objects at the house.

Each object, of course, has its own sound effect which bears no relevance to its purpose size or shape or life form. An equally odd (and also perfectly befitting) soundtrack accompanies the game.

The game was showcased at the #Decorbuziers exhibition in Athens, Greece late last year (on the 50th anniversary of Corbusier’s death).

Allison Meier at Hyperallergic succinctly stated: “Le Petit Architecte is a fairly simple game — create chaos in the face of modernist serenity. Yet it’s an enjoyably absurd diversion, and provides some digital retribution perhaps for those of us who still cringe over Le Corbusier’s mural defacement of Eileen Gray’s E.1027.”

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