meaning certain hallowed external signs and aspects have been fixed. The plan, which is really a cluster of ideas and of the intention essential to this cluster of ideas, has become a piece of paper on which black marks for walls and lines for axes play at a sort of mosaic on a decorative panel making graphic representations of star-patterns, creating an optical illusion. The most beautiful star becomes the Grand Prix de Rome. Now, the plan is the generator, “the plan is the determination of everything; it is an austere abstraction, an algebrization, and cold of aspect.” It is a plan of battle. The battle follows and that is the great moment. The battle is composed of the impact of masses in space and the morale of the army is the cluster of predetermined ideas and the driving purpose. Without a good plan nothing exists, all is frail and cannot endure, all is poor even under the clutter of the richest decoration.
From the very start the plan implies the methods of construction to be used; the architect is above all an engineer. But let us keep strictly to architecture, this thing which endures through the ages. Placing myself entirely at this one angle of vision I commence by drawing attention to this vital fact: a plan proceeds from within to without, for a house or a palace is an organism comparable to a living being. I shall speak of the architectural elements' of the interior. I shall pass on to arrangement. In considering the effect of buildings in relation to a site, I shall show that here too the exterior is always an interior. By means of various fundamental elements which will be clearly shown in diagrams, I can demonstrate the illusion of plans, this illusion which kills architecture,
