ABSTRACT
It is difficult to think of a more striking way to sum up the range of ‘modern mediation’ than by juxtaposing Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye with Can Lis, the house Jørn Utzon built for himself and his family on Majorca in 1973. Abstract, cubic and poised confidently above, more than ‘on’, its site, Madame Savoye’s house is an ideal dwelling in the tradition of Palladio’s Villa Rotonda. Can Lis, by contrast, is resolutely concrete, made of the stone on which it stands, fragmented rather than pure, rooted in the earth. If the Villa is the paradigmatic modern house, designed to land anywhere on the planet, 1 Can Lis might be mistaken for something built on Crete in the time of King Minos, inseparable from the Mediterranean environment and culture of stone from which it grows (Fig. 18.1).
