Le Corbusier's spiral labyrinth

In the archive of Le Corbusier the World Museum is a precursor (in plan diagram at least) to a set of projects, hereafter to be referred to as the spiral museums. Those designs include the scheme for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Paris (1931), project for a Museum of Unlimited Extension (1939), the Cultural Centre of Ahmenedabad Museum (1954), the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (1957), and the Museum and Art Gallery of Chandigarh (completed in 1970). The spiral museum design also appears in the layout of urban design schemes such as the design for Rio de Janeiro (1929) and Saint-Die (1946). As a project the spiral museum occupies the archive in every decade from the 1920s until the architect’s death.
In the critical literature little is made of this occurrence, this design’s constant return, nor indeed of the spiral museum as a project within the archive. The built versions have not been considered remarkable in their own terms. What little critical interest that there is focuses upon the spiral form itself. Thus the spiral has been seen to stand for the architect’s interest in the symbolism of nature and patterns of growth and archetypal forms.
Yet the drawings from the Oeuvre Complete of the World Museum project are also manifestly setting out a promenade. This is a museum in which a spectator takes up an itinerary of history set out along a continuous wall; an itinerary carrying the spectator from the centre to edge of the museum, and it is this aspect of the design - how this promenade is being figured in the drawings - into which I inquire. In order to map out the promenade of the museum I point to a coincidence of figures - of the figure of this plan with that of a labyrinth. In literally appearing to take up the plan form of the labyrinth figure the project thus might be viewed as rehearsing the qualities of labyrinthine paradox (a recognition of a particular type of doubling)

Moulis, Antony, “Figure and Experience: The labyrinth and Le Corbusier’s World Museum”, Interstices No. 4 (Auckland) 1996: CD-ROM publication.