Housing design by Le Corbusier, 1914–15 and later Between 1914 and 1915, Le Corbusier, partly encouraged by his friend Max du Bois, conceived of a standardized system of construction using reinforced concrete, which was to provide the structural basis of most of his houses through the mid-1930s. These were the Dom-ino prefabricated houses with independent skeletons. The frame was to be completely independent of the floor plans of the houses. Derived from the Hennebique frame, it consisted of six thin concrete columns that simply carried two horizontal slabs as the floors. The columns and slabs were connected by staircases. Apart from this structural core of the houses, nothing else was fixed, thus permitting a great flexibility to suit demands on the basis of aesthetics, climate, composition, or view. The floor plan was also extremely flexible, as interior partitions were independent of the grid. This utterly simple and clear “open plan” method did away with load-carrying walls. Suppor...