The notion of 

promenade architecturale within the history and language of architecture's Modern Movement emanates from Le Corbusier who employed
the phrase specifically when describing the experience of walking through two of his 1920s houses, the Maisons La Roche-Jeanneret (1923) and
the Villa Savoye (1929-31). Both references occur in the Oeuvre Compléte: 

"This house [the Maisons La Roche-Jeanneret] will be rather like an architectural promenade. You enter: the architectural spectacle at once
offers itself to the eye. You follow an itinerary and the perspectives develop with great variety, developing a play of light on the walls or
making pools of shadow. Large windows open up views of the exterior where the architectural unity is reasserted." 
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Oeuvre Compléte 1910-1929, p. 60. 

"In this house [the Villa Savoye] we are presented with a real architectural promenade, offering prospects which are constantly changing and
unexpected, even astonishing. It is interesting that so much variety has been obtained when from a design point of view a rigorous scheme of
pillars and beams has been adopted. . . . It is by moving about . . . that one can see the orders of architecture developing."  
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Oeuvre Compléte 1929-1934, p. 24. 

Furthermore, the words promenade architecturale caption a specific photographic view up the Villa Savoye's exterior ramp towards the roof-top solarium
(Oeuvre Compléte 1929-1934, p. 30).

Promenade Architecturale: A Documentation Part I : The Background 

http://www.quondam.com/31/3171.htm

Apart from the physical design of the two houses described, these textual citings together with the
captioned photograph of the Villa Savoye ramp offer the best, albeit quasi, definition of
the promenade architecturale. In plain terms, the promenade commences upon entering the
building, is recognized straight away as an "itinerary" to follow, and travel along the path exposes
the building's seemingly infinite architectural variety. In not so plain terms, the promenade
architecturale is the synergistic manifestation of a dynamic spatial experience, whose total effect is
greater than the sum of the effects of the discrete parts of the building--the "rigorous scheme of
pillars and beams" and the ramp--taken independently. Le Corbusier clearly suggests with the
captioned photograph, however, that the ramp itself is nonetheless the promenade architecturale's
crucial element, the component that makes the promenade "real." 

In the ensuing years since the building and publication of the Villa Savoye, a number of
architectural writers and thinkers have contributed additional layers of meaning to Le
Corbusier's promenade architecturale, and, as it happens, each new layer of meaning emphasizes
the significance of the ramp. Like a promenade architecturale itself, the following series of
quotations delivers a weaving path of "constantly changing and unexpected prospects," and each
individual passage is thus an incremental step towards a fuller and deeper understanding of the
architectural promenade idea. 

"[T]he ramp was designed as the preferred route of what the architect [Le Corbusier] calls
the promenade architecturalethrough the various spaces of the building--a concept which
appears to be close to that almost mystical meaning of the word "axis" that he had
employed in Vers un Architecture." 
Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age 

"An axis is perhaps the first human manifestation; it is the means of every human act. The
toddling child moves along an axis, the man striving in the tempest of life traces for himself
an axis. The axis is the regulator of architecture. To establish order is to begin to work.
Architecture is based on axes. The axis is a line of direction leading to an end. In
architecture you must have a destination for your axis. In the Schools they have forgotten
this and their axes cross one another in star-shapes, all leading to infinity, to the undefined,
to the unknown, to nowhere, without end or aim. The axes of the School is a recipe and a
dodge. 

Arrangement is the grading of axes, and so it is the grading of aims, the classification of
intentions. 

The architect therefore assigns destinations to his axes. These ends are the wall (the
plenum, sensorial sensation) or light and space (again sensorial sensation)." 
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1960), p.173.

James Stirling's competition entries for museums Banham augments the definition of the promenade architecturale with two cogent
in Düsseldorfand Cologne, writes Graham Shane, both ideas--one is practically self-evident and the other is cleverly subtle. First, Banham's
demonstrate a developing concern with circulation. What is
outstanding in these two projects is the collagist juxtaposition of a
vocabulary of neo-classical and contemporary architectural
elements, which become a coherent text only when viewed in
sequence from Stirling's 'preferred route'--the pleasure of the text
depending almost entirely on this promenade architecturale. 
"[At] Leicester solid wall, glass, ramp, lift tower, railing and
staircase were sandwiched between raised podium below and
sculpted segregated masses above.  of solemnly exposed ascents has been a major theme of "high architecture"
Both Düsseldorf and Cologne employ this vocabulary over larger
fields, with an extended circulation path passing between, above
and below--strong, easily recognised forms that function
symbolically at a city scale. The question is whether or not link
spaces of the complexity of Düsseldorf's foyer will have an
internal poetic coherence for the user, lacking as it does the
simplicity of storyline that contributes so much to Leicester's
success.  doubt that ramps in his houses reflect something of the thrill of fast motorized
citing of the analogy between the promenade idea and Le Corbusier's "philosophy"
on axes generates a powerful merger whereby the combination of path and
destination takes a paramount position. Second, Banham's phrase "preferred route"
carries a slightly critical tone--although the promenade architecturale is the travel
plan of choice, it, nonetheless, cannot exclude the tangential or marginal course. 
"Perhaps the most striking feature of the Villa is the ramp, which lends a
simple walk on the roof terrace the aura of a ceremonial ascent. What is the
origin and meaning of the motif? The articulation of the arrival-zones in terms
from Palladio up to the great châteaux of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. In Le Corbusier's case, however, the forms appears to have
industrial, that is, machine age overtones recalling motorized traffic with its
roadways in the forms of bridges, ramps, and loops. In Towards a New
Architecture he had published a photograph of the Fiat test track on the roof
of their factory in Turin, and in Paris, large elevated access ramps for taxis
were outstanding architectural elements at the old Gare Montparnasse and
the Gare de Lyon. All this most have interested Le Corbusier and there is little
circulation within the modern city. 

the "Düsseldorf foyer" 

It is this 'preferred route', these sentences, this promenade

architecturale, that distinguishes Stirling's work as architecture
and protects it from the Piranesian chaos. It is this same route
that is so lovingly described, both by Stirling at great length in his
lecture, and in the deadpan text and line drawings that illustrate
these competition entries--and which can be so easily ignored." 
Graham Shane, "Cologne in Context" in Architectural Design, no.
11, 1976, pp. 685-7.

This idea found other, more obvious realizations in later years, The most spectacular is Harvard's Carpenter Center: its ramps are a sort of
miniature version of Boston's Southeast Expressway running through the structure in a bold S-shaped curve, piercing it like a tunnel, and
inviting the pedestrians to take a metaphorical stroll through Corbusier's ideal "ville radieuse." 

So much for the explicit machine-age symbolism. But the ramp is also a spectacle of pure form and space, and it has been praised as
such by Giedion who insisted that it is impossible to "comprehend the Villa Savoye by a view from a single point; quite literally, it is a
construction in space-time." Le Corbusier's own comments on space-time are more straightforward: "It is by moving about . . . that one
can see the orders of architecture developing." And once again, as he had done earlier in connection with the Villa La Roche, the architect
speaks of "promenade architecturale," and the vernacular architecture of North Africa as sources of inspiration. 
Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier, elements of a synthesis (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1979), p.87.

In addressing the symbolism of the ramp within the Corbusian oeuvre, von Moos
simultaneously increases the holdings of thepromenade architecturale's
definition. Although referring specifically to the ramp within the Villa Savoye, the
notions of "ceremonial ascent," "machine-age overtones recalling motorized
traffic," and " a construction in space-time" likewise identify auxiliary
characteristics of the architectural promenade concept. As if it was the
instrument of a twentieth-century ritual, the ramp as promenade
architecturale seems capable of somehow manifesting a transcendence,
whereby the active participant glides into the realm of the thoroughly modern.
Additionally, von Moos suggests the Late Italian and French Renaissance
tradition of articulating "arrival-zones in terms of solemnly exposed ascents" as
the promenade architecturale's most likely historical precedent. 

"Having reached the entrance to the monastery [of Ema, which Le

Corbusier visited on his first journey to Italy in 1907], the visitor
encounters a long, gently ascending ramp with low steps leading upward
in the opposite direction. Going up this ramp one is looking out through
large apertures enclosed with semicircular arches onto the path one has
come. Was this the proto-type, the model--retained in the memory--for the
ramp in the Villa Savoye and for all other ramps in Le Corbusier's later
work? 

It was not merely the ramp as such that we discovered here but its special
formation as a path which is open to the outside permitting the visitor to
look back to whence he has just come. In other words, it is the ramp as
architectonic promenade which so cogently suggests the comparison with
the Villa Savoye . . . 

The entrance to the [Villa Savoye], the beginning of the upward path
through the house, and the terminal point of this path, and finally the vista
point, from which one looks out from the building onto the landscape, are
all situated above one another. . . . 

Man's movement through space became the guiding principle of a new and
different architecture, not just movement in and through space but also in
the alternation between movement and being stationary. Thus the ramp in
the Villa Savoye not only leads from one place to another, it also connects
places that are harmoniously balanced within themselves. It does not
simply lead through the building but has a beginning and an end, and when
one end is reached it begins to lead us once more to another place." 
Jürgen Joedicke, "The Ramp as Architectonic Promenade in Le Corbusier's
Work" in Daidalus, 1984, June, p. 104-108.

Joedicke presents a fairly convincing case when suggesting the entrance ramp of the Monastery of Ema as the leading precedent for
the promenade architecturale, especially with regard to the inside/outside nature of the ramp and the overall ability of the path to reflect upon
itself. These qualities are well evident at the Villa Savoye, where Joedicke further notes the stacked correspondence between the beginning
and end of the route through the building. This relationship between the path and its point of termination immediately recalls Le Corbusier's
own thoughts concerning the "axis" and the architect's requirement in providing the axis with a "destination." Consequently, with the
convergence of beginning and end, the definition of the Corbusianpromenade architecturale comes to full circle. 

The practice of promenade architecturale within twentieth-century architecture does not end with Le Corbusier, however. As already
marginally noted, the architecture of James Stirling also exhibits traits attributable to the promenade idea, as does a specific project by Rem
Koolhaas. Each of the following quotations examines the presence of the promenade architecturale within the building designs of these two
architects, and thus adds a few more steps, along with some new twists, to the established course.

"Although the movement route has been
thoroughly assimilated in twentieth-century
architecture as a strategic device, the
term promenade architecturale cannot be used
in describing the work of other than a handful of
architects. The inevitable Corbusian
associations raise the level of expectation
beyond that usually associated with a
movement route, suggesting an integration of
"[P]ushed by having to produce a huge library
[in Paris]with minimum financing, [Rem
Koolhaas] suddenly thought of exploiting the
fold, a method of design I have already
mentioned. [The architect] folded and cut up
sheets of paper and this led him to a new
movement system where the library is both a
continuous linear route and a set of near-
horizontal planes. The trick is that much of the
 circulation and form resulting in an experiential
dimension of unusual richness and subtlety. . . .
From the beginning, circulation was an
important generator in [James] Stirling's
designs . . . In [the Cambridge History Faculty
Building], thepromenade
architecturale becomes the conduit for a
dynamic visual experience . . . As in the [V]illa
[Savoye], the ramps [of the Olivetti Training
School at Haslemere] act as a contemplative
device, their gentle ascent under a glazed 'vault'
giving access to space, sunlight and greenery,
symbolizing that liberation of the spirit
epitomised by Le Corbusier's work of the 1920s. library floor has a tilt: not so much that books
As in the villa, the promenade on a trolley roll away, but just enough to move
architecturale gradually unfolds to reveal a from floor to floor. In effect, the building is an
visual sequence containing enclosure and enormous ramp with various surprising events
exposure, with spaces and volumes compacted superposed along the route. The idea has some
into a geometrical composite . . . In all three precedents--the 'architectural promenade' of the
[German Museums: Nordrhine Westphalia; seventeenth-century French hôtel, the
Wallraf-Richartz; Staatsgalerie], thepromenade programmed walk through an English landscape
architecturale emanates from an analysis of the garden, Frank Lloyd Wright'sGuggenheim
complex texture of the city, resonances of which Museum, which also has an organizational ramp
are evoked by metaphor and allusion and by a as a route of exploration--but Koolhaas'
juxtaposition of forms that combine visual invention is different. He makes the whole floor
surprises with vitality and grandeur. . . . In [the a ramp and weaves through it a grid of columns
Staatsgalerie], James Stirling'spromenade and randomized incidents. This, once again, is
architecturale reaches its joyous and most the method of superposition. Different layers of
profound fulfillment, transcending his earlier meaning are strained through each other
logic in an affirmation of the role of architecture without any narrative, or priority. This is
as being to provide man with an experiential different from the controlled promenade
foothold in the world."  architecturale -- for instance Le Corbusier's
Geoffrey Baker, "James Stirling and the promenade Mundaneum project--because it refuses to
architecturale" in The Architectural Review, 1992, privilege one interpretation over another." 
Dec., pp. 72-75.  Charles Jencks, The Architecture of the Jumping
Universe(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), p. 88.
"The promenade architecturale surges across
the [Staatsgalerie] complex in a magical mystery
tour that resonates with memories of city
structuring. In this scenario associations are
transformed and decoded so that, for example,
the traditional rotunda acts not as a point of
culmination (as in the Pantheon or in
Schinkel's Altes Museum) but as a dynamic
participant in an elaborate dialogue between
inside and outside and between an ideal and
reality." 
Geoffrey Baker, "Stuttgart Promenade" in The
Architectural Review, 1992, Dec., pp. 76.

Baker's descriptions of the "movement routes" throughout Stirling's buildings and projects are
unquestionably a positive affirmation of the promenade architecturale as defined thus far, whereas
Jencks' description of Koolhaas' Bibliothègues Jessieu presents a negation of the Corbusian promenade
ideal. Both historians clearly hold a thorough and accurate understanding of the promenade
architecturale, yet neither of their analyses are completely satisfactory nor conclusive. In his general
study, Baker correctly notes the long standing importance of circulation within Stirling's designs, and
furthermore recognizes Stirling's steady development of the circulation route in conjunction with specific
built forms that carry both functional and symbolic significance. What Baker does not note, however, is
whether Stirling ever intentionally directed his circulation routes towards specific "destinations." Jencks,
on the other hand, stresses Koolhaas' total elimination of the "narrative and priority" of the promenade
architecturale within his library design, and thus the idea of path and destination is altogether antithetical
to the library's overriding design concept. Could it be that the combined notions of "axis" and "destination"
which Le Corbusier held in such high regard at the beginning of the twentieth-century are precisely the
concepts now lost to architects at the end of the same century? Did thepromenade architecturale indeed
"lead us once more to another place?" 

"Get carefully out of your car and consider where you are. You may be standing on a sloping
floor. The space in which you stand is ambiguous and endless. Where does Level D end and Level
E begin, and why? And are you indoors or outdoors? 

Every element of traditional humanistic architectural space--the walls, the floor, the ceiling--is
ambiguous, askew or both. The parking garage subverts all architectural expectations. 

But they are built routinely, and we use them with scarcely a second thought. The spatial
experience of the parking garage may actually be more consonant with how most people
experience the contemporary environment of highways, interchanges, electronic media and
computers than their experience with traditional buildings. Most architecture is solid and static.
Parking garages make room for dynamism. And each of the cars is a private realm that has
entered the place but is essentially unaffected by it. The classical principles of architecture seem
not to apply. In our world, the renaissance man -- standing firm, heroic, contemplative but ready to
act - would probably get run over. . . . 

We needn't find [parking garages] beautiful. But perhaps they do contain the seeds of great things
to come." 
Thomas Hine, "Ramps give a slant on design" in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 11, 1994, sec. N, p. 1. 

In calling attention to the modern parking garage, Hine presents an eloquent and very reasonable answer
to what the "other place" at the end of the promenade architecturale might be. There is, however, one
specific building design that provides a better answer to the promenade architecturale question--Le
Corbusier's Palais des Congrès. Designed as the European Parliament in Strasbourg the year before Le
Corbusier died, the building has not received critical attention simply because it remained unexecuted,
yet, not only does it relate directly to the Villa Savoye, it is also the culmination of Le
Corbusier's promenade architecturale ideal. 
roofscape of the Palais des Congrès