While the importance of ‘Readymades’ in art is undeniable, their presence in architecture has grown in prominence, particularly in domestic spaces. The study begins with a comparison of two sanitary objects that are significant examples of work by Marcel Duchamp and Le Corbusier: the urinal through which Duchamp made a radical intervention into what we consider art and the bidet that Le Corbusier conceived as a work of decorative arts. Unlike the artist, the architect acknowledged the bidet’s utilitarian nature and valorised the manufacturer’s ingenuity. The bidet should be appreciated as a ‘true’ object.
Fascinated by the advancement of mechanical equipment, the architect regarded these ready-made objects as ‘tools of the house’ to be ‘architecturized’. All architectonic and mechanical elements must be entrusted ‘to the specialized technician’. Thus, architects can focus on their essential task: ‘to provide order and proportion’, in other words, to compose. By selecting and arranging the ready-mades objects, the architect proclaimed himself the author of an architectural ensemble and not of its elements. However, our perceptions of these elements in this ensemble may differ from our perceptions of individual elements in quotidian life. The logic of the elements, now ‘palpitating’ to form different interrelationships, goes beyond that of a conventional installation.
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