Pick any modern automobile, and you can drive to your destination with ease. Each car maximizes some manner of cost, comfort, materials, efficiency, and safety. Compare a modern car with a 100 year old vehicle, and you will find innovation in absolutely every area. A machine for moving people. You don't need to bring anything with you. You don't need to bring your own chair to sit in, for example - the car already has that.
Now, pick any modern house. You will find almost no innovation compared to a house that is 100 years old. You'll need to bring your own chair, since the house just has empty rooms. Think of all the things you need to do in order to live. Shouldn't the architect of the house take all of these activities into consideration? Le Corbusier uses such examples as -- shouldn't there be a place to store artwork, so that there is always something different on the wall? Shouldn't there be recessed lighting, so there is no dusty chandelier to clean? Shouldn't there be as much natural light as possible, to avoid the need for artificial light in the first place?
Shouldn't the house be a machine for living, just as the car is a machine for driving? Where style is not bolted on, but rather the formal outcome of functionality?
Another phrase he uses that I really like, "the answer to a question well posed," or, "the solution to a problem well posed."
But anyway, I'm rambling. Read "Toward An Architecture." Any book that gets a new translation at almost 100 years old is probably worth a gander.
