There are some minds which give us the sense that they have passed through an elaborate education which was designed to initiate them into the traditions and achievements of their civilization; the immediate impression we have of them is an impression of cultivation, of the enjoyment of an inheritance. But this is not so with the mind of the Rationalist, which impresses us as, at best, a finely tempered, neutral instrument, as a well-trained rather than as an educated mind. Intellectually, his ambition is not so much to share the experience of the race as to be demonstrably a self-made man. And this gives to his intellectual and practical activities an almost preternatural deliberateness and self-consciousness, depriving them of any element of passivity, removing from them all sense of rhythm and continuity and dissolving them into a succession of climacterics, each to be surmounted by a tour de raison. His mind has no atmosphere, no changes of season and temperature; his intellectual processes, so far as possible, are insulated from all external influence and go on in the void. And having cut himself off from the traditional knowledge of his society, and denied the value of any education more extensive than a training in a technique of analysis, he is apt to attribute to mankind a necessary inexperience in all the critical moments of life, and if he were more self-critical he might begin to wonder how the race had ever succeeded in surviving. With an almost poetic fancy, he strives to live each day as if it were his first, and he believes that to form a habit is to fail. And if, with as yet no thought of analysis, we glance below the surface, we may, perhaps, see in the temperament, if not in the character, of the Rationalist, a deep distrust of time, an impatient hunger for eternity and an irritable nervousness in the face of everything topical and transitory.
    -Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics

This was an example par excellence, of the five points (Le Corbusier's Five Points of a New Architecture)--the perfect, cubically-white, living machine. But what was a modern life like in one of these cubical living machines? Well you had to put up with a building that malfunctioned technically, there were cracks and stains and leaks and condensation and...of course you'd already paid way beyond the initial budget. But some people could cope. Raoul la Roche 'enjoyed living in the villa, despite its many technical deficiencies, such as a noisy central heating system that was never resolved and an ever pending lighting solution.'

But other were less enthusiastic--the Savoye family for instance. Pierre Savoye was a Parisian banker and not a member of the avant-garde. What he wanted was a weekend house in the country for his family. There is no evidence that he had any interest, one way or the other, in modern architecture -- but he chose Le Corbusier to be his architect. The outcome was a disaster. The final cost of the project was far in excess of the budget, there were technical problems, as always, and the house was so uncomfortable for family life that the Savoyes hardly used it. It later served as a military billet for both German and Allied soldiers, then was used as a hay barn by local farmers. In 1959, scheduled for demolition, it was "rescued" by the then French minister of culture Andre Malraux--it is now a historic monument!