Le Corbusier’s concept of a floor plan without required load-bearing interior walls is the free plan.
A free plan becomes possible when a building’s structural loads are carried by columns and beams, commonly made from reinforced concrete or steel, rather than by a continuous network of interior masonry walls. Non-structural partitions can then be positioned, removed, or rearranged with much greater freedom.
Le Corbusier explored this principle in the Dom-Ino structural system, proposed in 1914. He later identified the free plan as one of the Five Points of a New Architecture, published in 1927 with Pierre Jeanneret. Villa Savoye is a famous example in which columns support the structure while interior circulation and partitions are organized independently.
“Open plan” is a related but broader everyday expression, not the canonical term in Le Corbusier’s theory. A free plan does not necessarily mean one completely undivided room; it means the layout is liberated from structural dependence on load-bearing interior walls.