| Le Corbusier | |
|---|---|
| Charles-Édouard Jeanneret | |
| Birthday | |
| Birthplace | La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland |
| Died | |
| Nationality | Swiss / French (from 1930) |
Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
(1887-1965)
Le Corbusier
(pseudonym of Charles Edouard Jeanneret). Born Oct. 6, 1887, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland; died Aug. 27, 1965, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, the Riviera, France. French architect and architectural theorist.
Le Corbusier, the son of an artisan, studied decorative applied art at the School of Art in La Chaux-de-Fonds. He studied and worked with the architects J. Hoffmann in Vienna (1907), A. Perret in Paris (1908–10), and P. Behrens in Berlin (1910–11). Beginning in 1917 he lived in Paris. Having become involved with painting, Le Corbusier worked out the theory of purism with A. Ozenfant in 1918. Four years later he established an architectural studio with his cousin P. Jeanneret, with whom he collaborated until 1940.
Le Corbusier first presented his ideas concerning modern architecture in articles which appeared in the journal L‘Esprit Nouveau (published from 1920 to 1925), as well as in the books Towards a New Architecture (1923) and The City of Tomorrow (1925). Opposing eclecticism and ornamentation that masks the structure of a building, Le Corbusier saw in modern technology and industrialized building a basis for the renovation of the architectural language. He saw rich aesthetic possibilities in revealing the functionally justified structure of a building. Viewing the harmony of the man-made artificial environment as the determining factor of daily life, he held a utopian hope of transforming society with the aid of architecture.
In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Le Corbusier was involved primarily with city planning and the design of housing and large public buildings. The innovation of his architectural proposals consisted in a completely new approach to the problem of highdensity housing, based on a careful analysis of modem life. Le Corbusier reorganized the functions of housing (through rational abbreviation, the blending of old functions, and allowing for new functions that respond not only to the processes of everyday life but also to the intellectual needs of man). He worked out in technological detail the utilization of space in an apartment to provide the maximum comfort, using compact design and counting on the development of centralized facilities and services. Le Corbusier also stressed industrial construction and, in city planning, provided links between an individual dwelling and its surroundings.
Le Corbusier’s designs of the 1920’s included the Citrohan House (1922, model project), the R. La Roche and A. Jeanneret houses in Paris (1923–24; together known as the Le Corbusier Institute since 1970), the housing estate of Pessac near Bordeaux (1925), the villa at Garches, Hautes-de-Seine Department (1927), and the Villa Savoye in Poissy (1929–31).
These projects led Le Corbusier to formulate the “five points of new architecture”: the building raised on pilotis (stilts), the flat roof with a roof garden, free interior plan, ribbon windows, and the free facade. His buildings of this period are characterized by simple geometric forms, smooth white facades, and broad glass surfaces. The reinforced-concrete skeleton construction permitted the replacement of cellular rooms by functionally divided living spaces that flow into one another. The austerity of the exterior and the polychromy of the interior are reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s painting and his theory of purism.
Le Corbusier was one of the leaders of urbanism, or city planning. His idea of the “vertical” city and park developed in his urban design projects of the 1920’s and 1930’s. The “vertical” city was to have a high population density, large areas of greenery, separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, and separate residential, commercial, and industrial zones (project for a city of 3 million, 1922; the Voisin plan for the reconstruction of Paris, 1925; plan for Buenos Aires, 1930; plan for Algiers, 1930–39; plan for Antwerp, 1932; plan for Nemours, Algeria, 1934—none of these projects was ever realized).
A number of Le Corbusier’s theoretical proposals formed the basis of The Athens Charter, which was adopted by the fourth International Congress for Modern Architecture in 1933; these proposals were also set forth in Le Corbusier’s books The Radiant City (1935) and The Three Human Establishments (1945).
In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Le Corbusier’s principles of architecture were realized in several major buildings, including the Tsentrosoiuz building in Moscow (now the Central Statistics Administration; 1928–35, with the participation of N. D. Kolli), the Swiss dormitory at the University of Paris (1930–32), and the Salvation Army Hostel in Paris (1932–33); these architectural principles also appeared in the plans for the unexecuted projects of the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva (1927) and the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow (1931).
In the 1940’s, Le Corbusier studied the question of architectural space and created the modulor, a system of harmoniously linked dimensions based on the proportions of the human body, which he proposed as the unit of measurement for building and artistic construction. His works of the 1950’s are marked by a powerful yet subtly nuanced plasticity (sun-shielding projections and curved surfaces), strongly expressed structural elements that actively interact with the environment, effects of light and space, the contrasting juxtaposition of materials of different textures, the combination of uniform prefabricated units with projecting sculptural constructions, and a rich polychromy (apartment house in Marseille, 1947–52, prototype of a series of “dwelling units” built in the 1950’s in other cities; Ronchamp Chapel, 1950–54; the Dominican friary La Tourette in Evieux, near Lyon, 1956–59). In a large cycle of works in India (1950–57), Le Corbusier realized some of his city-planning ideas (the general plan of the city of Chandigarh and several of its government buildings; museums, villas, and the Textile Associations building in Ahmadabad).
In his buildings of the late 1950’s and 1960’s, Le Corbusier paid particular attention to the organization of interior space, integrating it not only horizontally but also vertically (by combining various levels and doing away with the rigid division into floors); to the regularities of the interior’s visual and emotional effect; and to the correlation of the functional scheme of a building with its architectural structure (the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, 1957–59; the Phillips Pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair of 1958; the Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA, 1964; a hospital in Venice, 1965; and the posthumously built Le Corbusier Center in Zürich, 1967).
Le Corbusier worked in various fields of art during his life. In the 1920’s and 1940’s he often did easel paintings. In the 1940’s and 1950’s he painted murals, designed rugs, and created sculptures.
Le Corbusier’s system of theoretical views and his works greatly influenced the development of modern architecture. His designs in many ways departed from the main tendencies of modern architecture—functionalism and rationalism—yet they revealed the specific purpose of a building and used the latest achievements in science and technology.
WORKS
Oeuvre complete, 1910–1965, vols. 1–8. Zürich, 1929–70.In Russian translation:
Planirovka goroda. Moscow, 1933.
Arkhitektura 20 veka. [Moscow] 1970.
Tvorcheskii put’. Moscow, 1970.
REFERENCES
Arkin, D. “Le Korbiuz’e.” In Arkhitektura sovremennogo Zapada. Moscow, 1932.Kolli, N. “Arkhitektor Le Korbiuz’e.” Arkhitektura SSSR, 1965, no. 12.
Ern, I. “Le Korbiuz’e.” Dekorativnoe iskusstvo SSSR, 1966, no. 1.
Gauthier, M. Le Corbusier.… Paris [1944].
Choay, F. Le Corbusier. New York, 1960.
Besset, M. Qui était Le Corbusier? Geneva-Paris, 1968.
I. V. ERN