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"You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you
build houses and palaces; that is construction. Ingenuity is at
work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy
and I say - “This is beautiful.” That is Architecture. Art enters in.
My house is practical. I thank you, as I might thank railway
engineers or the telephone service. You have not touched my heart.
But suppose that walls rise towards heaven in such a way that I am
moved. I perceive your intentions. Your mood has been gentle,
brutal, charming or noble. The stones you have erected tell me so.
You fix me to the place and my eyes regard it. They behold something
which expresses a thought. A thought which reveals itself without
word or sound, but solely by means of shapes which stand in a
certain relationship to one another. These shapes are such that they
are clearly revealed in light. The relationships between them have
not necessarily any reference to what is practical or descriptive.
They are a mathematical creation of your mind. They are the language
of Architecture. By the use of inert materials and starting from
conditions more or less utilitarian, you have established certain
relationships which have aroused my emotions. This is Architecture.”
– Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture, 1923 |
CHARLES-ÉDOUARD JEANNERET aka Le Corbusier (1887-1965) He was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, and began his career after completing education at the advanced course of the Ecole d'Art. Jeanneret was an architect, designer, urbanist, writer, and painter known for being a pioneer in Modernist architecture. His career spanned five decades, with buildings constructed throughout the world. Trained as an artist, he travelled extensively through Germany and the East. In Paris he studied under Auguste Perret and absorbed the cultural and artistic life of the city.During this period he developed a keen interest in the synthesis of the various arts. In 1917 he settled in Paris where he issued his book Vers une architecture [Towards a New Architecture], based on earlier articles in L'Esprit Nouveau. Jeanneret adopted the name Le Corbusier in the early 1920s. From 1922, Le Corbusier worked with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. During this time, Le Corbusier's ideas began to take physical form, mainly as houses which he created as "a machine for living in" and which incorporated his trademark five points of architecture: 1. Support of ground-level supports elevating the building from the ground and allowing an extended continuity of the garden beneath. 2. Functional roof, serving as a garden and terrace, reclaiming for nature the land occupied by the building. 3. Free floor plan, relieved of load-bearing walls, allowing walls to be placed freely and only where aesthetically needed. 4. Long horizontal windows, providing illumination and ventilation. 5. Freely-designed facades, serving as only as a skin of the wall and windows and unconstrained by load-bearing considerations. He became a French citizen in 1930. In 1947, he started his Unite d'habitation series. Although relieved with sculptural roof-lines and highly colored walls, these massive post-war dwelling blocks received justifiable criticism. People just didn't get it, and their lives never transformed as he predicted and hoped. Yet, he was a pioneer in studies of modern design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. He died of a heart attack while swimming in the sea off Cap Martin in 1965. He was buried alongside his wife in the grave he had designated at Robuebrune. Le Corbusier wrote some forty books and left a body of about 32,000 architectural drawings and plans.  Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut, aka Ronchamp, photo above, completed in 1954, is one of the finest examples of his architecture and one of the most important examples of twentieth-century religious architecture. Biography adapted from Wikipedia and Great Buildings online. Many thanks to Jody Brown, of Coffee with an Architect, for his extensive research. |
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1905 - Villa
Fallet, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
 1907 - Villa Jaquemet, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland  1907 - Stotzer House, 6, Chemin de Pouillerel, la Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. 
 1912 - Villa Favre-Jacot, Le Locle, Switzerland. 
  1912 - Villa Jeanneret-Perret, aka Maison Blanche, aka White House, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. By this point he distanced himself from the spirit of Art Nouveau and began to travel in Europe and the Middle East to learn m the masters of modern architecture. Maison Blanche was his first independent project. He lived and worked in the house from 1912 to 1915. In 1919, the house was sold and had many owners until 2000, when the Association Maison Blanche bought it and opened it to the public in 2005.   
 1916 - Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. 
 1922 - Villa Besnus (Ker-Ka-Ré), Vaucresson, Paris, France. 
 1922 - Amédée Ozenfant House and Studio, Vaucresson, Paris. Has been much altered.  
 1923 - Villa Le Lac, Corseaux, Switzerland. 
  1923 - Villas Lipchitz-Miestchaninoff, Boulogne-sur-Seine, France. 
  
  1925 - Villa La Roche / Villa Jeanneret, 8-10 square du Docteur-Blanche, XVIe arrondissement, Paris, France. Villa Jeanneret and Villa La Roche are two houses in Paris, designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret from 1923-1925 and renovated by Charlotte Perriand in 1928. The Villa Jeanneret was commissioned by Le Corbusier's brother, Albert Jeanneret, and his fiancée Lotti Raaf. It forms part of a joint project with the connected Villa La Roche - the original scheme involved more houses and more clients, but it was only Jeanneret and La Roche that stayed the course and saw their villas built. No longer inhabited, they now house the Foundation Le Corbusier Museum and archives.   1924 - House and canteen, Lège, France.  1924 - Maison Planeix, Paris, France. 
 1924 - Pavillon de L'Esprit Nouveau, Paris, France. Destroyed. 
 
 1925 - Quartiers Modernes Frugès, Pessac, France. 
 
 1926 - Villa Cook, Boulogne-sur-Seine, France.  1926 - Armée du Salut, Palais du Peuple, Paris, France.  1926 - Guiette House, Antwerp, Belgium.    1926 - Villa Ternisien, 5, Allee des Pins, Boulogne-sur-Seine, Paris. This is a block of apartments built over a house. 
 
  1926 - The M. de Monzie House, aka Villa Stein, aka Villa Garches, aka Villa de Monzie, aka Villa Stein-de Monzie, 7 Rue de professeur Victor Pauchet, Garches, Paris, France. Sold to Gertrude Stein. 
 
  
 1927 - Villa Church, Ville-d'Avray, France. 
 
 1927 - Villas at Weissenhof Estate, Stuttgart, Germany. From Wikipedia: It was a showcase of what later became known as the International style of modern architecture. The estate was built for the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition of 1927 and included 21 buildings comprising sixty dwellings, designed by seventeen European architects. Mies van der Rohe was in charge of the project on behalf of the city, and it was he who selected the architects, budgeted and coordinated their entries, prepared the site, and oversaw construction. Le Corbusier was awarded the two prime sites, facing the city, and by far the largest budget.All but two of the entries were white. Bruno Taut had his entry, the smallest, painted a bright red. Advertised as a prototype of worker housing, each of these houses was highly customized and furnished on a budget far out of a normal workers reach, and with little direct relevance to the technical challenges of standardized mass construction. The exhibition opened to the public on July 23, 1927, a year late, and drew large crowds. Of the original twenty-one buildings, eleven survive as of 2006.    1928 - Villa Baizeau, Carthage, Tunisia.   
 1931 - Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, France. Designed with Pierre Jeanneret, and built between 1928 and 1931. The Villa Savoye is Corbusier's best known building from the 1920s, and it has had enormous influence on international modernism. Ownership passed to the French state in 1958, and after surviving several plans of demolition, it was designated as an official French historical monument in 1965 (a rare occurrence, as Le Corbusier was still living at the time). It was thoroughly renovated from 1985 to 1997, and under the care of the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, the refurbished house is now open to visitors year-round.  1929 - Cité du Refuge, Armée du Salut, Paris, France. 1929 - Villa de Madame H. de Mandrot, Le Pradet, France.  1930 - Maison Errazuriz, Zapallar, Chile. Unsure if built. 
   1932 - Pavillon Suisse (Swiss Pavilion), Cité Universitaire, Paris. Commissioned 1930.  1930 - Enrique Amorim House, aka Las Nubes, Salto, Uruguay. 
   1934 - The Molitor Building, 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli, Paris, France. Commissioned 1931. 
 
  1930 - Clarity Building, Geneva, Switzerland. 
  1934 - The Weekend House, La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France.  
 1935 - Villa "Le Sextant", Les Mathes, France.  
  
 1952 - Unité d'Habitation (Housing Unit), aka Cité Radieuse (radiant city), aka La Maison du Fada ("The House of the Mad"), Marseille, France. The Unité d'Habitation is a Modernist design principle developed by Le Corbusier with the collaboration of painter-architect Nadir Afonso. The concept formed the basis of several housing developments led by Le Corbusier. From Wikipedia: Developed with Corbusier's designers Shadrach Woods and George Candilis, it comprises 337 apartments arranged over twelve stories, all suspended on large piers. The building also incorporates shops with architectural bookshop, sporting, medical and educational facilities, a hotel which is open to the public, and a gastronomic restaurant, Le Ventre de l'Architecte ("The Architect's Belly"). The flat roof is designed as a communal terrace with sculptural ventilation stacks, a running track, and a shallow paddling pool for children. The roof, where a number of theatrical performances have taken place, underwent renovation in 2010. It has unobstructed views of the Mediterranean and Marseille. Inside, corridors run through the centre of the long axis of every third floor of the building, with each apartment lying on two levels, and stretching from one side of the building to the other, with a balcony. Unlike many of the inferior system-built blocks it inspired, which lack the original's generous proportions, communal facilities and parkland setting, the Unité is popular with its residents and is now mainly occupied by upper middle-class professionals. As of 2011, it is pending designation as a World Heritage site by UNESCO. It was already designated a historic monument by the French Ministry of Culture. 
 
 1949 - The Pedro Domingo Curutchet House, La Plata, Argentina. Commissioned 1948. Included a small medical office on the first floor. Consists of four main levels with a courtyard between the house and the clinic. The building faces the Paseo del Bosque park. Construction began in 1949 under the supervision of Amancio Williams and was completed in 1953. The house was restored from 1986 to 1988 during the centennial of Le Corbusier's birth and declared a national landmark by Argentina's Commission on National Landmarks. It currently houses the Buenos Aires professional association of architects, the Colegio de Arquitectos, and is open to the public for tours.  
 1949 - Le Corbusier’s Cabanon (Cabin), Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.  
   1956 - Maisons Jaoul, 83 Rue de Longchamp, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. The two houses were drawn in 1937 but were only built postwar for André Jaoul and his son Michel. They were for a time owned by English millionaire Lord Palumbo. They now belong to two sisters who live there with their families. The Maisons Jaoul have been protected by the French government as historical monuments since 1966, at the request of André Malraux. 
  
  1951 - Villa Sarabhai, Ahmedabad, India. 
  1951 - Villa Schodan, Ahmedabad, India.  
 1952 - Unité d'Habitation of Nantes-Rezé, Nantes, France.  
  1956 - Unités de Camping, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.  
 1957 - Unité d'Habitation, Briey en Forêt, France.  1957 - Maison du Brésil, Cité Universitaire, Paris, France.  1960 - Sainte Marie de La Tourette Monastery, near Lyon, France. Designed with Iannis Xenakis. Commissioned 1953. The Dominican monks wanted the monastery in a small valley at Éveux, near Lyon. The buildings contain a hundred bedrooms for teachers and students, study halls, a hall for work and one for recreation, a library and a refectory. There is also a church, where the monks worship, and the circulation, which connects all the parts (the achievement of the traditional cloister form is rendered impossible here by the slope of terrain). Though still functioning for a reduced population of monks, La Tourette has, like Ronchamp, become something of a pilgrimage site for students of architecture. The priory allows overnight stays in the unused cells. Fees go to maintenance of the monastery.  1957 - Unité d'Habitation of Berlin-Charlottenburg, Flatowallee 16, Berlin, Germany.  1957 - Unité d'Habitation of Meaux, France.  1957 - Unité d'Habitation of Firminy, France. 
 1963 - House of Man, Zurich, Switzerland. Sources include Wikipedia, Foundation Le Corbusier, Great Buildings Online, Modern Architecture: – a Critical History by Kenneth Frampton. |
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