Le Corbusier is the nom-de-plume of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris (born in La Chaux-de-Fonds/Switzerland; died 27 August 1965 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin/France). After studying painting and architecture at the local École d'Art, he initially worked for Josef Hofmann in Vienna, where he also made the acquaintance of Adolf Loos. Another important influence came when he was working in Paris in 1909 for over a year in the practice of Auguste Perret, a pioneering exponent of building with reinforced concrete using steel. During this period, he also visited the architect and urban planner Tony Garnier in Lyon. It was not long before Le Corbusier was focusing on modern reinforced concrete architecture. In 1917, he moved to Paris. Since he only had a few architectural commissions at the time, he spent much of his time painting, producing mainly still life's. In 1919, Le Corbusier joined the painter Amédée Ozenfant and the poet Paul Dermée to found the journal "L'Esprit Nouveau", in which he first began using his pseudonym in 1920. In 1922, Le Corbusier produced an urban planning concept for a Ville Contemporaine - a "contemporary city with a population of three million". In 1925, he collaborated with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret on designing a two-storied pavilion for the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The avant-garde architecture of that pavilion was complemented by furnishings of functional design and paintings by Le Corbusier, Ozenfant, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz and others. By 1927, Le Corbusier was among the leading practitioners of the New Architecture designing the housing for the Weißenhof Settlement in Stuttgart. Around 1942, he formulated his "Modular" theory, which was Le Corbusier's term for a system of proportion based on the Golden Mean that he used in his architectural designs, especially in his large-scale urban planning projects. Intended to facilitate architecture on a human scale based on an objective system, the Modular still remains one of the most controversial of Le Corbusier's theoretical approaches to architecture. A copy of Le Corbusier's famous Modular measuring tape has been re-issued by Vitra.
Le Corbusier
LC4 Chaiselongue from Cassina
...1027 Frescos not by Eileen Gray nor by Jean Badovici but by Le Corbusier... A film in which Eileen Gray, Jean Badovici and Le Corbusier exist in dialogue with one another, directly and indirectly, on architecture, design, space, the human condition, dialogues that while following and engaging with it is important to remember that in E...
...Le Corbusier is regularly discussed and presented it does contain an awful lot of very infrequently discussed and presented projects, including numerous that are not only as informative and instructive as the regularly presented projects but which offer alternative insights into the person, architect and designer Le Corbusier... Projects such as Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret's 1929-1932 penthouse villa for that leading figure of the haute bohème of early 20th century Paris, Carlos de Beistegui; a penthouse project developed on a rooftop high above the Champs-Élysées; a penthouse that was both indoor and outdoor spaces; a penthouse that as the exhibition's title implies was conceived as a machine à amuser rather than a machine à habiter, a machine for amusement not a machine for living, a machine for parties and hospitality, not a machine for the mundane banality of everyday existence...
..."Customs turn into habits, some modest, some all-powerful", opined Le Corbusier in 1950, a reference to that inexplicable way humans have of passing through life blithely accepting all that has come before, accepting all that existed when they were born, as fixed and immutable and unchallengeable; an acceptance of the familiar, the existing, as fixed and immutable and unchallengeable that, for Le Corbusier, represented a major hindrance to the "free play of the mind"... However, Le Corbusier continues, "a simple decision can sweep away the obstacle, clearing the path for life"...
..."The Modulor — Measure and Proportion" at Pavillon Le Corbusier, Zürich, Switzerland Although first published in 1950 Le Corbusier's Le Modulor, his scale of proportions based on the Golden Ratio developed as a basis for, as a tool for, designing buildings and their interiors responsive to and meaningful for humans, was the result of not only a great many years research and consideration by Le Corbusier, research that saw numerous changes to the basic, idealised, human body from which everything else is and was abstracted, but also arose from positions to proportions and dimensions that Le Corbusier had developed in the earliest days of his career in his native La Chaux-de-Fonds... A journey to Le Modulor that the Pavillon Le Corbusier, Zürich, aim to sketch and elucidate in their 2023 exhibtion The Modulor — Measure and Proportion via a presentation of, and amongst others exhibits: natural objects, including seashells and plants in which the Golden Ratio can be measured; of historical proposals for a scale of human proportions, that chain in which Le Modulor is a link; and also a documentation of Le Corbusier's research and considerations, the workings that led to the 1950 publication...
...One could be forgiven for thinking that little would be as pointless as a Le Corbusier colouring-in book... So singularly achromatic is the popular understanding of Le Corbusier, a lack of colour reinforced by the dour, austere, round bespectacled, persona which so universally defines Le Corbusier: what, one asks oneself, could there possibly be to colour in a Le Corbusier colouring-in book?...
