The latest instalment of our new series of AR Reading Lists: seven carefully chosen pieces from our archive, free for registered users
This week marks the anniversary of Le Corbusier’s death: 55 years since the ‘pope of Modernism’ drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of his beloved Cabanon.
In this week’s reading list, we look back at how his travels to Athens shaped his architectural eye, dig out of the archive some of the works that built his reputation and assess the enduring legacy of some of his projects and theories – the Modulor contributed to instil in architecture the contentious idea of man as the ultimate measure of all things.
These seven selected pieces celebrate the life and work of Le Corbusier while pointing to the importance of revisiting Modernist ideals in order to evolve architectural history.
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The Classical ideals of Le Corbusier, William JR Curtis, AR September 2011
‘Refusing to trap the building in the dry categories of structural Rationalists, he rather saw it as the sculptural embodiment of an idea: a sublime expression transcending all simplified notions of the Classical’
The mathematics of the ideal Villa: Palladio and Le Corbusier, Colin Rowe, AR March 1947
‘The difference is that between the universal, and the decorative or merely competent; perhaps in both cases it is the adherence to rules which has lapsed’
Views on Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation, Kenneth Easton, AR Mary 1951
‘This post-war project by Corbusier for rebuilding a small town in the Vosges represents the most recent development of his ideas on urbanism’
Ronchamp Chapel in France by Le Corbusier, James Stirling, AR May 1956
‘Far from being monumental, the building has a considerable ethereal quality, principally as a result of the equivocal nature of the walls’
Le Corbusier in the sun, Christopher Mackenzie, AR February 1993
‘the invention of the brise-soleil seemed to be the answer to problems’
Arguing about Chandigarh’s legacy, Apurva Bose Dutta, AR December 2015
‘with Chandigarh’s rampant growth, there are issues that need urgent attention, not least Le Corbusier’s legacy’
Proportional representation: the measure of a man, Edwin Heathcote, AR March 2020
‘Neufert was, of course, using as a standard the fair-haired German Übermensch. At exactly the same time Le Corbusier was working on his Modulor’
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