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Le Corbusier: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret was born on the 6th of October 1887 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a city nestled in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland, where the air was thin and the watchmaking industry ruled the economy. His father was an artisan who enameled boxes and watches, and his mother taught piano, creating a household steeped in precision and rhythm. At the age of fifteen, he entered the municipal art school, which taught the applied arts connected with watchmaking, but it was the painter Charles L'Eplattenier who redirected his path. L'Eplattenier took him into the mountains, where they grew accustomed to a vast horizon, and eventually convinced him to choose architecture, despite his earlier horror of the profession. He adopted the pseudonym Le Corbusier, derived from his maternal grandfather's surname Lecorbésier, signaling a reinvention of self that would define his career. The culture of his hometown, influenced by the Loge L'Amitié Masonic lodge, instilled in him the values of the right angle and the compass, principles he would later describe as his guide and choice, ingrained deep in his intellect like entries from a catechism.
The Machine to Live In
In 1914, during the early days of World War I, Le Corbusier began a serious study of reinforced concrete with engineer Max Dubois, discovering that the material offered incredible resources and a passionate plasticity. This led to the creation of the Dom-Ino House, a model proposing an open floor plan consisting of three concrete slabs supported by six thin columns, with a stairway providing access to each level. The system was designed to provide large numbers of temporary residences after the war, allowing residents to build exterior walls with materials found on the site. By 1923, he had collected his essays into the book Towards an Architecture, where he famously declared that a house is a machine to live in. He presented his ideas through maxims and declarations, stating that styles were a lie and that the new spirit of the epoch was already present in industrial production. His theoretical studies advanced into single-family house models like the Maison Citrohan, named after the Citroën automaker to reflect modern industrial methods and the idea that homes should be consumed like commercial products. The house featured a three-floor structure with a double-height living room, bedrooms on the second floor, and a kitchen on the third, with a roof terrace and large uninterrupted banks of windows.
The White Box and The City
The year 1925 marked a decisive turning point in the quarrel between the old and new, as Le Corbusier built the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion for the Paris International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts. The pavilion was a stark white box with a tree emerging through a hole in the roof, containing only standard things created by industry and mass-produced objects. It was a direct attack on the decorative arts, which he denounced as the final twitch of old manual modes. Alongside the pavilion, he presented the Plan Voisin, a provocative plan to demolish a large part of central Paris and replace it with sixty-story cruciform office towers surrounded by parkland. The plan included a multi-level transportation hub and the fanciful notion that commercial airliners would land between the skyscrapers. Although the plan was never seriously considered, it provoked discussion on how to deal with overcrowded working-class neighborhoods. In 1928, he co-founded the International Congresses of Modern Architects (CIAM) to establish a common style, and in 1931, he developed a visionary plan for Algiers that called for an elevated viaduct of concrete carrying residential units over the old city. His ideas for urban design were driven by the belief that modern architectural forms would provide an organizational solution to raise the quality of life for the working classes.
When was Le Corbusier born and where did he grow up?
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret was born on the 6th of October 1887 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. He grew up in a city in the Jura Mountains where the watchmaking industry ruled the economy and his father was an artisan who enameled boxes and watches.
What is the meaning behind the name Le Corbusier and when did he adopt it?
Le Corbusier adopted the pseudonym Le Corbusier derived from his maternal grandfather's surname Lecorbésier. This name change signaled a reinvention of self that would define his career as an architect.
What famous book did Le Corbusier publish in 1923 and what was its key declaration?
Le Corbusier published the book Towards an Architecture in 1923. In this work he famously declared that a house is a machine to live in and stated that styles were a lie.
When did Le Corbusier design the Chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp?
Le Corbusier built the chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp between 1950 and 1955. The structure features a plain box of concrete with light coming through a single square in the roof and six small bands on the sides.
When did Le Corbusier die and what was the cause of his death?
Le Corbusier died of a heart attack on the 27th of August 1965 after swimming on the French Riviera. He was 77 years old at the time of his death.
During the Great Depression and the onset of World War II, Le Corbusier devoted himself to the concept of the Cité Radieuse, or Radiant City, where residences would be assigned by family size rather than income. In 1947, he submitted a design for the United Nations headquarters in New York, which was selected by a Board of Design Consultants including Oscar Niemeyer and Wallace K. Harrison. Although his Plan 23 was not chosen, he collaborated with Niemeyer on the final project, urging the placement of the General Assembly Hall in the center of the site. After the war, he secured his first public commission with the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille, a giant reinforced-concrete framework into which modular apartments fit like bottles into a bottle rack. The building contained 337 duplex apartment modules to house 1,600 people, with a running track and small stage on the roof. The structure was designed to offer all services needed for living, including shops, eating places, and a nursery school on every third floor. The building marked a turning point in his career, transforming him from an outsider and critic of the architectural establishment to its center, as the most prominent French architect, and he was made a Commander of the Légion d'Honneur in a ceremony held on the roof of his new building.
The Box of Miracles
In the postwar years, Le Corbusier, an avowed atheist, designed two important religious buildings that defied his earlier modernist principles. The chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp, built between 1950 and 1955, was a place of silence, peace, and prayer, featuring a plain box of concrete with light coming through a single square in the roof and six small bands on the sides. The interior was extremely simple, with only benches in a plain, unfinished concrete box, and the crypt beneath had intense blue, red, and yellow walls illuminated by sunlight channelled from above. The second major religious project was the Convent of Sainte Marie de La Tourette, built between 1953 and 1960, which involved a chapel, library, refectory, and dormitories for nuns. He used raw concrete to construct the convent, which is placed on the side of a hill, with residential cells having small loggias with concrete sunscreens. The centerpiece of the convent was the chapel, which he called his Box of miracles, a rectangular box made of concrete that did not have any of the traditional theatrical tricks. The monastery had other unusual features, including floor to ceiling panels of glass in the meeting rooms and a system of concrete and metal tubes like gun barrels which aimed sunlight through colored prisms and projected it onto the walls of the sacristy.
The City of Trees
Le Corbusier's largest and most ambitious project was the design of Chandigarh, the capital city of the Punjab and Haryana States of India, created after India received independence in 1947. He was contacted in 1950 by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and invited to propose a project, working with British specialists Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. His plan called for residential, commercial, and industrial areas, along with parks and transportation infrastructure, with the capitol complex in the middle. The design made use of many of his favorite ideas, including an architectural promenade, the Modulor to give a correct human scale, and his favorite symbol, the open hand. The High Court of Justice, begun in 1951, was finished in 1956, featuring a parallelogram topped with an inverted parasol and high concrete grills serving as sunshades. The Secretariat, the largest building that housed the government offices, was constructed between 1952 and 1958, with a ramp extending from the ground to the top level. The most important building of the capitol complex was the Palace of Assembly, which featured a central courtyard and a large tower on the roof, similar to the smokestack of a ship. Le Corbusier wrote that it was an architectural symphony which surpassed all his hopes, flashing and developing under the light in a way which was unimaginable and unforgettable.
The Final Years
The 1950s and 1960s were a difficult period for Le Corbusier's personal life, as his wife Yvonne died in 1957 and his mother died in 1960. He remained active in a wide variety of fields, publishing Poéme de l'angle droit in 1955 and collaborating with the composer Edgar Varèse on Le Poème électronique in 1958. In 1959, a successful international campaign was launched to have his Villa Savoye declared a historic monument, the first time a work by a living architect had received this distinction. His later architectural work was extremely varied, including a series of tiny holiday cabins in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, the Maison du Brésil, and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. From 1960 to 1963, he built his only building in the United States, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died of a heart attack at age 77 on the 27th of August 1965 after swimming on the French Riviera. At the time of his death, several projects were on the drawing board, including the church of Saint-Pierre in Firminy, which was finally completed in modified form in 2006, and a Palace of Congresses for Strasbourg. His estate, the Fondation Le Corbusier, functions as his official legacy, preserving his work and ideas for future generations.