Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, widely known as Le Corbusier (October 6,
1887–August 27, 1965), was a Swiss architect famous for his contributions to
what is now called modernism, or the International Style. He was a pioneer
in theoretical studies of modern design and was dedicated to providing
better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. His career
spanned five decades, with iconic buildings constructed across central
Europe, India, Russia, and one structure in the United States. He was also
an urban planner, painter, sculptor, writer and furniture designer.
Early life and education, 1887-1913
Born as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small town of
Neuchâtel canton in north-western Switzerland, just across the border from
France, Le Corbusier was attracted to the visual arts and studied under the
tutelage of the teacher at the local arts school, Charles L'Éplattenier, who
had himself studied in Budapest and Paris. He designed his earliest houses,
like the Villa Fallet, the Villa Schwob, and the Villa Jeanneret (the latter
of which was for his parents) in La Chaux-de-Fonds. These houses recall the
indigenous mountainous vernacular architectural styles popular in the Alps.
Frequently, in his early years he would escape the somewhat provincial
atmosphere of his hometown by traveling around Europe. In about 1907 he
travelled to Paris, where he found work in the office of Auguste Perret, the
French pioneer in reinforced concrete. Between October 1910 and March 1911
he worked for the renowned architect Peter Behrens near Berlin, where he met
a young Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and became fluent in German. Both of these
experiences proved influential in his later career. Later in 1911 he would
journey to the Balkans and visit Greece and Turkey, filling sketchbooks with
renderings of what he saw, including many famous sketches of the Parthenon,
whose forms he would later praise in his work Vers une architecture (1923).
Early career: the villas, 1914-1930
Jeanneret moved to Paris permanently at the age of 29 in 1916, shortly
after he had begun to work on theoretical architectural studies using modern
techniques. Among these was his project for the "Dom-ino" House (1914-1915).
This model proposed an open floor plan consisting of concrete slabs
supported by a minimal number of thin reinforced concrete piers around the
edges, with a stairway providing access to each level on one side of the
floor plan. The design soon became the foundation for most of his
architecture for the next ten years. Soon he would begin his own
architectural practice with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967), a
partnership that would last until 1940.
In 1918 Jeanneret met the disillusioned Cubist painter Amédée Ozenfant, in
whom he recognized a kindred spirit. Ozenfant encouraged him to paint, and
the two began a period of collaboration. Rejecting Cubism as irrational and
"romantic," the pair jointly published their manifesto, Après le Cubisme and
established a new artistic movement: Purism. Ozenfant and Jeanneret
established the Purist journal L'Esprit Nouveau in 1920, in whose first
issue, Jeanneret adopted the moniker "Le Corbusier" (an altered form of his
maternal grandfather's name, "Lecorbésier") as a pseudonym, reflecting
Jeanneret's belief that anyone could reinvent himself. Some architectural
historians claim that this pseudonym translates as "the crow-like one."
Between 1918 and 1922 Jeanneret built nothing, concentrating his efforts on
Purist theory and painting.
His theoretical studies soon advanced into several different single-family
house models. Among these was the Maison "Citrohan," a pun on the name of
the French Citroën automaker, for the modern industrial methods and
materials Le Corbusier advocated using for the house. Here, Le Corbusier
proposed a three-floor structure, with a double-height living room, bedrooms
on the second floor, and a kitchen on the third floor. The roof would be
occupied by a sun terrace. On the exterior Le Corbusier installed a stairway
to provide second-floor access from ground level. Here, as in other projects
from this period, he also designed the façades to include large expanses of
uninterrupted window space. The house used a rectangular plan, with exterior
walls not filled by windows left as white, stuccoed spaces. Le Corbusier and
Jeanneret left the interior aesthetic spare, with any movable furniture made
of tubular metal frames. Light fixtures usually comprised single, bare
bulbs. Interior walls were also left white. Between 1922 and 1927 Le
Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret designed many of these private houses for
clients around Paris. In Boulogne-sur-Seine and the 16th arrondissement of
Paris, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret designed and built the Villa
Lipschitz, Maison Cook (see William Edwards Cook), Maison Planeix, and the
Maison LaRoche/Albert Jeanneret (which now houses the Fondation Le
Corbusier).
Five points of architecture
Villa Savoye
It was, however, Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (1929-1931) that most
succinctly summed up his five points of architecture that he had
elucidated in the journal L'Esprit Nouveau and his book Vers une
architecture, and which he had been developing throughout the 1920s.
First, Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of the structure off the ground,
supporting it by pilotis--reinforced concrete stilts. These pilotis, in
providing the structural support for the house, allowed him to elucidate
his next two points: a free façade, meaning non-supporting walls that
could be designed as the architect wished, and an open floor plan,
meaning that the floor space was free to be configured into rooms
without concern for supporting walls. The second floor of the Villa
Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows that allow unencumbered
views of the large surrounding yard, and which constitute the fourth
point of his system. A ramp rising from the ground level to the third
floor roof terrace (the fifth point) allows for an architectural
promenade through the structure. The white tubular railing recalls the
industrial "ocean-liner" aesthetic that Le Corbusier much admired. As if
to put an exclamation point on Le Corbusier's homage to modern industry,
the driveway around the ground floor, with its semicircular path,
measures the exact turning radius of a 1929 Voisin automobile.
Forays into urbanism, 1922-1929
For a number of years French officials had been unsuccessful in dealing
with the squalor of the growing Parisian slums, and Le Corbusier sought
efficient ways to house large numbers of people in response to the urban
housing crisis. He believed that his new, modern architectural forms
would provide a new organizational solution that would raise the quality
of life of the lower classes who lived in such dirty quarters. His
Immeubles Villas (1922) was such a project that called for large blocks
of cell-like individual apartments stacked one on top of the other, with
plans that included a living room, bedrooms, and kitchen, as well as a
garden terrace.
Not merely content with designs for a few housing blocks, soon Le
Corbusier moved into studies for entire cities. In 1922, he also
presented his scheme for a Contemporary City of Three Million
Inhabitants. The centerpiece of this plan was the group of sixty-story
cruciform skyscrapers built on steel frames and encased in huge curtain
walls of glass. They housed both offices and the apartments of the most
wealthy inhabitants. These skyscrapers were set within large,
rectangular park-like green spaces. At the very center was a huge
transportation center, that on different levels included depots for
buses and trains, as well as highway intersections and at the top, an
airport. (He had the fanciful notion that commercial airliners would
land between the huge skyscrapers). Le Corbusier segregated the
pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways, and glorified the use of
the automobile as a means of transportation. As one moved out from the
central skyscrapers, smaller multistory zigzag blocks set in green space
and set far back from the street housed the proletarian workers. Le
Corbusier hoped that politically-minded industrialists in France would
lead the way with their efficient Taylorist and Fordist strategies
adopted from American models to reorganize society.
In this new industrialist spirit, Le Corbusier began a new journal called
L'Esprit Nouveau that advocated the use of modern, industrial techniques
and strategies to transform society into a more efficient environment
with a higher standard of living on all socioeconomic levels. He
forcefully argued that this transformation was necessary to avoid the
specter of revolution that would otherwise shake society. His dictum
"Architecture or Revolution," developed in his articles in this journal,
became his rallying cry for the book Vers une architecture ("Towards an
Architecture," translated into English under the incorrect title Towards
a New Architecture), which was comprised of selected articles from
L'Esprit Nouveau between 1920 and 1923.
The theoretical urban schemes continued to occupy Le Corbusier. He
exhibited his Plan Voisin (sponsored by another famous automobile
manufacturer) in 1925. In it, he proposed to bulldoze huge sections of
Paris north of the Seine and replace it with his sixty-story cruciform
towers from the Contemporary City, placed in an orthogonal street grid
and park-like green space. His scheme was met with only criticism and
scorn from French politicians and industrialists, although they were
favorable to the ideas of Taylorism and Fordism underlying Le Corbusier
designs. Nonetheless, it did provoke discussion concerning how to deal
with the cramped, dirty conditions that enveloped much of the city.
Furniture
Chaise longue 'LC4'
Le Corbusier began experimenting with furniture design in 1928 after
inviting the architect Charlotte Perriand to join his studio. His cousin
Pierre Jeanneret also collaborated on many of the designs. Before the
arrival of Perriand, Le Corbusier relied on ready-made furniture to
furnish his projects, such as the simple pieces manufactured by Thonet.
In 1928 Le Corbusier and Perriand began to put the expectations for
furniture Le Corbusier outlined in his 1925 book L'Art Décoratif
d'aujourd'hui into practice. In the book he defined three different
furniture types; type-needs, type-furniture, and human-limb objects. He
defined human-limb objects as: "Extensions of our limbs and adapted to
human functions that are. Type-needs, type-functions, therefore
type-objects and type-furniture. The human-limb object is a docile
servant. A good servant is discreet and self-effacing in order to leave
his master free. Certainly, works of art are tools, beautiful tools. And
long live the good taste manifested by choice, subtlety, proportion and
harmony".
The first results of the collaboration were three chrome-plated tubular
steel chairs designed for two of his projects, The Maison La Roche house
in Paris and a pavilion for Henry and Barbara Church. The line of
furniture was expanded for Le Corbusier's 1929 Salon d'Automne
installation Equipment for the Home. In 1964, while Le Corbusier was
still alive, Cassina S.p.A. of Milan acquired the exclusive worldwide
rights to manufacture his furniture designs. Today many copies exist but
Cassina is still the only manufacturer authorized by the Fondation Le
Corbusier.
Death
On August 27, 1965, against his doctor's orders, Le Corbusier went for a
swim in the Mediterranean Sea at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. His body
was found by bathers and pronounced dead at 11 am. It is assumed that he
suffered a heart attack, at the age of 78. His death rites took place at
the courtyard of the Louvre Palace September 1, 1965 under the direction
of writer and thinker Andre Malraux, who was at the time France's
Minister of Culture.
Le Corbusier's death had a strong impact on the cultural and political
world. Homages were paid world wide and even some of Le Corbusier's
worst artistic enemies, like painter Salvador Dalí, recognized his
importance and sent a floral tribute. In the Cold War era, the President
of the United States said: "His influence was universal and his works
are invested with a permanent quality possessed by those of very few
artists in our history". The Soviets replied: "Modern architecture has
lost its greatest master". Japanese TV channels decided to broadcast
simultaneously his Museum in Tokyo, in what was at the time a unique
media homage.
Influence
Le Corbusier was at his most influential in the sphere of urban planning,
and was a founding member of the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture
Moderne (CIAM). One of the first to realize how the automobile would
change human agglomerations, Le Corbusier described the city of the
future as consisting of large apartment buildings isolated in a
park-like setting on pilotis. Le Corbusier's theories were adopted by
the builders of public housing in the United States. For the design of
the buildings themselves, Le Corbusier said "by law, all buildings
should be white" and criticized any effort at ornamentation. The large
spartan structures, in cities, but not of cities, have been widely
criticized for being boring and unfriendly to pedestrians. The city plan
of Brasília was based on his ideas, as was Chandigarh in India. Le
Corbusier's thinking also had profound effects on the philosophy of city
planning and architecture in the Soviet Union.
Le Corbusier was heavily influenced by the problems he saw in the
industrial city of the turn of the century. He thought that industrial
housing techniques led to crowding, dirtiness, and a lack of a moral
landscape. He was a leader of the modernist movement to create better
living conditions and a better society through housing concepts.
Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities of To-Morrow heavily influenced Le
Corbusier and his contemporaries.
Significant buildings
Notre Dame du Haut
1905 - Villa Fallet, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
1912 - Villa Jeanneret, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
1916 - Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
1923 - Villa LaRoche/Villa Jeanneret, Paris, France
1924 - Pavillon de L'Esprit Nouveau, Paris, France (destroyed)
1924 - Quartiers Modernes Frugès, Pessac, France
1926 - Villa Cook, Boulogne-sur-Seine, France
1927 - Weissenhof Siedlung, Stuttgart, Germany
1928 - Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, France
1929 - Armée du Salut, Cité de Refuge, Paris, France
1930 - Pavillon Suisse, Cité Universitaire, Paris, France
1933 - Tsentrosoyuz, Moscow, USSR
1938 - The "Cartesian" sky-scraper
1947-1952 - Unité d'Habitation, Marseille, France
1948 - Maison Curutchet, La Plata, Argentina
1949 - Usine Claude et Duval, Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France
1949-1952 - United Nations headquarters, Manhattan, New York City
1950-1955 - Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France
1951 - Cabanon Le Corbusier, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin
1951 - Maisons Jaoul, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
1952-1959 - Buildings in Chandigarh, India (with Iannis Xenakis)
1952 - Haute Cour
1952 - Musée et Galerie d'Art
1953 - Secrétariat
1953 - Club de kk Nautique
1955 - Assemblée
1959 - Ecole d'Art
1953 - Maison du Brésil, Cité Universitaire, Paris, France
1956 - Unité d'Habitation de Briey en Forêt, Briey en Forêt, France
1957-1960 - Sainte Marie de La Tourette, near Lyon, France (with Iannis
Xenakis)
1957 - Unité d'Habitation de Berlin-Charlottenburg, Flatowallee 16,
Berlin, Germany
1958 - Pavillon Philips, Brussels, Belgium (with Iannis Xenakis)
(destroyed)
1960 - Unité d'Habitation de Firminy, Firminy, France
1961 - Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Quotations
"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......"
"Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses
brought together in light."
"Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as
much as they need bread or a place to sleep."
Trivia
Le Corbusier's portrait is featured on the Swiss ten francs banknote,
pictured with his distinctive eyeglasses.
References
Marco Venturi, Le Corbusier Algiers Plans, research available on
planum.net
Behrens, Roy R. (2005). COOK BOOK: Gertrude Stein, William Cook and Le
Corbusier. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books. ISBN 0971324417.
Eliel, Carol S. (2002). L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918 - 1925.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-6727-8.
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