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Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, in October 6th 1887. He was considered to be one of the greatest architects and designers in the early 1900's. From 1900 to 1904 he studied at the La Chaux-de-Fonds college of art, and taught himself architecture, mostly through his working experience in the A. Perret Studio. In 1922, he opened a studio in Paris together with Pierre Jeanneret, in 35 Rue de Sèvres. |
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The picture illustrated here shows Corbusier at work in his office at 20, Rue Jacob in 1930-1932 |
Essentially a functionalist
in his architecture, Le Corbusier conceived of the ideal house as "a machine
for living." He sought a new 20th-century style to be based on engineering
achievements in bridge building and steamship construction, on modern materials
such as ferroconcrete and sheet glass, and on contemporary needs such as
town planning and housing projects. Le Corbusier's most famous buildings
include a prizewinning design for the Palace of the League of Nations (1927-1928)
in Geneva, Switzerland; Notre Dame de Haut (1950-1955), a church in Ronchamp,
France; and the High Court Buildings (1952-1956) in Chandìgarh,
India.
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Around
200 projects illustrated by sketches, plans, models, photographs, texts,
audio-visual documents etc have been done by Le Corbusier during his entire
career. Shown on the left here are some of his works and a discription
of them.
From the top: 1) The Villa Schowb, period photograph, coloured in photograph. 2) The Main elevation of the Secretariat. 3) Ma Maison (My House), FLC: 33414: study-detail. 4) Maison Dom-ino, FLC: 30289: external perspective-detail. 5) Eglise Saint Pierre,FLC: 16515: section east-west-detail.
Overcoming an initial hostility to his "revolutionary" ideas, he went on to be widely recognised and left an indelible mark in modern conceptions of architecture and town-planning. The characteristic of his design strategy was to use rational systems, with extremely simple modules and shapes, following the principles of "functionalism". |
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During his working life, he found his own proportion system of architecture, which he called - The Modulor - . It considered the standard human height to be 1829 mm. The furniture and the rules of which his design bears also refers to the Modulor system. |
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In his tireless experimentation,
he managed to reach the opposite extremes of a wide range of architectural
language, as can be seen in such works as his Unité d'Habitation
in Marseilles, the Ronchamp Chapel, "La Tourette" Domenican convent, la
maison de l'Homme Zurich and the hospital for Venice. He died in France,
at Cap Martin, in August 1965.
His furniture - designed
in collaboration with Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret - is produced
by Cassina under licence by the Fondation Le Corbusier for the "I Maestri"
Collection.
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