Architect and artist, born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, W Switzerland. He left school at age 13 to learn the trade of engraving watch faces. Encouraged by a local art teacher he taught himself architecture, travelling throughout Europe to observe architectural styles. Settling in Paris in 1917, he met Ozenfant, who introduced him to Purism, and with whom he collaborated in writing several articles under his pseudonym (the name of a relative on his father's side). He developed a theory of the interrelation between modern machine forms and architectural techniques, and his first building, based on the technique of the Modulor (a system using units whose proportions were those of the human figure), was the Unité d'habitation (living unit), Marseille (194550). Some of his buildings are raised on stilts or piloti, an innovation he first used in the Swiss Pavilion at the Cité Universitaire at Paris. His main interest was large urban projects and city-planning, and although many of his designs were rejected, they influenced other architects throughout the world. Other examples of his work are Chandigarh, the new capital of the Punjab; the Swiss Dormitory in the Cité Universitaire in Paris; and the Exposition Pavilion in Zürich. A project he began in the 1960s with protégé, José Oubrerie, to build the Church of St Pierre in Firminy, SE France, was finally completed by Oubrerie in 2006.
| Charles-Edouard Jeanneret | |
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Swiss ten francs banknote with Le Corbusier's portrait (left) |
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| Personal Information | |
|---|---|
| Name | Charles-Edouard Jeanneret |
| Nationality | Swiss, French |
| Birth date | October 6, 1887 |
| Birth place | La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland |
| Date of death | August 27, 1965 |
| Place of death | Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France |
| Working Life | |
| Significant Buildings |
Villa Savoye
Unité d'Habitation |
| Significant Projects |
Ville Radieuse
Ville Contemporaine |
Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, widely known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887– August 27, 1965), was a French Swiss born architect, famous for his contributions to what is now called modernism, or the International Style.
Early life and education, 1887-1913
He was born as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small town of Neuchâtel canton in north-western Switzerland, in the Jura mountains, just four kilometers across the border from France.
Le Corbusier was attracted to the visual arts and studied under Charles L'Éplattenier at the La-Chaux-de-Fonds Art School, who had himself studied in Budapest and Paris.
Early career: the villas, 1914-1930
Le Corbusier taught at his old school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds during World War I, not returning to Paris until the war was over.
In 1918 Le Corbusier met the disillusioned Cubist painter Amédée Ozenfant, in whom he recognized a kindred spirit. Rejecting Cubism as irrational and "romantic," the pair jointly published their manifesto, Après le Cubisme and established a new artistic movement: Purism. In 1920, in the first issue, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret adopted the moniker "Le Corbusier" (an altered form of his maternal grandfather's name, "Lecorbésier") as a pseudonym, reflecting his belief that anyone could reinvent himself. Between 1918 and 1922 Le Corbusier built nothing, concentrating his efforts on Purist theory and painting. In 1922 Le Corbusier and Jeanneret opened a studio in Paris at at 35 rue de Sèvres. 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. On the exterior Le Corbusier installed a stairway to provide second-floor access from ground level. Le Corbusier and Jeanneret left the interior aesthetic spare, with any movable furniture made of tubular metal frames. 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).
Le Corbusier took French citizenship in 1930.
Five points of architecture
It was 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. 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.
Not merely content with designs for a few housing blocks, soon Le Corbusier moved into studies for entire cities. Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways, and glorified the use of the automobile as a means of transportation. 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.
The theoretical urban schemes continued to occupy Le Corbusier. 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.
The Modulor
Le Corbusier explicitly used the golden ratio in his Modulor system for the scale of architectural proportion. In addition to the golden ratio, Le Corbusier based the system on human measurements, Fibonacci numbers, and the double unit. Le Corbusier's 1927 Villa Stein in Garches exemplified the Modulor system's application. Le Corbusier placed systems of harmony and proportion at the centre of his design philosophy, and his faith in the mathematical order of the universe was closely bound to golden section and Fibonacci the series, which he described as "[...] rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another.
Furniture
Le Corbusier began experimenting with furniture design in 1928 after inviting the architect Charlotte Perriand to join his studio. 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.
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 the year 1964, while Le Corbusier was still alive, Cassina S.p.A.
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.
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.
Influence
Le Corbusier was at his most influential in the sphere of urban planning, and was a founding member of the Congrès International 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. 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. Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities of To-Morrow heavily influenced Le Corbusier and his contemporaries.
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