Le Corbusier
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"The house is a machine for living in" --Le Corbusier in Vers une architecture (1923) |
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Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, who chose to be known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a French, Swiss-born architect and writer, who is famous for his contributions to what now is 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 his iconic buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one structure each in North and South America. He was also an urban planner, painter, sculptor, writer, and modern furniture designer.
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 realise 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 Western Europe and the United States. For the design of the buildings themselves, Le Corbusier said, "by law, all buildings should be white" and criticised any effort at ornamentation. The large spartan structures, in cities, but not of cities, have been widely criticised for being boring and unfriendly to pedestrians.
The city plan of Brasília was based on his ideas, as was Chandigarh in India and the industrial city of Zlín in the Czech Republic. 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 Tomorrow heavily influenced Le Corbusier and his contemporaries.
See also