Le Corbusier: Modernism’s Most Influential Architect

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) was a Swiss-French architect and urban planner, one of the most important figures of modernism. He formulated five points for a new architecture, designed Villa Savoye, the Unité d’Habitation and the chapel at Ronchamp, and held that the house is a machine for living in.

Facts

From Jeanneret to Le Corbusier

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret trained as an engraver in La Chaux-de-Fonds but travelled and worked for the leading architects of Europe, among them Peter Behrens in Berlin. In 1917 he settled in Paris and began painting with his friend Amédée Ozenfant in a style called Purism. In 1920 he took the pen name Le Corbusier, and in 1923 he published the book Towards an Architecture, in which he argued that the house is a machine for living in and held up steamships, aeroplanes and cars as models for a new, rational art of building.

The book became a manifesto for the modern. He praised geometry, the straight line and light, and attacked traditional ornament. But Le Corbusier wanted not only to build efficiently but also to create poetry; he called architecture the masterly, correct and magnificent play of forms in light. Read about the movement in the guide to functionalism and under functionalism.

The five points and Villa Savoye

In 1927 he summed up his new architecture in five points: columns instead of load-bearing outer walls (pilotis), a roof garden, a free plan, long ribbon windows and a free façade. Reinforced concrete made it possible, because the load-bearing frame now stood on columns and the walls could be placed freely.

Villa Savoye in Poissy outside Paris, built 1928–1931, is the purest application: a white box lifted on columns, with ribbon windows, a roof terrace and a ramp leading through the house. In the same period he designed furniture together with Charlotte Perriand; read about the design side of the movement in the guide to the Bauhaus. Compare also the work of Mies van der Rohe and Gropius, and E-1027.

After the war: concrete and sculpture

After the Second World War his style changed. The Unité d’Habitation in Marseille (1947–1952) was a residential building for about 1,600 inhabitants in 337 apartments, with shops, a nursery and a roof terrace, a city in a house. The concrete was left raw, béton brut, which gave its name to Brutalism; read more in the guide to Brutalism. With the Modulor, a system of measurement he developed from 1943 based on the human body, he wanted to give buildings a human scale; read about proportion in the guide to the golden ratio.

The chapel at Ronchamp (1950–1955) is a sculptural white building with a sweeping, shell-like roof and deep window openings, far from the strict boxes of the 1920s. It shows that he was not dogmatic. He also designed the city of Chandigarh in India from 1951 and the monastery of La Tourette (1953–1960).

A disputed legacy

Le Corbusier’s urban plans were disputed. In the Plan Voisin of 1925 he proposed demolishing large parts of central Paris and replacing them with eighteen skyscrapers in a park. The idea of dividing the city into zones for living, working, recreation and traffic had great influence on post-war planning, but critics such as Jane Jacobs held that it killed street life. His housing blocks have been both criticised and loved.

Even so his importance is enormous. He inspired architects such as Oscar Niemeyer, Kenzo Tange and Louis Kahn, and his five points are found in millions of buildings. He died in 1965 while swimming in the Mediterranean. Read on about post-war modernism, modernism and about his place among the architects: Le Corbusier. See also the Congress in Brasília for Niemeyer’s interpretation.

How to recognise it

Exercise

What are the columns that lift the house off the ground called in Le Corbusier’s five points?