L E COR- BUS-

CHARLES-ÉDOUARDIER JEANNERET Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pio- neers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades; he constructed buildings in Eu- rope, Japan, India, and North and South America.

Dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities, Le Corbusier was influential in urban planning, and was a founding member of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Le Corbusier prepared the master plan for the city of Chandigarh in India, and contributed specific designs for several buildings there.

On July 17, 2016, seventeen projects by Le Corbusier in seven countries were inscribed in the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites as “an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement”.

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret was born on October 6, 1887 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small city in the French-speaking Neuchâtel canton in north-western Switzerland, in the Jura mountains, just 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) across the border from France. It was an industrial town, devoted to the manufacture of watches. (He adopted the pseudonym Le Corbusier in 1933 of Le Corbusier in 1920). His father was an artisan who Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris[1] October 6, 1887 enameled boxes and watches, while his mother gave piano La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland lessons. His elder brother Albert was an amateur violinist. Died :August 27, 1965 (aged 77) Roquebrune :Cap-Martin, France [3] He attended a kindergarten that used Fröbelian Nationality :Swiss, French methods. Occupation :Architect Awards :AIA Gold Medal (1961), Grand Officiers of the Légion d’honneur (1964) Buildings :, Poissy , Paris Unité d’habitation, Marseille Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp Buildings in Chandigarh, India Projects Le Corbusier began teaching himself by going to the library to read about architecture and philosophy, by visiting museums, by sketching buildings, and by constructing them. In 1905, he and two other students, under the supervision of their teacher, René Chapallaz, designed and built his first house, the , for the engraver Louis Fallet, a friend of his teacher Charles L’Eplattenier. Located on the forested hillside near Chaux-de-fonds. It was a large chalet with a steep roof in the local alpine style and carefully-crafted colored geometric patterns on the façade. The success of this house led to his construction of two similar houses, the Villas Jacquemet and Stotzer, in the same area.

In September 1907, he made his first trip outside of Switzerland, going to Italy; then that winter traveling through Budapest to Vienna, where he stayed for four months and met Gustav Klimt and tried, without success, to meet Josef Hoffman.[10] In Florence, he vis- ited the Florence Charterhouse in Galluzzo, which made a lifelong impression on him. “I would have liked to live in one of what they called their cells,” he wrote later. “It was the solution for a unique kind of worker’s housing, or rather for a terrestrial paradise.”[11] He traveled to Paris, and during fourteen months between 1908 until 1910 he worked as a draftsman in the office of the architect Auguste Perret, the pioneer of the use of reinforced concrete in residential construction and the architect of the Art Deco landmark Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Two years later, between October 1910 and March 1911, he traveled to Germany and worked four months in the office Peter Behrens, where Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius were also working and learning.

Le Corbusier in 1933 Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris[1] October 6, 1887 In 1911, he traveled again for five months; this time he journeyed to the Balkans and visit- La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland ed Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, as well as Pompeii and Rome. filling nearly 80 sketch- Died :August 27, 1965 (aged 77) Roquebrune :Cap-Martin, France books with renderings of what he saw—including many sketches of the Parthenon, whose Nationality :Swiss, French forms he would later praise in his work Vers une architecture (1923). He spoke of what he Occupation :Architect Awards :AIA Gold Medal (1961), saw during this trip in many of his books, and it was the subject of his last book, Le Voyage Grand Officiers of the Légion d’honneur (1964) d’Orient. Buildings :Villa Savoye, Poissy Villa La Roche, Paris Unité d’habitation, Marseille Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp Buildings in Chandigarh, India In 1912, he began his most ambitious project; a new house for his parents. also located on Projects Ville Radieuse the forested hillside near La-Chaux-de-Fonds. The Jeanneret-Perret house was larger than THE DOM-INO HOUSE AND THE SCHWOB THE FIVE POINTS OF ARCHITECTURE TO THE HOUSE VILLA SAVOYE

During World War I, Le Corbusier taught at his The notoriety that Le Corbusier achieved from old school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds, He concen- his writings and the Pavilion at the 1925 Expo- trated on theoretical architectural studies using sition led to commissions to build a dozen res- modern techniques.[14] In December 1914, idences in Paris and in the Paris region in his along with the engineer Max Dubois, he began “purist style.” These included the Maison La a serious study of the use of reinforced concrete Roche/Albert Jeanneret (1923–1925), which as a building material. He had first discovered now houses the ; the concrete working with Auguste Perret in Paris, in Antwerp, (1926); but now wanted to use it in new ways. a residence for Jacques Lipchitz; the Maison “Reinforced concrete provided me with incred- Cook, and the . In 1927, he ible resources,” he wrote later, “and variety, and was invited by the German Werkbund to build a passionate plasticity in which by themselves three houses in the model city of Weissenhof my structures will be rhythm of a palace, and a near Stuttgart, based on the Citrohan House Pompieen tranquility.”.[15] This led him to his and other theoretical models he had published. plan for the Dom-Ino House (1914–15). This He described this project in detail one of his model proposed an open floor plan consisting best-known essays, the Five Points of Architec- of concrete slabs supported by a minimal num- ture.[31] ber of thin reinforced concrete columns, with The following year he began the Villa Savoye a stairway providing access to each level on (1928–1931), which became one of the most one side of the floor plan. with this design, the famous of Le Corbusier’s works, and an icon of framework of the house[16] He described it in modernist architecture. Located in Poissy, in a his patent application as “a juxtiposable system landscape surrounded by trees and large lawn, of construction according to an infinite number the house is an elegant white box poised on of combinations of plans. This would permit, he rows of slender pylons, surrounded by a hor- wrote, “the construction of the dividing walls at izontal band of windows which fill the struc- any point on the façade or the interior.” ture with light. Le Corbusier moved to Paris definitively in 1917 and began his own architectural prac- tice with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret (1896–1967), a partnership that would last until the 1950s, with an interruption in the World War II years.

In 1918, Le Corbusier met the Cubist painter Amédée Ozenfant, in whom he recognised a kindred spirit. Ozenfant encouraged him to paint, and the two began a period of collabo- ration. Rejecting Cubism as irrational and “romantic”, the pair jointly published their man- ifesto, Après le cubisme and established a new artistic movement, . Ozenfant and Le Corbusier began writing for a new journal, L’Esprit Nouveau, and promoted with energy and imagination his ideas of architecture.

In the first issue of the journal, in 1920, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret adopted Le Corbusier (an altered form of his maternal grandfather’s name, Lecorbésier) as a pseudonym, reflect- ing his belief that anyone could reinvent themselves.[22][23] Adopting a single name to identify oneself was in vogue by artists in many fields during that era, especially in Paris.

Between 1918 and 1922, Le Corbusier did not build anything, concentrating his efforts on Purist theory and painting. In 1922, he and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret opened a studio in Paris at 35 rue de Sèvres.[14] 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. In 1922 and 1923, Le Corbusier devoted himself to advocating his new concepts of archi- tecture and urban planning in a series of polemical articles published in L’Esprit Nouveau. At the Paris Salon d’Automne in 1922, he presented his plan for the , a model city for three million people, whose residents would live and work in a group of identical sixty-story tall apartment buildings surrounded by lower zig-zag apartment blocks and a large park. In 1923, he collected his essays from L’Esprit Nouveau published his first and most influential book, “Towards an Architecture”.

He presented his ideas for the future of architecture in a series of maxims, declarations, and exhortations. commencing with “A grand epoch has just begun. There exists a new spirit. There already exist a crowd of works in the new spirit, they are found especially in industrial production. Architecture is suffocating in its current uses. “Styles” are a lie. Style is a unity of principles which animates all the work of a period and which result in a characteristic spirit...Our epoch determines each day its style..-Our eyes, unfortunately don’t know how to see it yet,” and his most famous maxim, “A house is a machine to live in.” Most of the many photographs and drawings in the book came from outside the world of traditional architecture; the cover showed the promenade deck of an ocean liner, while others showed racing cars, airplanes, factories, and the huge concrete and steel arches of zeppelin hangers.

An important early work of Le Corbusier was the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion, built for the 1925 Paris International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, the event which later gave Art Deco its name. Le Corbusier built the pavilion in collaboration with Amédée Ozenfant and with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. Le Corbusier and Ozenfant had broken with Cubism and formed the Purism movement in 1918 and in 1920 founded their journal L’Esprit Nouveau in 1920. In his new journal, Le Corbusier vividly denounced the decorative arts: “Decorative Art, as opposed to the machine phenomenon, is the final twitch of the old manual modes, a dying thing.” To illustrate his ideas, he and Ozenfant decided to create small pavilion at the Exposition, representing his idea of the future urban housing unit. A house, he wrote, “is a cell within the body of a city. The cell is made up of the vital elements which are the mechanics of a house...Decorative art is antistandariza- tional. Our pavilion will contain only standard things created by industry in factories and mass produced, objects truly of the style of today...my pavilion will therefore be a cell ex- tracted from a huge apartment building.”. Le Corbusier and his collaborators were given a plot of land located behind the Grand Palais in the center of the Exposition. The plot was forested, and exhibitors could not cut down trees, so Le Corbusier built his pavilion with a tree in the center, emerging through a hole in the roof. The building was a stark white box with an interior terrace and square glass windows.The interior was decorated with a few cubist paintings and with a few pieces of mass-produced commercially available furniture, entirely different from the expensive, one-of-a-kind pieces in the other pavilions. The chief organizers of the Exposition were furious, and built a fence to partially hide the pavilion. Le Corbusier had to appeal to the Ministry of Fine Arts, which ordered that fence be taken down.

The Pavilion of the Esprit Nouveau (1925) The model of the for the reconstruction of Paris displayed at the Pavilion of the Esprit Nouveau

Besides the furniture, the pavilion exhibited a model of his “Plan Voisin” his provocative plan for rebuilding a large part of the center of Paris. He proposed to bulldoze a large area north of the Seine and replace the narrow streets, monuments and houses with giant six- ty-story cruciform towers placed within an orthogonal street grid and park-like green space. His scheme was met with criticism and scorn from French politicians and industri- alists, although they were favorable to the ideas of Taylorism and Fordism underlying his designs. The plan was never seriously considered, but it provoked discussion concerning how to deal with the overcrowded poor working-class neighborhoods of Paris, and it later saw partial realization in the housing developments built in the Paris suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1925, Le Corbusier combined a series of articles about decorative art from “L’Esprit Nouveau” into a book, L’art décoratif d’aujourd’hui (Decorative Art Today). The book was a spirited attack on the very idea of decorative art. His basic premise, repeated throughout the book, was: “Modern decorative art has no decoration.” [27] He attacked with enthusi- asm the styles presented at the 1925 Exposition of Decorative Arts: “The desire to decorate everything about one is a false spirit and an abominable small perversion....The religion of beautiful materials is in its final death agony...The almost hysterical onrush in recent years toward this quasi-orgy of decor is only the last spasm of a death already predictable.”[28] He cited the 1912 book of the Austrian architect Adolf Loos “Ornament and crime”, and quoted Loos’s dictum, “The more a people are cultivated, the more decor disappears.” He attacked the deco revival of classical styles, what he called “Louis Philippe and Louis XVI moderne”; he condemned the “symphony of color” at the Exposition, and called it “the triumph of assemblers of colors and materials. They were swaggering in colors... They were making stews out of fine cuisine.” He condemned the exotic styles presented at the Expo- sition based on the art of China, Japan, India and Persia. “It takes energy today to affirm our western styles.” He criticized the “precious and useless objects that accumulated on the shelves” in the new style. He attacked the “rustling silks, the marbles which twist and turn, the vermilion whiplashes, the silver blades of Byzantium and the Orient…Let’s be done with it!”

”Why call bottles, chairs, baskets and objects decorative?” Le Corbusier asked. “They are useful tools….Decor is not necessary. Art is necessary.” He declared that in the future the decorative arts industry would produce only “objects which are perfectly useful, conve- nient, and have a true luxury which pleases our spirit by their elegance and the purity of their execution, and the efficiency of their services. This rational perfection and precise determinate creates the link sufficient to recognize a style.” He described the future of dec- oration in these terms: “The ideal is to go work in the superb office of a modern factory, rectangular and well-lit, painted in white Ripolin (a major French paint manufacturer); where healthy activity and laborious optimism reign.” He concluded by repeating “Modern decoration has no decoration”. The book became a manifesto for those who opposed the more traditional styles of the decorative arts; In the 1930s, as Le Corbusier predicted, the modernized versions of Louis Philippe and Louis XVI furniture and the brightly colored wallpapers of stylized roses were replaced by a more sober, more streamlined style. Gradually the modernism and function- ality proposed by Le Corbusier overtook the more ornamental style. The shorthand titles that Le Corbusier used in the book, “1925.EXPO.ARTS.DECO was adapted in 1966 by the art historian Bevis Hillier for a catalog of an exhibition on the style, and in 1968 in the title of a book, Art Deco of the 20s and 30s. and thereafter the term “Art Deco” was commonly used as the name of the style.

The notoriety that Le Corbusier achieved from his writings and the Pavilion at the 1925 Exposition led to commissions to build a dozen residences in Paris and in the Paris region in his “purist style.” These included the Maison La Roche/Albert Jeanneret (1923–1925), which now houses the Fondation Le Corbusier; the Maison Guiette in Antwerp, Belgium (1926); a residence for Jacques Lipchitz; the Maison Cook, and the Maison Planeix. In 1927, he was invited by the German Werkbund to build three houses in the model city of Weissenhof near Stuttgart, based on the Citrohan House and other theoretical models he had published. He described this project in detail one of his best-known essays, the Five Points of Architecture.

The following year he began the Villa Savoye (1928–1931), which became one of the most famous of Le Corbusier’s works, and an icon of modernist architecture. Located in Pois- sy, in a landscape surrounded by trees and large lawn, the house is an elegant white box poised on rows of slender pylons, surrounded by a horizontal band of windows which fill the structure with light. The service areas (parking, rooms for servants and laundry room) are located under the house. Visitors enter a vestibule from which a gentle ramp leads to the house itself. The bedrooms and salons of the house are distributed around a suspended garden; the rooms look both out at the landscape and into the garden, which provides ad- ditional light and air. Another ramp leads up to the roof, and a stairway leads down to the cellar under the pillars. The Villa La Roche-Jeanerette (now Fondation Le Corbusier) in Paris Corbusier Haus in Weissenhof, Stuttgart, Germany (1923) (1927)

Villa Savoye succinctly summed up the five points of architecture that he had elucidated in L’Esprit Nouveau and the book Vers une architecture, 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 garden, and which con- stitute the fourth point of his system. The fifth point was the roof garden to compensate for the green area consumed by the building and replacing it on the roof. A ramp rising from ground level to the third-floor roof terrace allows for an architectural promenade through the structure. The white tubular railing recalls the industrial “ocean-liner” aesthetic that Le Corbusier much admired. The Villa Savoye in Poissy (1928–1931) Citrohan Haus in Weissenhof, Stuttgart, Germany (1927)

Le Corbuser was quite rhapsodic when describing the house in Précisions in 1930: “the plan is pure, exactly made for the needs of the house. It has its correct place in the rustic landscape of Poissy. It is Poetry and lyricism, supported by technique.”[32] The house had its problems; the roof persistently leaked, due to construction faults; but it became a land- mark of modern architecture and one of he best-known works of Le Corbusier.