Charles-Édouard Jeanneret

L E COR- BUS- CHARLES-ÉDOUARDIER JEANNERET Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier (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 :Villa Savoye, Poissy Villa La Roche, Paris Unité d’habitation, Marseille Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp Buildings in Chandigarh, India Projects Ville Radieuse 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 Villa Fallet, 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 Fondation Le Corbusier; the concrete working with Auguste Perret in Paris, Maison Guiette in Antwerp, Belgium (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 Maison Planeix. 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, Purism. 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 architecture 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 Ville Contemporaine, 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.

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