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Le Corbusier
built 633 days ago
Le Corbusier was born in 1887 in the Swiss watchmaking town of La Chaux de Fonds. His father was a highly skilled watch enameler; his mother was a pianist and music teacher. The family was Protestant; some scholars believe they were Calvinists (Sereyni 1975: 23). At the age of fifteen, Corbusier enrolled at the local trade school, L’Ecole d’Art, in order to learn the craft of watch case engraving. Corbusier’s mentor at the school was Charles L’Eplattenier. L’Eplattenier’s personal mission at L’Ecole was to find the most promising students alternate careers in the fine arts.
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Le Corbusier, the pseudonym for Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, was born on Oct. 6, 1887, at La-Chaux-de-Fonds, where he attended the School of Fine Art until the age of 18 and was then apprenticed to an engraver. He studied architecture in Vienna with Josef Hoffmann (1908), in Paris with Auguste Perret (1908-1909), and in Berlin with Peter Behrens (1910-1911). In 1911 Le Corbusier traveled in the Balkans, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy. The Acropolis in Athens and the sculpture of the 5th century B.C. by Phidias on the Parthenon made a great impression on him, as did Michelangelo's contributions to St. Peter's in Rome.
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Le Corbusier’s theories suggest that the center of a great city should consist mainly of skyscrapers – exclusively for commercial use – and that the area occupied by these should be no greater than 5 percent. The remaining 95% should be parks with trees. Also in the center there would be a train station, the “hub” of the city, and three-story buildings with “luxury shops, [...] restaurants and cafés.”
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Some critics believe that Le Corbusier is no longer the central figure of modernism he was once believed to be. That against the background of a wide-ranging critical reassessment of the whole phenomenon of modernity, he is only one of a number of influential figures of the time. Yet others maintain that he is not only central to modernism, but to the still lingering possibility of a poetic architecture.
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Many scholars have adopted the notion that the Corbusier of the Radiant City was a kinder, gentler Corbusier. However, they have failed to consider that the so-called individual freedoms that Corbusier promoted were not freedoms at all. Certainly, Corbusier provided lesiure time activities that he enjoyed, such as sunbathing on the roof or playing basketball. But, are these pastimes necessarily freedom? Corbusier’s individuals were not allowed to have a voice in the governance of their lives; they are able to behave, but not to act. Additionally, there is no room in the Radiant City for individuals to act non-rationally.
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Although the politics of Lagardelle and Valois included elements of fascism, anti-semitism, and ultra-nationalism, Le Corbusier's own affiliation with these movements remains uncertain. In La Ville radieuse, he conceives an essentially apolitical society, in which the bureaucracy of economic administration effectively replaces the state.[7]
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Le Corbusier