Le Corbusier
Pioneer architect of Modern
Architecture
Lecture by Ar.Padmashri
BIOGRAPHY - Short
• Born – 6th Oct 1887
• Born in Switzerland
• Became a French Citizen in his 30’s.
• Studied at La-Chaux-de-Fonds Art School
• Between and 191 8 and 1922 concentrating his
efforts on Purist thoery and painting.
• In 1922, opened a studio in Paris.
• Died – 27th August 1965 at the age of 77
Early Life
• His father was an artisan who enameled boxes and watches, and
his mother taught piano. His elder brother Albert was an
amateur violinist. He attended a kindergarten that
used Fröbelian methods.
Early Life
• He was attracted to the visual arts; at the age of fifteen he entered
the municipal art school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds which taught the
applied arts connected with watchmaking.
• Three years later he attended the higher course of decoration,
founded by the painter Charles L'Eplattenier, who had studied
in Budapest and Paris. Le Corbusier wrote later that L'Eplattenier
had made him "a man of the woods" and taught him painting from
nature.
• His architecture teacher in the Art School was architect René
Chapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusier's earliest
house designs. He reported later that it was the art teacher
L'Eplattenier who made him choose architecture.
EARLY WORKS 1905
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
TRAVEL & DRAFTSMAN 1907-1911
• 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 Hoffmann.
• In Florence, he visited the Florence Charterhouse in Galluzzo, which
made a lifelong impression on him.
• 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 .
• 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
TRAVEL AGAIN 1911 - 1912
In 1911, he traveled again with his friend August Klipstein for five
months, this time he journeyed to the Balkans and
visited Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, as well as Pompeii and Rome,
filling nearly 80 sketchbooks with renderings of what he saw—
including many sketches of the Parthenon, whose forms he would later
praise in his work Vers une architecture (1923).
SWITZERLAND & WW-I 1912-1918
• In 1912, he began his most ambitious project; a new house for his parents.
also located on the forested hillside near La-Chaux-de-Fonds.
• During World War I, Le Corbusier taught at his old school in La-Chaux-
de-Fonds. He concentrated on theoretical architectural studies using
modern techniques.
• In December 1914, along with the engineer Max Dubois, he began a
serious study of the use of reinforced concrete as a building material.
• He had first discovered concrete working in the office of Auguste Perret,
the pioneer of reinforced concrete architecture in Paris, but now wanted to
use it in new ways.
Dom-Ino House (1914–15). This model
proposed an open floor plan consisting of
three concrete slabs supported by six
thin reinforced concrete columns, with a
stairway providing access to each level on one
side of the floor plan. The system was
originally designed to provide large numbers
of temporary residences after World War I,
producing only slabs, columns and stairways,
and residents could build exterior walls with
DOM – INO HOUSE the materials around the site.
DURING WW-I 1916
• In August 1916, Le Corbusier received his largest commission ever, to
construct a villa for the Swiss watchmaker Anatole Schwob, for whom he
had already completed several small remodeling projects.
• He was given a large budget and the freedom to design not only the house,
but also to create the interior decoration and choose the furniture.
• Following the precepts of Auguste Perret, he built the structure out of
reinforced concrete and filled the gaps with brick.
Le Corbusier's grand ambitions
collided with the ideas and
budget of his client, and led to
bitter conflicts. Schwob went to
court and denied Le Corbusier
access to site, or the right to
claim to be the architect. Le
Corbusier responded,
"Whether you like it or not, my
presence is inscribed in every
corner of your house." Le
Corbusier took great pride in
the house, and reproduced
pictures in several of his books
CUBISM & PURISM 1918-1922
Le Corbusier moved to Paris definitively in 1917 and began his own
architectural practice with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret
• 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
collaboration. Rejecting Cubism as
irrational and "romantic", the pair
jointly published their
manifesto, Après le cubisme and
established a new artistic
movement, Purism Le Corbusier, 1921, Nature
morte (Still Life), oil on canvas, 54 x
• Between 1918 and 1922, Le Corbusier
81 cm, Musée National d'Art
did not build anything, concentrating Moderne, Paris
his efforts on Purist theory and
painting
ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE 1922
• In 1922, he and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret opened a studio in Paris at
35 rue de Sèvres. They set up an architectural practice together.
• From 1927 to 1937 they worked together with Charlotte Perriand at the
Le Corbusier-Pierre Jeanneret studio.
• In 1929 the trio prepared the “House fittings” section for the Decorative
Artists Exhibition .
• This was refused by the Decorative Artists Committee. They resigned
and founded the Union of Modern Artists (“Union des artistes
modernes”: UAM).
Postcard of the Exposition
Internationale des Arts
décoratifs et industriels
modernes (1925)
TOWARDS A NEW ARCHITECTURE 1922-1923
Book
• 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 this book he elucidated his
vision for architecture inspired by
the emerging modern era, applying
the principles of cars, planes, and
ships to buildings. It was here that
he proclaimed the house as a
“machine for living in,”
summarizing his early approach to
design and defining the
fundamental attitude of Modernist
architecture.
Original in French and
translated in English Later
1923-1925 - International Exhibition of Modern
Decorative and Industrial Arts –
1923 – 1931 - Concept of Five Points of Architecture – Villa
Savoye
1926 – 1930 - League of Nations and Pessac Housing Project
– Competition Project – was chosen out of 337 projects, but
lost for implementation.
1923- The Cite Fruges – urban planning for worker
housing project in Bordeaux. Le corbusier desinged low
cost housing with series of rectangular blocks with small
terrace for individual block.
1928- International Congress of Modern Architects –
commenced in Switzerland, where Adolf loos, Mies Van
der Rohe, Walter Gropius Auguste Perret, Tony Garnier,
Erich Mendelson, Alvar Alto, were present with Le-
Corbusier.
This congress discussed on Modern Cities and City
planning.
1928 – 1934 - Moscow - Le corbusier was invited by Russian
Architect – Konstantin Melnikov for lectures on various topics,
designed Headquarters of Soviet trade unions – Moscow.
Paris - Also designed several buildings Villa de Madrot,
floating homeless shelter for Salvation Army, Cite de Refuge,
student housing, etc.
1922 – 1931 - Le Corbusier developed ideas for urban design
and planned cities, for an organizational solution that would
raise the standards of quality of life of working classes.
Examples of these ideas were Radiant City, Ville
Contemporaine, Plan Voisin, Cite Radieuse, City Algiers, Rio
de Janerio, etc.
1928 – Public Housing called by French Minister, for
constructing 260,000 housing units, Le corbusier designed
modular housing with 45 sq.mts each unit.
1939 – 1945 – World War – II, did writings, offered services for
reconstruction but were rejected. He was 60 years old and
realized he hasn’t done projects for 10 years.
1947 – 1952 - Unite d’Habitation – Housing units
- The Headquarters of United Nations with
Oscar Niemeyer and Wallace K Harrison
1950 - 1955 – The Chapel of NoreDame du Haut in Ron
Champ
1953 – 1960 – The convent of Sainte Marie de La Tourette
near Lyon and Church of Saint Pierre.
1951 – 1956 - Chandigarh and Ahmedabad
1955 – 1965 - National Museum of Western Art, Carpenter
Center for the Visual Arts, in Cambridge, The Centre Le
Corbusier in Zurich, etc.
1965 – Died due to heart attack at age of 77.
Concepts THE MODULAR
The modular was a system of
proportioning worked out by
le corbusier essentially the
modular is a series of proportions
not unlike the golden section used by
ancient Greeks.
Based on the measurements of a six-
foot man in various positions,
standing ,
sitting, lying down etc.
Two series of measurements
were developed,
the one derived from a standing
figure, the other from a figure with an
arm upraised.
• The modular was both a module of measurement and of scale;in
addition it provides a means of relating measurements in feetand
inches to those of the metric system.
• ‘The modular’ , le corbusier wrote, is a measuring tool based on
the human body and on mathematics. A man with an arm
upraised provides, at the determining points of his occupation of
space- foot, solar plexus, head, tips of fingers of the upraised arm-
three intervals which give rise to a series of golden sections called
the fibnacci series.
IDEOLOGY
• THE PILOTIS
• ROOF GARDEN
• FREE FLOOR PLAN
• ELONGATED WINDOW
• FREE FACADE
VILLA SAVOYE, POISSY,FRANCE 1931
• Villa savoye ,It is situated on smoothly sloping hill top in midst of
fields
• It illustrates with extreme clarity and is perhaps the most faithful in its
observation of hi five points i.e pilotis, roof garden, free floor plan ,
elongated window, and free façade
• Palladian grid is followed
• Golden proportions are analyzed
• Columns of the buildings are defined by a system of walls
independent of structure
• Entry to the property is through a gate at one end of high stone wall
Turning radius of the car forming semi circular
reception hall
GROUND FLOOR - CONTAINS AN ELEGANT RECEPTION
HALL, GARAGE AND THE SERVANT QUARTERS
ROOF GARDEN
SECOND LEVEL WITH
ROOF GARDEN
LIVING AREA
ABOUT 1/3RD OF THE
SPACE IS OCCUPIED BY
THE ROOF TERRACE
ELONGATED WINDOWS
LIVING ROOM OPENING TOWARDS
TERRACE (INTERIORS)
RAMP TOWARDS TERRACE
There is small gate keeper’s lodge at the entrance
The main portion of the house is raised on the columns which are set on
grass plane
Second level with open garden terrace, as the extention of the main rooms
of the house is lifted upon columns
Living area opens on the south to the garden through large floor to
ceiling sliding glass doors
UNITE D’ HABITATION
It was the time when
Europe was rising from
the smoldering funeral
pyre of and its newly
liberated people were to
establish some program
direction of new life.
Le corbusier had a
revolutionary event,
sun, space and greenery
was developed here.
To understand the
change of mind of the
people around
• It was le corbusier’s best contribution to a modern typology of social
housing
• The building us situated on 9 acre site on the outskirts of Marseille
• It has an east west orientation
• It is 450’ long, 80’ wide and 185’ high
• It follows the theoretical principles of le corbusier’s logic of
construction
• 4 lifts each with a capacity of 20 travelling with a speed at 40 ft per
second.
• It has skeleton of reinforced concrete and rest on powerful pillars
which leaves the ground free
• All piping passes through these pillars (pilotis)
• All apartments are built in two levels
• The northern façade is blank, while the other facades are
animated with glass walls and sunbreak loggias of living area
• the plan is not completely free ; the partition walls between the
apartments are load bearing
• Strong sound proofing between apartments
• It is 9 storeys high
• They are divided into twenty three different types of apartments
• 337 apartments in all
• Recreational rooms are on the roof
Glass wall of 12’ x 16’
Double height
balconies too
Huge pilotis
leaving the
ground free Double height living room
with glass wall
Concrete as flexible
material
Roof nursery
Colourful walls in
balconies
Narrow rooms Open
terrace
( 8’ high rooms)
1929-SALVATION ARMY REFUGE IN
PARIS
PLANS
1.Ground-floor plan,
reception hall and dining
rooms.
2.Typical floor plans,
dormitories, day
nurseries and
washrooms.
3.Plan at upper level,
with individual cubicles
for mothers and children.
• The refuge was undertaken by the salvation in 1929.
• It is one of the first of lecorbusier’s buildings.
• It was the first building for human habitation entirely sealed
comprising 10,000 sq.Ft of fenestration without opening sections.
• The ventilation was achieved by means of forcedair. This forced air
installation was effected on a very small budget. How ever,
temperature could not be controlled.
