Submitted by:

Avashana Pant
071/B.Arch/03
Krishant Basnet
071/B.Arch/07
Rosy Shrestha
071/B.Arch/13
Sonika Maharjan
071/B.Arch/19
Sunil Basnet
071/B.Arch/21
Vishal Maharjan
071/B.Arch/22
Submitted to:
Ar. Nisha R.C.
Introduction
 Originally – Charles Édouard
Jeanneret and developed the
pseudonym “Le Corbusier” in
1920 inspired from his
grandfather

 Born on October 6, 1887 at

town of La Chaux-de-Fonds,
Switzerland.

▪ An architect, designer,
painter, urban planner, writer
& one of the pioneers of what
is now called Modern
Architecture or the
International style
 His career spanned five
decades, with his
buildings constructed
throughout Europe,
India and America

 Although born Swiss,

he lived most of his life
in France since 1930.

 He was awarded the

Frank P. Brown medal
and AIA Gold medal in
1961
Early Years
 At age of 13, he left primary school to learn enameling and
engraving of watch faces, his father’s trade where he met
Charles L’Eplattenier, whom Le Corbusier later called his only
teacher.

 L’Eplattenier, taught him art, history, drawing and asthetics of Art

Nouveau.

 It was L’Eplattenier who decided Le Corbusier should become an

architect.

 On his advice, Corbusier took a series of trips afterward.

 He built his first house at the age of 18 for a member of his school’s
teaching staff. In 1908, he went to Paris and began to practice with
Auguste Perret then moved to Berlin.
 ‘Decoration’ his 1st experience of art but he found no satisfaction in
it.

 Mosque of turkey first taught him to understand molding of interior

spaces
Le-Corbusier at Acropolis Sketch of Le Parthenon, Athens,

 He spend 3 weeks in acropolis studying its proportion.

 During this trip, he made numerous drawings, sketches and notes

in his sketchbooks, as well as several hundred photographs.
 At the age of 30 he returned to Paris where he met the painter and
designer Amedee Ozenfant

 Ozenfant initiated him to sophisticated contemporary art ‘Purism’

which rejected the complicated abstraction of cubism and returned
to pure, simple geometric form.
L’Espirit Nouvou
 In 1920, with the poet Paul
Darmee, he founded a
review, L’Esprit Nouveau and
wrote a series of articles for
it.

 The articles written by le

corbusier were collected and
published as Vers une
architecture (toward a new
architecture)

 Ozenfant also suggested the

name for Jeanneret ‘Le
Corbusier’ ‘The Architect”
Machine to living
 Came up with the solution of making buildings out of a series of
standardized elements that could be combined in diff. ways
 The bases -- concrete frame work
-interior wall had no supporting function
-doors, windows, closets all prefabricated could be equally freely
disposed
 1925, despite opposition by the society, he used this method in
building 51 small houses but its unfamiliar look caused the
occupants to alter them
 His only comment was ‘ life is always right’
 From that time, untreated conc. became the hallmark of his
architecture
 The stricking polechrome structure “Hiedi Weber Museum Center”
was the Le Corbusier’s last work
Philosophies/ Ideas
 Five points of modern architecture

 Le Modulor

 Sixth Point of Modern Architecture

Five points of Architecture
1. Pilotis

2. Free Plan

3. Free Façade

4. Horizontal Windows

5. Roof Garden
 Lift the building over pilotis

 The ground floor of the house,

like the street, belongs to
automobile.
 replacement of the supporting
walls by "pilotis", or, reinforced
concrete stilts.
 To allow vehicles’ movement or
green continuity.
Free designing of the ground plan
 A buildings’ floor plan must be free from structural condition so
partitions can be organized in any way.
➢ made possible by the system of supporting stilts
➢ E.g. Brazilian students dormitory , Paris university(1957-1959)
The free facade

➢ consequence of concrete frame construction

➢ The structure separates from the facade, relieving it of its
structural function
➢ E.g. Swiss student dormitories ,Paris university
The Horizontal windows
 The façade can be cut along its entire length to
➢ allow impressive views of the exterior
➢ for maximum illumination of the interior space
➢ E.g. Salvation army hospital, Paris(1929-1931)
The Roof Garden

➢ a mean of bringing nature to houses

➢ A building should give back the space it takes up on the
ground by replacing it with garden in sky.
➢ E.g. Unite d’Habitation, Marseille(1947-1952)
(use of sun breakers)
Masterpiece
1. Villa Savoye; Poissy France
◦ Purest architectural promenade
◦ Use of all 5 principles
◦ Historic monuments
◦ Stunning complex of interlocking volume
◦ Another example of open structure
◦ designed by Le Corbusier as a paradigm of the "machine as a home", so
that the functions of everyday life inside become critical to its design
◦ The materials used in the Villa Savoye is prosaic materials; such materials
were used during this time in building houses for lower-class Parisians
◦ It is currently a "museum," dedicated to the life and works of Le
Corbusier and maintained by the public company Monuments of France,
and receives thousands of visits per year, mostly architects and students.
Villa Savoye- “the house is a box in the air”
Interior of Villa Savoye
 The sociologist
 For Corbusier, a house no matter how
beautiful, should have a little significance
in itself
 What countered him was the interrelationship
between the dwelling- its use for work and its
possibility for leisure work
 Concerned with the freedom for the individual
i.e. to say- space, sunlight , open green areas for each and all of us.
▪ In 1943, he applied an interdisciplinary approach in developing
"Modulor”
 Primitive man used to measure by the length of his face, fore arm
or thumb
 decided to base all his architectural calculations on the
requirements of 6’ man
 The Modulor
A system of quantity, based on the male
figure and the Golden Mean, used to
determine the proportions of units in
architecture and technology.

• became
foundation
for his
furniture
design
 Approach
System based on
three aspects:

Human
Measurements

LE-MODULAR

The Fibonacci
Numbers

-Developed the Modulor

between 1943 and 1955 in an The Golden
era which was already Ratio
displaying widespread
fascination with mathematics
as a potential source of
universal truths.
Le Modulor
 created the Modulor following the steps of :
➢ Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man,
the work of Leone Battista Alberti
➢ and other attempts to discover mathematical
proportions
 used that knowledge to improve
architecture.
 the measurements of man are in nature
distributed in this manner, that is:
✓ a palm is four fingers
✓ a foot is four palms
✓ a cubit is six palms
✓ four cubits make a man
✓ a pace is four cubits
✓ a man is 24 palms
…and these measurements are in his
buildings“
THE FIBONACCI NUMBERS

-are a sequence of numbers

where the first number of the
sequence is 0, the second
number is 1, and each
subsequent number is equal
to the sum of the previous
two numbers of the sequence
itself.
THE GOLDEN RATIO
(1.618)

Two quantities are in

the golden ratio if the
ratio between the sum
of those quantities and
the larger one is the
same as the ratio
between the larger one
and the smaller.
 Graphical Representation
ARM UPRAISED

▪ Le Corbusier explicitly used

the golden ratio in his
Modulor system for the
scale of architectural
proportion.

▪ The Modulor is an
anthropometric scale of
proportions devised by him

▪ It is based on the height of

an English man with his arm
raised

•The graphic representation of

the Modular is a stylized human
figure with one arm upraised
standing next to two vertical
measurements.
VERTICAL MEASUREMENTS
 Basic plot

Basic plot:

❑113, 70, 43 cm. 43

❑When these quantities are

combined, they provided
other measurements related
with the modulor. 70

❑For example: 43+70=113,

113+70=183 and
113+70+43=223, these three
results define the space
human body occupies. 113

According to the quantities of 113 and

226, Le Corbusier developed two
vertical measurements, the red series
and the blue series, which are
descending scales related to the
height of the human figure.
 Masterpiece
2. SAINTE MARIE DE LA TOURETTE (1956-1960)
 About
 Sainte Marie de La Tourette is a Dominican Order priory in a
valley near Lyon, France designed between 1956 and 1960.

 La Tourette is considered one of the more important

buildings of the late Modernist style.

• Unique example in which to explore a case study of

architectural form as understood by Le Corbusier’s beliefs,
attitudes, and personal morphologies toward his profession.
 He sought to embody the materially minimalist lifestyle of the monks
through a series of dualities, his own personal dialectic:
individual-collective;
incremential-continous;
secular-religious;
light-dark;
high-low;
lucid-obscure;
nature-architecture;
irrational-rational.

 These dualities combined with Le Corbusier's incredible

understanding of the monks' daily life generated a series of forms in
an almost harsh contrast to one another that expressed his notion of
pure and beautiful geometries.
SAINT MARIA LA TOURETTE IS A STUDY OF DUALISTIC
RELATIONSHIPS

INDIVIDUAL LIGHT
COLLECTIVE DARK

NATURE
ARCHITECTURE

INCREMENTIAL HIGH
CONTINOUS LOW

IRRATIONAL
RATIONAL

SECULAR LUCID
RELIGIOUS OBSCURE

INDIVIDUAL
COLLECTIVE
OPPOSITION OF NATURE AND ARCHITECTURE
AS A WHOLE, THE MONASTERY IS GOVERNED THROUGH THE
FORMAL AND CULTURAL LOGICS OF A PROGRAM.

These Plans Illustrate a Formal

Governance.

PRAYER

DINING

EDUCATION

LIVING

VISITOR HOLDING

The Message of these spaces suggests SINGULAR

FUNCTIONALITY, this is plausible being that the
monks of La Tourette led a very STRUCTURED
AND STRICT Lifestyle.
 THESE PLANS ILLUSTRATE A
CULTURAL LOGIC OF LA
TOURETTE.

Public Space

Private Space

because the monk lived mostly in solitude,

public and private exist as cultural boundary
between the inside and outside.
Couvent de la Tourette
Spaces
Notre Dame du Haut (Ronchamp Chapel)
❑ 3. Notre Dame du Haut
 one of his most iconic designs
 Completed in 1954
 built for a Catholic church on a pre-existing pilgrimage site
 The monumental curved concrete roof is a shell structure
supported by columns hidden in the walls. A gap underneath
allows a sliver of light to filter into the interior.
 External appearance- complicated layout
 The interior- fairly simple in plan.
 Three thick white walls curl inwards
from the outside to create smaller
chapels at the sides of the main
space.
 The interior of chapel –
bright red paint, north side is
painted violet.
 The floor follows the slope of the site towards the main altar, and
is covered with a concrete surface that was poured on site
 divided into a gridded pattern based on Modulor system of
proportions.
 Scattered and irregular arrangement of the window
 Glasses- clear and colored, not stained glasses
 The internal and external walls-- finished with mortar and sprayed
onto the surfaces before being whitewashed or painted.
 The roof was left raw, showing the board marks from the casting of
the concrete.
The Sixth Point of Modern
Architecture:
 There is one more feature that distinguishes
Corbusian architecture of the years from 1945 to
1965, the use of the sun-break (brise- soleil).
 Failures of the pans de verre (glass curtain walls)
lead him to think about a passive sun protection
system for his facades.
 In volume 3 of the Oeuvre complete, he launched
into a detailed review of the process by which he
had come to invent this “sixth point of modern
architecture”, i.e. the honeycomb sun break.
 Seen mostly implemented in his city planning of
Chandigarh.
The City Planner
 Honored and recognized only late in life
 Had been planning cities for many years though his designs were
never carried out
 For 40 years, he has been dreaming of ideal cities
 He studied the skyscraper using various ground plans
-crossed shaped
-fan shaped
-Cartesian
 He developed the plans for some cities and towns but were
rejected
 He separated different functions for the city
-dwelling
-working
-recreation of body and mind
-circulation
 For Le Corbusier, a man was only one type; whether the city has a
population of 20,000 or 2 million; whether from one part of the
world or another
Masterpieces
4. Chandigarh city planning

➢ India just gained independence

➢ terribly handicapped economically by its backwardness
➢ City had to be built with bare hand of powerless laborers in the
ruling heat
➢ Le Corbusier planned the city in such a way that the discipline of
economy, technology and climate was maintained--
(materials, simple shapes, shades, hydraulics, flow of air current)

➢ “where there is order , there is harmony”

➢ Maintained right angles thinking that it was better than wavering
lines so -planned the city like a checkerboard
Plan of the City
 It had 7 main road
 1,2,3- heavy traffic
4- shopping
5,6- for feeders
7-parkway
 Still free from major traffic problems
 Majority of people in Chandigarh is now either a constructional
worker or the ministry personnel
 city was planned to house a number of 150 000 inhabitants in its
first phase, realized between 1951-66, and 500 000 in its” final
stage”

 Punjab became the capital city

having 3 immense building
❖ The high court building,
❖ The assembly hall
❖ The secretariat building
Open Hand
•He also designed the open
hand monument in Chandigarh

•The Open Hand (La Main

Ouverte) is a recurring motif in
Le Corbusier's architecture, a
sign for him of "peace and
reconciliation. It is open to give
and open to receive.

•It express a philosophy, the

result of a life of study of
struggles, of defeats, of victories
The High Court
Assembly Hall
The Secretariat
 This project was a huge success
 After this, he was offered many projects of great importance.
 He was recognized and highly respected
 But even 50 years of struggle had not shaken the conviction of Le
Corbusier.
 He said, “..of this I am sure, I am right”.
 Other Famous
Works

As of 2016, a total of 17 buildings built by Corbusier from 6

different countries has been listed in UNESCO’s world
heritage site list.
Church of saint Pierre - Firminy
Unite d’Habitation- Marseille
National Museum of Western Art- Tokyo
Villa Schwob- France
Apart from architecture:
 Le Corbusier was originally a painter, although his succession in the field of
architecture is commendable, he still didn’t forget his roots along the way.
He continued his dedication towards painting and also designed furniture's,
tapestries, sculptures and also wrote numerous books.

 Paintings :
 Tapestries :

As found on the High Court at

Chandigarh
Sculptures:
Furnitures:
Teachings and Writings:
 Didn’t professionally teach as a professor
but took several lecture series.
 Mostly put his ideas and innovations in
the form of writings by publishing books.
 Famous writings include, Towards a new
architecture ; The Radiant City ; The city
of tomorrow and its planning; The
Modulor.
References:
 Book References:

 Towards a New Architecture – Le Corbusier
 Art through the Ages- Horst de la Croix and Richard G. Tansey
 Le Corbusier from Marseilles to Chandigarh (1945-1965) - Kiran Joshi

 Web Documents:

 thefamouspeole.com
 houzz.com
 archdaily.com
 sacredarchitecture.org
 brainyquotes.com
 orangeticker.wordpress.com
 Wikipedia