{"id":28471,"date":"2020-12-04T16:01:11","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T16:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsblogsnew.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=28471"},"modified":"2020-12-04T16:01:11","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T16:01:11","slug":"ihbcs-cpd-boost-the-world-according-to-le-corbusier-an-animated-introduction-to-the-most-modern-of-architects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=28471","title":{"rendered":"IHBC\u2019s CPD boost: The World According to Le Corbusier – An animated introduction to the most modern of architects"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Among modern architects, was any architect ever so modernity-minded as Charles-\u00c9douard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier), asks Open Culture<\/em>, while reporting one take on how, in fact, \u2018Le Corbusier, writer, has little in common with Le Corbusier, maker\u2019.<\/h3>\n
image: for illustration purposes only – Joop van Bilsen \/ Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/h6>\n

<\/p>\n

…\u2018Le Corbusier, writer, has little in common with Le Corbusier, maker …<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n

… proposals included, … \u2018the destruction of the Right Bank in Paris and its replacement with ranks of cruciform skyscrapers\u2019…<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n

…’looked to modern machines, especially those that had begun appearing in the sky in his youth…<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n

Open Culture<\/em> writes:<\/p>\n

…Like many cultural figures well-known outside their field \u2014 Franz Kafka<\/a>,\u00a0George Orwell<\/a>,\u00a0David Lynch<\/a> \u2014 his name has long since been adjectivized, though nowadays the term \u201cCorbusian\u201d is seldom used as a compliment. Many a self-described opponent of modern architecture, whatever they consider modern architecture to be, points to Le Corbusier as the originator of all the inhumanity of buildings designed over the past 90 years, and especially the second half of the 20th century: their drab colors (or lack thereof), their depressing austerity, their forbidding scale, their dark corridors, their leaky roofs. But how much, really, is he to blame?<\/p>\n

\u201cLe Corbusier recommended that the houses of the future be ascetic and clean, disciplined and frugal,\u201d\u00a0says The Book of Life<\/a>, the companion site to Alain de Botton\u2019s School of Life. Remembered as an architect but both an artist and engineer at heart, he thought that \u201ctrue, great architecture \u2013 meaning, architecture motivated by the quest for efficiency \u2013 was more likely to be found in a 40,000-kilowatt electricity turbine or a low-pressure ventilating fan\u201d than in the capitals of old Europe. For inspiration he looked to modern machines, especially those that had begun appearing in the sky in his youth: \u201che observed that the requirements of flight of necessity rid airplanes of all superfluous decoration,\u201d says de Botton in\u00a0the animated School of Life primer above<\/a>, \u201cand so unwittingly transformed them into successful pieces of architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hence Le Corbusier\u2019s infamous pronouncement that \u201ca house is a machine for living in,\u201d which first appeared in his 1923 manifesto\u00a0Vers une architecture<\/em>\u00a0(Towards an Architecture<\/em><\/a>). Le Corbusier was a writer \u2014 and a painter, and a furniture designer, and an urban planner \u2014 as much as he was an architect.\u00a0\u201cThe problem is that both his detractors and his acolytes want to believe that his written manifestos, urbanistic visions, utopian ideologies and theories are compatible with his buildings,\u201d\u00a0writes Jonathan Meades<\/a>, sometime architectural critic and full-time resident of Le Corbusier\u2019s\u00a0Unit\u00e9 d\u2019habitation<\/a>\u00a0apartment block in Marseilles. But \u201cLe Corbusier, writer, has little in common with Le Corbusier, maker of the century\u2019s most profoundly sensuous, most moving architecture\u201d: one was a \u201cself-advertising propagandist,\u201d the other \u201can artist-craftsman of peerless originality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Le Corbusier\u2019s headline-making urban-renewal proposals included, Meades writes, \u201cthe destruction of the Right Bank in Paris and its replacement with ranks of cruciform skyscrapers\u201d; he also proposed demolishing Manhattan, as de Botton says, \u201cto make way for a fresh and more \u2018Cartesian\u2019 attempt at urban design.\u201d Le Corbusier\u2019s utopian dreams of colossal skyscrapers placed in the middle of vast green parkland and surrounded by elevated freeways led, in this telling, to \u201cthe dystopian housing estates that now ring historic Paris, the wastelands from which tourists avert their eyes in confused horror and disbelief on their way into the city.\u201d But if cities can still use Le Corbusier\u2019s planning ideas as a negative example, they have more to learn from the positive example of his aesthetic sensibility, which remains exhilarating today, even amid a kind of modernity the man himself could never have imagined.<\/p>\n

Read more….<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among modern architects, was any architect ever so modernity-minded as Charles-\u00c9douard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier), asks Open Culture, while reporting one take on how, in fact, \u2018Le Corbusier, writer, has little in common with Le Corbusier, maker\u2019. image: for illustration purposes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ihbc-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28473,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28471\/revisions\/28473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}