Overview

Le Corbusier is often remembered as having been aggressively indifferent to the sites in which he placed his buildings and plans. However, new research reveals that, in keeping with his proposition that 'the outside is always an inside', all of Le Corbusier's projects responded emphatically to specific geographies. This book examines Le Corbusier's relationship with the landscapes of five continents, in forty essays by thirty of the foremost scholars of his work. His sketchbooks, letters and publications confirm that he was deeply involved with both optical and physical relationships to landscapes - in observing them, rendering them and building them. From his beginnings in Switzerland, as a disciple of the regional style sapin in his hometown of La Chaux-de-Fonds, to the creation of the new Indian city of Chandigarh; from touring Europe in his Avions Voisin automobile to mapping South America from the air; from inserting grand plans into existing urban layouts to setting the Ronchamp chapel on an isolated hill in France, Le Corbusier created forms that responded to the horizons and welcomed them in.

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9780500342909

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Reviews

This catalogue records the only comprehensive exhibition that the Museum of Modern Art has ever staged and published on Le Corbusier's works. [...] Key words in the subtitles are atlas and landscapes. First Le Corbusier was the Atlas of modern design, from furniture to urbanism; second, he profoundly conceived his designs in terms of landscapes. [...] This book charts all of his built works by continent, including his paintings and writings, which he sold and published to support and promote himself.--P.S. Kaufman CHOICE (12/01/2013)

Author Information

Jean-Louis Cohen is Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

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