Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (Le Corbusier)

Le Corbusier (1887-1963) was not afraid to advertise his achievements in a wide range of media: painting, drawing, lithography, collage, sculpture, and tapestry, not to mention architecture and urbanism. But about one branch of his activity he always remained strangely silent. Between 1906 and 1916, and again from 1936 to 1938, Le Corbusier took hundreds of photographs. He published very few of these, and maintained that photography was a stultifying activity, good only for lazy people. The book 'Le Corbusier Secret Photographer' by Tim Benton complements earlier research on the photographic output of Le Corbusier. The work attributes prints and negatives held in different photo collections,  it analyses the photographic equipment owned and used by Le Corbusier, and it assesses Le Corbusier's artistic development in the field of photography and movies over time.

This paper explains the restoration of the Cité de Refuge, completed almost two years ago. The building was realised in the 1930s in Paris by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret and was often enlarged and transformed during the twentieth century. In particular, the paper analyses the collaborative method adopted by all the partners  involved, the overcoming of the dichotomy between protected parts and unprotected ones, the decision to exclude for the façade the reconstruction à l’identique of the  original purist state of the building and to prefer instead to keep the testimony of transformations over time.
The project offers yet another opportunity for reflection on issues related to restoration of modern architecture, in particular regarding the works of Le Corbusier: on the need and effectiveness of protective measures in architectural heritage, on the dialectic between conservation and transformation, on the relationship between restoration and architectural design, on the debate over whether to reinstate works with their original archetypal iconic appearances, or to conserve the narrative of a building’s ‘life’ over time, and on the need for a building to ‘live on’ after restoration.

This paper considers the nature of the speculative architectural project, its distinction from building,  its relationship to a particular aspect of mimetic inquiry, and the implications of  the rise of technique -- in particular, its influence on the mimetic capacity of a speculative architectural project. Architectural speculation is considered through the relationship of "making" and "place," evidenced in the admittedly unlikely conjunction of Gothic Scholasticism, surrealist theater, and the Cinquecento conceptual model of disegno. This paper explicates their interrelationship through reconstructing a program that invites participation in the collective mimesis of a speculative architectural project.

Transcending Architecture considers the mysterious, profound, and real power of designed environments to address the spiritual dimension of our humanity. By bringing in perspectives from within and without architecture, the book offers a wide, critical and nuanced understanding of the lived relationship between the built and the numinous worlds.

Far from avoiding the charged issues of subjectivity, culture and intangibility, the book examines phenomenological, symbolic and designerly ways in which the holy gets fixed and experienced through buildings, landscapes, and urban forms, and not just in institutionally defined “religious” or “sacred” places.  Acknowledging that no individual voice can exhaust the topic, Transcending Architecture brings together a stellar group of scholars and practitioners to share their insights: architect Juhani Pallasmaa and philosopher Karsten Harries, comparative religion scholar Lindsay Jones and architectural theoretician Karla Britton, sacred architecture researcher Thomas Barrie and theologian Kevin Seasoltz, landscape architect Rebecca Krinke and Faith & Form magazine editor Michael Crosbie, are among the illustrious contributors.

The result is the most direct, clear, and subtle scholarly text solely focused on the transcendental dimension of architecture available. This book thus provides, on one hand, understanding, relief, and growth to an architectural discipline that usually avoids its ineffable dimension and, on the other hand, a necessary dose of detail and reality to fields such as theological aesthetics, material anthropology, or philosophical phenomenology that too often fall trapped into unproductive generalizations and over-intellectualizations.

The gardens that Gabriel Guévrékian designed during the 1920s in France have long been considered peripheral to the history of landscape architecture. The reasons for this marginalization are clear: they were too decorative for such major polemicists as Sigfried Giedion and too bourgeois for the Congres International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Even their designer rejected these gardens, suggesting that one neither take them too seriously, nor measure his worth by these works alone. No sooner had Guévrékian completed them he began the process of distancing himself from the entire project of the modern garden. Yet in recent reappraisals of both Guévrékian and the early “modernist” garden in France, his works have become de facto icons of the garden art of this period. Many of these recent assessments can be traced to a single article on Guévrékian that Richard Wesley published in 1980. This was the first scholarly treatment of Guévrékian’s gardens, and it did much to stimulate interest in his work. Using a conceptual apparatus developed by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky in their seminal essay “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal,” Wesley asserts that Guévrékian was attempting to copy the effects of cubist painting in his gardens. Yet, the gardens of Guévrékian, along with those of his contemporaries Paul and André Vera, Jean-Charles Moreux, and Le Corbusier, exhibit numerous influences such as surrealism, purism, and, in the case of Guévrékian, simultanéisme and Persian Paradise Gardens. Through reconsidering these gardens as complex cultural artifacts we can better understand the gardens Guévrékian designed during this period, the rich panoply of ideas upon which they were based, and why he felt the need to escape from them.

Modernist Cultures 12.3 (2017): 331–344. This essay reconsiders Reyner Banham's classic study of early twentieth-century architecture and design, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, originally published in 1960. Banham surveyed the architecture, design, and visual arts of the 'first machine age', characterized by industrial production and motorized transportation, from a self-consciously thematized perspective within the 'second machine age', populated by expendable consumer technologies and images. This revisionist perspective enabled Banham to challenge long-standing myths propagated by the dominant figures of the modern movement. In his polemical emphasis on the contingency and plurality of that which had empirically transpired in first machine age, Banham rejected the reduction of the messy history of the modern movement to the victory of a putative 'international style'. Banham reasserted the intimate connection of architectural modernism with the avant-garde artistic movements of the 1910s and 20s, emphasizing particularly the most radical ones such as expressionism, futurism, and dadaism.

Quella di Le Corbusier è un’architettura contraddistinta da un’apparente dialettica. Nei suoi scritti così come nei suoi progetti, troveremo, infatti, da un lato una sinergia simbiotica dei luoghi e dall’altro una razionalità progettuale . Dalla concezione post-modernista de La machine à habiter ai temi poetici dell’angolo retto, quella di Le Corbusier è una vera e propria filosofia dell’abitare. Questa dicotomia, che rende l’opera dell’architetto francese, d’importanza capitale, trova l’incontro tra razionale e poetico nel nesso in comune che è quello dell’esperienza. 
Un caso emblematico di esperienza è quello dell’elaborazione del Modulor che Le Corbusier sviluppa attraverso un lungo studio durante il Voyage d’Orient , un percorso spirituale e iniziatico, al mondo dell’architettura. Iniziato nel 1910 e terminato dopo un anno, è un tragitto che abbraccia la gran parte delle coste del Mediterraneo. « J’entrepris un grand voyage qui allait être décisif, à travers les campagnes et les villes des pays réputés encore intactes ; de Prague, je descendis le Danube, je vis les Balkans serbes, puis la Roumanie, puis les Balkans de la Bulgarie, Andrinople, la mer de Marmara, Stamboul (et Byzance), Brousse d’Asie. Et puis Athos. Et puis la Grèce. Puis le sud d’Italie, avec Pompéi. Rome. J’ai vu les grands monuments éternels, gloire de l’esprit humain. J’ai surtout cédé à cette invincible attirance méditerranéenne  ».  E’ dunque attraverso l’esperienza del Mediterraneo che Le Corbusier si affaccia al mondo dell’architettura, attraverso la meraviglia per la distribuzione degli spazi, della luce, dell’importanza dell’ombra e dei colori. Nel viaggio d’Oriente, contemporaneamente alla propria emancipazione, Le Corbusier concepisce il Modulor, come misura a scala umana, frutto dell’esperienza corporea e del calcolo matematico. Alla luce di questo parallelismo, possiamo considerare La Méditerranée di Le Corbusier come una scenografia attraversa la quale mettere in atto diverse riflessioni su cosa possa considerarsi esperienza interiore.


The Mediterranean of Le Corbusier, is not only an inner experience, is an anthropological lesson and fundamental composition. The conception of harmony as a dialectical encounter between man and space is concretized in the elaboration of the Modulor. The relationship between Classicism and Modernism reveals two aspects that make up the organic plastic canons in architecture from the early twentieth century. Le Corbusier using the philosophy of “the open hand” “la main ouverte” is capable to receiving and giving prosperity and harmony for all mankind.

This paper seeks to demonstrate that Le Corbusier's autodidactic agenda between 1908 and 1911 reflects a
consistent philosophical reasoning based on the philosophical tradition of German idealism. The vehicle of analysis is the
connection between Édouard Schuré's 'Sanctuaires d'Orient', a book Le Corbusier read in 1908, and three key episodes of
the subsequent period of travel. Schuré's book provides us with the philosophical framework to which he was exposed. The
three episodes, in turn, are taken as case studies in order to demonstrate the correlation between the philosophical
background of the book and Le Corbusier's changing attitudes during this period. The terms of this correlation are based on
an evolutionary conception of history and can be synthesized as the belief in cultural progress, leading to a new society built
upon the unity of science, religion and art, in a secular-sacred life attained through the recovery of a pantheistic existence,
and in art and architecture as a means to an epistemological experience. I will lastly argue that this creates the basis for the
lifelong influence of idealism in Le Corbusier's work and thought.

Since transcending architecture is fundamentally an action or event (not some esoteric, idealist construct deduced from dogma or philosophy), understanding what it really means to ‘transcend architecture’ demands a serious and detailed study of its experiential nature. And what better way to do this than by investigating one of the most well known yet less probed transcending experiences of architecture ever recorded: the extraordinary encounter of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (who was to become Le Corbusier a few years later) with the Parthenon in September 1911.

This chapter offers a thorough phenomenological examination of the event and delivers an array of new insights on the psychological, physical, and spiritual dimensions of the architectural numinous. It also demonstrates the power that such extraordinary moments may have in one’s life, not to mention the importance of this particular one in the architectural disciplines given the stature of Le Corbusier — arguably the most influential architect of 20th Century.

Alexandra Trevisan, Josefina Gonzalez Cubero e Pedro Vieira de Almeida (eds.).
RESUMEN: La aproximación detallada al edificio genérico de los immeubles-villas, tanto la versión de 1922 como la de 1925, intenta explicar su probable origen en la forma abierta como algo más que una mera hipótesis. Ambos edificios que Le Corbusier descarta de su arsenal urbano, entendidos respectivamente como figura y como fondo, contienen sistemas compositivos flexibles que se funden y mezclan con los desarrollos de los bloques à redents, a favor de los cuales se decanta definitivamente. Esta es la paradoja de los immeubles-villas: lo que se apunta como origen va a ser la causa de su fin.
Si se tiene en cuenta dicha posibilidad sobre su origen, los immeubles-villas se pueden considerar como un eslabón inicial de un proceso compositivo en vez de verse como una excepción dentro de los edificios genéricos de vivienda colectiva de Le Corbusier. Así pues, se consolida la idea de que todos ellos surgen de operaciones de yuxtaposición y enlace de unidades lineales encaminadas a establecer la forma abierta, la cual desemboca en la síntesis que supone el edificio continuo de la Ville Radieuse.
ABSTRACT: The detailed approximation to the generic building of the immeubles-villas, in both the 1922 and 1925 versions, attempts to explain its probable origin in the open format as something more than a mere hypothesis. Both buildings which Le Corbusier highlights from his urban arsenal, understood respectively as figure and as background, contain flexible composite systems that meld and combine with the developments of the block à redents for which he opts definitely.
This is the paradox of the immeubles-villas: what seems to be its origin is itself the reason for its end. If we take this possibility of origin into consideration, the immeubles-villas can be considered as an initial sketch of a composite process, and not as an exception to Le Corbusier’s generic projects of collective housing. This reinforces the possibility that all these projects stem from exercises of juxtaposing and linking linear unities in order to establish the open form which in turn would yield the synthesis considered in the continuous building of the Ville Radieuse.

Realizada al final de su carrera, la iglesia parroquial de Saint-Pierre de Firminy-Vert condensa todas aquellas obsesiones propias de su autor que se han ido materializándose poco a poco, que se acumulan lentamente por sedimentación en cada uno de sus proyectos hasta precipitarse en un sólido resultado, tangible y denso. Cada proyecto que precede a esta obra es un pequeño paso que, desplazándose de un lado a otro, avanza inexorablemente hacia un objetivo claro: la machine à émouvoir. Le Corbusier acomete la disciplina de la Arquitectura desplegando sus inquietudes en varios frentes simultáneos. La crítica ha descuidado esta consonancia de intereses comunes, fragmentando y disgregando aspectos aparentemente inconexos que en realidad vibran animados por la misma energía que les da forma: la poesía. Este trabajo quiere rescatar y reubicar todas esas piezas que iluminadas bajo un mismo fulgor han de ayudar a comprender esta visión integradora. No es una lectura unívoca, lineal, cronológica. Utilizando la iglesia como intermediaria, perfilaremos un extenso mapa de conexiones e interacciones que en última instancia pondrán de manifiesto una discurso proyectual monolítico, sintético e universal.

This is a longer and more detailed version of the essay Benton, T. (^2018). "E-1027 and the «drôle de guerre» " Rassegna di architettura e urbanistica: 46-61. Based on archive documents in the Getty Research Institute, the essay throws new light on the relationships between Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici. It casts doubt on many of the assumptions in Beatriz Colomina's 'War on Architecture' and 'Battle Lines' essays. It also seeks to understand why Le Corbusier painted his seven murals in E-1027 in 1938 and 1939 and what the reaction was.

Here is my first paper about the relasionship between Le Corbusier and the parisian art collector and gallerist Louis Carré. It is an extract of the proceedings of the symposium "Le Corbusier et les arts dits primitifs" (Fondation Le Corbusier / Editions de la Villette editor)

In this chapter, I focus on Le Corbusier, an artist with whom Marie Cuttoli worked, and one who is most pertinent to our examination of the tapestry and its role in architecture. I begin with the crucial question of why Le Corbusier concerned himself with tapestry. An immensely productive artist, Le Corbusier worked with a variety of media in his lifetime but is perhaps best known for his contributions to city planning and architecture. Le Corbusier’s name is synonymous with the interwar movement in western architecture known as International Style, primarily due to his book on the subject, entitled Toward a New Architecture (1923). However, Le Corbusier’s name also evokes a time in which the role of the architect expanded into a figure whose consultation was needed in every aesthetic decision. In the interwar period, the architect took on a variety of activities and interests—interests which included the potential of the tapestry.

This research paper attempts to establish orientalist undertones in Edouard
’s work at Chandigarh at its conceptual core, early design conception, the actualization of these ideas at Chandigarh and his extrinsic justifications and orientalist influences during his formative years to comprehension of his critics.

In 1911, a twenty-three-year-old Le Corbusier embarked on a six-month journey from Dresden to Istanbul, and back to his native Switzerland through Greece and Italy. Upon his return, the young architect unsuccessfully attempted to publish his travel notes as a book in 1912 and again in 1914. Only in 1965, forty days before his death, did Le Corbusier conduct the final revision of his 1914 typescript for publication. The next year, Le Voyage d’Orient was published posthumously. Previous scholarship on this book has overlooked the importance of Le Corbusier’s 1965 edits, consequently approaching the work as an authentic testament of the author’s youthful spirit. Based on a new and contextualized reading of the 1914 typescript hand-annotated by Le Corbusier in 1965, this article demonstrates how the late edits constitute a rewriting of a segment of Le Corbusier’s own history, especially in relation to his ideas of modernity, tradition, inspiration, and attachment to Mediterranean architecture. This essay concludes with methodological reflections on how previous teleological arguments on the impact of Le Corbusier’s trip onto his later career corroborate Eurocentric considerations of non-Western architecture.

Pour la génération d’architectes, tels Ionel Schein, qui se forment à Paris après la guerre, Le Corbusier représente le seul antidote à l’académisme “bozartien”. La filiation corbuséenne se fait d’abord en clandestinité, à travers les livres et les projets, puis avec le contact direct ou par lettre, et représente un bassin inépuisable pour l’éducation permanente des jeunes à l’architecture. Les rencontres et la correspondance, ponctuée de divertissements intellectuels, permettent à Schein d’absorber le lexique corbuséen comme une nouvelle langue maternelle, jusqu’à la formation de son propre vocabulaire d’architecture. A la mort du maître, contré pendant toute sa vie par les institutions, Schein est dégoûté par la suite grotesque d’honneurs posthumes mise en scène : sa fidélité au message de Le Corbusier survit aux apparences et dans ses obituaires sans couronnes de lauriers on trouve le sens profond d’un héritage tant discuté et imposant.

In 1921, issue 11-12 of L'Esprit Nouveau featured an article entitled " Toepffer, précurseur du cinema " where Le Corbusier, signing as 'De Fayet', vindicated the figure of Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846), a Swiss a pioneer of comics, as a key element in the development of cinema. Marginal as it may seem, this reference unveils a deeper relationship between Jeanneret and Töpffer's work which started in his childhood, and would have a key role in the development of some of Le Corbusier's trademark obsessions: travel, drawing, and cinematic narratives. In this context, " La Ligne Claire de Le Corbusier " proposes a close examination of the presence of graphic narrative and its aesthetics in Le Corbusier's early work in relation to its evolution from a sequential promenade architecturale to multispatial enjambment. The paper explores themes such as narrative and the inclusion of time in le Corbusier's Purist paintings, or his evolution from a painterly approach to drawing to an idealized, linear and synthetic rendering style.

ABSTRACT: The redent is the only generic building of Le Corbusier’s to endure and be transformed over the years between the initial and last designs, while others (immeubles-villas, gratteciel cartésien cruciforme, etc) disappeared altogether and still others arose during his lifespan (Unités, gratteciel «patte de poule» or “y”, etc). The residential redents’s obsessive presence can be attributed to its versatility in composition given that it is both open and closed at the same time. While the open form pools from French military architecture, the French garden, and social reformism, the closed form is highly attributed to Sitte’s tradition. To discover its phylogeny rather than its achievements, all one needs to do is go back in time from the stale mechanism used in Hauptstadt-Berlin to the incipient form that was inoculated based on Fröbel’s teaching system of learning through play.

Miyuki Aoki Girardelli, “Charles Eduard Janneret, Le Corbusier and the ‘Orient’”, in Ana Tostoes and Yoshiyuki Yamana eds., The 16th International Docomomo Conference Tokyo Japan 2020+1proceedings, Inheritable Resilience: Sharing Values of Global Modernities vo. 4, Tokyo, 29 August-2 September, 2021, pp. 1296-1299

Este libro pretende poner a disposición del lector en castellano una parte de la obra de Le Corbusier que hasta ahora no se podía encontrar sino de manera dispersa. Tomando como punto de partida los XI Rencontres de la Fundación Le Corbusier, Le symbolique, le sacré, la spiritualité (París: Editions de la Villete, 2004), en este volumen se recogen diversos ensayos que abordan el tratamiento del espacio sagrado en la obra del arquitecto franco-suizo, y más precisamente, su materialización en los edificios proyectados para el culto católico. Se ha incorporado documentación inédita, tanto escrita como gráfica, que quiere resaltar la inserción de estas obras dentro de la tradición de mecenazgo y de búsqueda de la excelencia como camino de encuentro con Dios, propia de la Iglesia católica.

Si sobre algunos de estos proyectos es difícil aportar novedades desde el punto de vista arquitectónico, el enfoque del cliente —la Iglesia católica en general, los padres dominicos o algunas asociaciones de fieles en particular— ha pasado mucho más inadvertido. Con esta nueva perspectiva, nos gustaría facilitar la comprensión de estos proyectos desde otro ángulo, el del programa, y así reconocer aquellos intereses comunes que comparten ambos extremos del hilo conductor.

This work sets out to explore the role played by Pierre Jeanneret in the design and construction of the city of Chandigarh between 1951-65. In the enormous task of anchoring the Chandigarh project Jeanneret played the role as faithful executioner of Le Corbusier’s visions both for the Capitol complex and the wider city.

Jeanneret was an innovative bricoleur leaving a trail of his furniture and architecture across the city. The paper begins to explore the dynamics between Jeanneret as the anchor to Le Corbusier’s architectural acrobatics.One must  hold  up a Corb shaped filter to try and find Pierre in the half light behind the glare of Le Corbusier’s persona. Pierre quietly floats by on a car tire in the sea of architectural  literature fixated on Le Corbusier. Although there is currently little architectural writing directly focused on Pierre Jeanneret, he was never far from the thoughts of Charlotte Perriand or Le Corbusier, who respectively left to posterity an autobiography and copious archives of correspondence from which much can be deduced. This text aims to uncover something of the complex relationship between the Jeanneret cousins and the individuality of Pierre Jeanneret’s work.

Jeanneret’s career is a case of  hiding in plain sight,  his contribution to the success of Le Corbusier’s life time corpus  has largely been obscured by the passage of time, by his reserved personality and the endlessly propelled Le Corbusier’s mythology. Perriand, Xenakis and Wogensky also never managed to fully escape the Corbusian event horizon.Drawing on direct observation of the multitude of built work in Chandigarh executed by the cousins the text examines something of the humanity of both protagonists, and acts as is an introduction to their lost time zone.

This article examines Le Corbusier's architectural design processes, paying special attention to his concept of "ineffable space". Le Corbusier related "ineffable space" to mathematics, arguing that both mathematics and the phenomenon of "ineffable space" provoke an effect of "concordance". He also argued that when the establishment of relations is "precise" and "overwhelming", architectural artefacts are capable of "provoking physiological sensations". For Le Corbusier, the sentiment of satisfaction and enjoyment that an architectural artefact can provoke is related to a perception of harmony. This article analyzes the reasons for which Le Corbusier insisted on the necessity to discover or invent "clear syntax" through architectural composition. He believed that the power of architectural artefacts lies in their "clear syntax". Particular emphasis is placed on the relationship of Le Corbusier's theories of space with those of Henri Bergson and the De Stijl movement. At the core of the reflections that are developed here are Le Corbusier's "patient search" ("recherche patiente") and the vital role of the act of drawing for the process of inscribing images in memory. For Le Corbusier, drawing embodied the acts of observing, discovering, inventing and creating. This article also relates Le Corbusier's interest in proportions and his conception of the Modulor to postwar Italian neo-humanistic approaches in architecture. It intends to render explicit how Le Corbusier's definition of architecture was reshaped, shedding light on the shift from defining architecture as clear syntax to defining architecture as the succession of events.

Makalenin amacı 20. yüzyılın ilk çeyreğinde yeni mimarlık ideallerini dile getiren Le Corbusier ve Theo van Doesburg’un odaklandığı makineleşme ve özlük kavramlarının birbiriyle olan ilişkisinin ortaya konmasıdır. Bu amaç doğrultusunda Le Corbusier’nin 1920 tarihli “Towards A New Architecture: Guiding Principles” (Vers Une Architecture) metni ile, Theo van Doesburg’a ait 1924 yılında De Stijl dergisinde yayımlanan “Towards A Plastic Architecture” metni karşılaştırılmıştır. Metinlerin yazıldığı dönemin düşünsel ortamı, siyasi ve sosyal altyapısı metinlerin karşılaştırılması için ortak bir zemin kurulmasına olanak sağlamıştır. Makalenin öne sürdüğü argüman ise, Corbusier’ye göre makineleşmenin özünü temsil eden geometrik formların; Doesburg’un nesnenin özüne inerek ulaşmak istediği nokta olduğu ve farklı kavramların odağından tarif edilen her iki “yeni mimarlığın” da çağın yeniliklerini içinde barındırması beklenen aynı zamanda çağa yön vermesi istenen mimarlıklar olduğu yönündedir.

This article looks into Le Corbusier's urban proposal for the City of São Paulo, as formulated during his journey to South America in 1929. It highlights the relationship between Architecture and Landscape exposed by Le Corbusier's plan. This paper sets out to investigate the analysis that the innovative Swiss architect performed of the geography and morphology of São Paulo. It contrasts to the works and plans carried out by technicians and engineers at that time. In order to explain how Le Corbusier's treatment of nature and landscape differs from them, we study the extent to which Le Corbusier's plans show design approaches, which were unusual in terms of Western History and Memory. He also looks into the relationship between Le Corbusier's work, on the one hand, and new technological elements and changes in the visual culture at that time, on the other hand, thus seeking to highlight certain obscure spots within Le Corbusier's work. This study aims at bringing forward some speculations and methods present in the work of Le Corbusier on cities. It deals with contradictory aspects in Le Corbusier's work in order to deepen our understanding of contemporary urban problems. Resumen: Este artículo investiga la hipótesis de proyecto de Le Corbusier para la ciudad de San Pablo, propuesta durante su viaje a América Latina en 1929, focalizando en las relaciones entre arquitectura y paisaje. La primera cuestión analizada en este trabajo es el innovador análisis de la geografía y la morfología de San Pablo propuesto por el arquitecto suizo, que contrasta con la manera con que los técnicos e ingenieros locales desarrollaban sus propuestas en ese momento. Para explicar dicha diferencia en la manera de lidiar con la naturaleza y el paisaje, el autor de este articulo estudia como el trabajo de Le Corbusier presenta abordajes de proyecto inusuales para la Historia y la Memoria, y su relación con los nuevos elementos tecnológicos y de la cultura visual de la época, procurando así resaltar ciertos puntos oscuros en el trabajo del arquitecto. Esta discusión intenta cuestionar ciertas especulaciones proyectuales y metodologías de trabajo presentes en el trabajo de Le Corbusier sobre ciudades, utilizando sus aspectos contradictorios como modo de profundizar nuestro entendimiento de los problemas urbanos contemporáneos.

Nadir  Afonso,  um  dos  mais  conhecidos  (e  reconhecidos)  pintores portugueses,  dedicou  grande  parte  da  sua  vida  ao  exercício  da profissão em que (afinal) se formou, a arquitectura, facto que ainda hoje é frequentemente ignorado pelo grande público.
Este artigo retrata a sua passagem pelo mundo da arquitectura, revelando-nos (...)

(PLEASE REQUEST THE FULL-TEXT TO THE AUTHOR)

This article looks at vernacular art and its milieu that had been seen by the eyes of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (1887-1965), when he visited Serbia in 1911 on his, now famous, voyage d’Orient. This voyage, across Northern and Central Europe, Balkan and the Mediterranean – via Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Tǔrnovo, Gabrovo, Adrianople, Constantinople (Istanbul), Mount Athos, Athens, and southern Italy – proved to be of the utmost importance for Ch.-É. Jeanneret, or as he was later known Le Corbusier, as an artist and architect.

RESUMEN: El proyecto para el concurso del Palacio de los Soviets en Moscú (1931) de Le Corbusier plantea otra posible y más fragmentaria clave de interpretación que, aunque en principio sea más marginal, merece ser mencionada: la relación con el teatro, con la renovación de la escena europea y con la experimentación soviética, porque Le Corbusier es consciente de que la arquitectura no consiste sólo en la cualidad del edificio, es también una puesta en escena, una dramaturgia. Escenógrafos como Appia, con la luz, o directores de escena como Max Reinhardt, con el espectáculo de masas, y Vsevelod Meyerhold, con el teatro japonés del Kabuki, van penetrando en el sentir de un Le Corbusier que deja la impronta teatral en la puesta en escena de la megaestructura moscovita.

ABSTRACT: Le Corbusier's design submitted to the public competition for the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow (1931) may have an additional interpretation which, although less researched and in principal more marginal, is noteworthy. And that is the relation­ship between theatre and the resetting of the stage in Euro pe and Soviet experimentation. Le Corbusier was aware that architecture goes beyond the building itself and is also a sort of staging or dramaturgy. Set designers such as Appia, through the use of light, and stage directors like Max Reinhardt, through the use of performance for the masses, and Vsevelod Meyerhold, through Japanese Kabuki theatre, gradually permeated the sensibility of Le Corbusier who left staging as a mark in his design for the Moscow me­gastructure.

Architectural practice is without any doubt based in a constant enquiry over the project. Even more important would be the fact that this process bounces off in two opposite directions: from the context onto the project and from the building onto the surrounding frame of reference. Both these two extremes are confronted in an active dialogue and to a certain extent, they both perform as “mirrors”. However, in the case of Le Corbusier, these questions do not only revolve around these two poles but even further, they do so in relation to his whole career. If we look closely at his works, we will find out that several ideas, concepts and strategies are transferred from one project to another as a tool able to trigger the creative process, thus unfolding through subsequent iterations. As part of this method, his own experiences and education during travels and visits help him to conform a synthesizing regard over the world.

Le Corbusier was never fond of participating in collective art movements, neither the plastic nor the architectural. With Amadée Ozenfant he launched a new vanguard, Purism, but it was practically limited to its two founders and had an ephemeral life, which ended with the estrangement of its two promoters. It is therefore quite remarkable that in 1930 -coinciding with the drafting of an important project, Centrosoyuz- we find him linked to a plastic trend and to an artistic magazine that emerged in France that same year: Cercle et Carré. The circle and the square were the emblems of this movement, but they also featured in the design process of the Muscovite building. They are a testimony to the predilection for two geometric forms, but also for a search for precision that must be found in any artistic manifestation and that nourishes all his work.