The war years of Le Corbusier

World War II and the German occupation of France interrupted his activity as a builder and a traveller and his 20-year association with Pierre Jeanneret, who, unlike Le Corbusier, had joined the French Resistance. Although he was prepared to work with the Vichy government, there was little building being done at the time in France, and his only activities were painting, writing, and reflection.

Le Corbusier’s thoughts during this time led to the elaboration of the first bases of the “Modulor” concept, a scale of harmonic measures that set architectural elements in proportion to human stature. This theory was finally perfected in 1950, and Le Corbusier used it in designing all his subsequent buildings, wishing them to incorporate “a human scale.” By the time the war ended, Le Corbusier had welded the attacks launched against him by representatives of traditional architecture into a myth. He had become, for the public, the Pablo Picasso of architecture and, for architecture students, the symbol of modernity.

The second period

Le Corbusier thought that he would finally be able to apply his theories of planning in the reconstruction of France. He prepared in 1945 two plans for the cities of Saint Dié and La Pallice-Rochelle. At Saint Dié, in the Vosges Mountains, he proposed regrouping the 30,000 inhabitants of the destroyed town into five functional skyscrapers. These plans were rejected, but they subsequently circulated throughout the world and became doctrine. Le Corbusier was bitter, however, and his bitterness increased when he was named a member of the jury of architects for the construction of the United Nations building in New York City instead of being asked to design it himself.

At last, thanks to the unlimited support of the French government, Le Corbusier was given the opportunity to construct a large (private) housing complex; he was commissioned to build, in Marseille, a residential complex that embodied his vision of a social environment.

The Marseille project (unité d’habitation) is a vertical community of 18 floors. The 1,800 inhabitants are housed in 23 types of duplex (i.e., split-level) apartments. Common services include two “streets” inside the building, with shops, a school, a hotel, and, on the roof, a nursery, a kindergarten, a gymnasium, and an open-air theatre. The apartments are conceived as individual “villas” stacked in the concrete frame like bottles in a rack. It was completed in 1952, and two more unítés were built at other locations in France, at Nantes and Briey, as well as others in West Berlin.

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Cubism: Art and Artists

Two religious buildings in France were commissioned as a result of the influence of the Dominican father Reverend Couturier, creator of the review L’Art Sacré. The more lyrical of the two, the chapel Notre-Dame duHaut at Ronchamp (1950–55), sacrifices Le Corbusier’s famous principles of apparent functionalism; the wall has been built to a double thickness for visual effect and the roof, which appears to be suspended, actually rests on a forest of supports. More brutal and austere is the convent of Sainte-Marie-de-la-Tourette at Eveux-sur-Arbresle, near Lyon. The square building imposes a fortress of concrete in a natural setting. In the three-tiered facade of glass at la Tourette, Le Corbusier first employed panes of glass set at “musical” intervals to obtain a lyrical effect. Le Corbusier’s reputation in France was established with two large expositions of his work in Paris in 1953 and in 1962.

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Only from 1950 on did Le Corbusier become active on a large scale outside of France. In 1951 the government of the Punjab named him architectural advisor for the construction of its new capital, Chandigarh. For the first time in his life, Le Corbusier was able to apply his principles of city planning on a metropolitan scale. Totally without reference to local tradition he designed the Palace of Justice, the Secretariat, and the Palace of Assembly. Unfinished concrete, with windows sheltered by enormous concrete sunshades, the sculptural facades, swooping rooflines, and monumental ramps are principal elements of his architecture, which immediately influenced architects all over the world. He built the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (1960), the Carpenter Visual Art Center at Harvard University (1964), and designed an Exposition Pavilion in Zürich that was constructed posthumously (1964).

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Le Corbusier was not greatly impressed by his late recognition. He seemed to prefer the image of a solitary and persecuted genius. Nevertheless, he continued to conceive new projects until the end of his life: an art centre for Frankfurt (1963), the Olivetti computer centre in Milan (1963), the Palais des Congrès in Strasbourg (1964), and the French embassy in Brasília (1964). In addition to practicing architecture, making art, and writing, Le Corbusier also designed a number of objects, including a furniture collection (1928) with Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand that included the LC1 chair and LC4 chaise lounge. Le Corbusier died suddenly in 1965 while swimming. The man who had thought himself so misunderstood in his own time was given a national funeral, and in 1968 the Le Corbusier Foundation was created.