le corbusier

1. LE CORBUSIER (1887-1965)
Presented by :
22/ARCH/009
22/ARCH/016
21/ARCH/019

2. INTRODUCTION
• Charles-Édouard Jeanneret also
known as Le Corbusier
• Born on October 6, 1887 at La
Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
• Swiss-French architect, designer,
writer, painter and urban planner
• Became a French citizen in 1930
• Studied architecture in Vienna in
1908
• One of the pioneers of modern
architecture

3. EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
 Charles Édouard-Jeanneret was born in the fall of 1887 in the small industrial town of La
Chaux-de-Fonds, in the section of the Alps called the Jura Mountains, just across the border
from France.
 His father was a watch engraver and enameller, and his mother worked as a music teacher.
 He left school when he was only 13 years old and did not have a formal academic training as
an architect
 He entered the Advanced Decorative Arts Course at the Art School in La Chaux-de-Fonds in
1904. The course on decoration there was taught by the painter Charles L'Eplattenier, who
would exert a strong influence on him, encouraging him to study architecture
 In 1905 when he was only 18 years old, in collaboration with Chapallaz and two other
students, designed his first house

4. PHILOSOPHY
 Le Corbusier explicitly used the modulor in the long tradition of Vitruvius,
Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, and other attempts to discover mathematical
proportions in the human body and then used that knowledge to improve the
appearance and function of architecture
 He based the systems on human measurements, Fibonacci numbers and the
Golden Ratio

5. FIVE POINTS OF ARCHITECTURE
 1. Pilotis - Replacement of supporting walls by a grid of reinforced concrete columns that bears
the structural load is the basis of the new aesthetic
 2. The free designing of the ground plan—the absence of supporting walls-means the house is
unrestrained in its internal use
 3. The free design of the facade—separating the exterior of the building from its structural
function-sets the facade free from structural constraints.
 4. The horizontal window, which cuts the facade along its entire length, lights rooms equally.
 5. Roof gardens on a flat roof can serve a domestic purpose while providing essential
protection to the concrete roof.
 Most succinctly summed up the five points of architecture - VILLA SAVOYE

6. NOTABLE PROJECTS

7. T HE MA IS O N BLA NC HE ,
T HE FI RST HO U S E BY
LE CO RBU S IE R
• Le Corbusier designed his first
house as an independent
architect being only 25 years old,
The Maison Blanche.
• Location – La Chaux-de-Fonds,
Switzerland
• The house was designed in 1912
for his parents and lived here
until he moved to Paris in 1915

9. VILLA SAVOYE
• Location - the outskirts of Paris,
France.
• Le Corbusier’s most renowned work
and a prime example of Modernist
architecture.
• Completed in 1931
• Use of reinforced concrete required
for fewer load-bearing internal walls,
allowing for an open-plan design.

11. UN HEADQUATERS
• Located in Midtown Manhattan,
New York, United States.
• Completed in 1951
• Blue-tinged glass reflects the
water below, while the two
windowless concrete walls give
the building a refined status of
solidarity and endurance

13. NOTRE DAME DU HAUT
• It is one of the earliest Modernist
churches (Roman Catholic chapel) in
Ronchamp, France.
• Built in 1955
• It is one of the finest examples of the
architecture of Le Corbusier.
• It has stained glass, tower, and high
ceilings, symbolically drawing the eye
– and the mind – towards heaven.
• Each window is cut through the wall
in different sizes and angles,
scattering ethereal colored light
across the room.

15. CHANDIGARH
• Chandigarh was planned by Le Corbusier
from 1951
• Completed in 1966
• Total area 114 sq km and population of
1054600 inhabitants
• He created sector in its design, each
sector has its self sufficient unit with
residential, shopping, institutional and
commercial area
• 1200x800m standard size of each sector
• Using sector as modules, he then place
several of these modules to create the
grid pattern

16. Palace of Justice, Chandigarh

17. Palace of assembly,

18. Secretariat, Chandigarh

19. ACCOMPLISHMENTS
• Honorary Degree by University of
Cambridge in 1959
• AIA Gold Medal in 1961
• Frank P.Brown medal in 1961
• Founding member of Congres
International d’architecture modern
• He was named Chevalier of the Légion
d'honneur in 1937
• 17 of his buildings are inscribed in
UNESCO World Heritage Sites reflecting
“outstanding contribution to the
modern movement”

20. BOOKS BY LE CORBUSIER
1918: Après le cubisme (After Cubism), with Amédée Ozenfant
1923: Vers une architecture (Towards an Architecture) (frequently mistranslated as "Towards a New
Architecture")
1925: Urbanisme (Urbanism)
1925: La Peinture moderne (Modern Painting), with Amédée Ozenfant
1925: L'Art décoratif d'aujourd'hui (The Decorative Arts of Today)
1930: Précisions sur un état présent de l'architecture et de l'urbanisme (Precisions on the present state of
architecture and urbanism)
1931: Premier clavier de couleurs (First Color Keyboard)
1935: Aircraft
1935: La Ville radieuse (The Radiant City)
1942: Charte d'Athènes (Athens Charter)
1943: Entretien avec les étudiants des écoles d'architecture (A Conversation with Architecture Students)

21. LATER LIFE
Le Corbusier died of a heart attack at age 77 in
1965 after swimming on the French Riviera. At the
time of his death several projects were on the
drawing board: the church of Saint-Pierre in
Firminy, finally completed in modified form in
2006, a Palace of Congresses for Strasbourg
(1962–65) and a hospital in Venice (1961–1965),
which were never built.
Le Corbusier designed an art gallery beside the
lake in Zürich now called Centre Le Corbusier, it is
one of his last finished works

22. LEGACY
Le Corbusier's six-decade career reshaped cities from South America to India. He built seventy five
buildings in a dozen countries and worked on over four hundred architectural projects. He
disseminated his ideas through his almost forty books and hundreds of published essays. This
extensive practice, characterized by the "poetic and often provocative interpretation of the
technologies and values of the new machine age," as architectural historian Kenneth Frampton
puts it, established him as one of the most influential and controversial artists of the 20th century.
Architect, city planner, painter, furniture designer, writer, publisher, and amateur photographer and
filmmaker, Le Corbusier introduced unconventional ideas that helped shape modern society. As
suggested by Kenneth Frampton "no single scholar has been able to master all the ramifications"
of Le Corbusier's creativity, not the least because Le Corbusier's perspectives and interpretations of
the world and its interaction with architecture often changed and remain difficult to pin down.
Thus his work continues to be studied, criticized, and reinterpreted today, gaining new meanings
and influencing generations to come.

23. THANK YOU