ART/ARCHITECTURE - Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier is perhaps the 20th century's most influential architect, responsible for persuading us of the merits of modern design on a grand scale. His work was at points hugely beautiful and accomplished, and at others, terrifying and extremely unhelpful. Our film explores Le Corbusier's mixed legacy, and what we might learn from it for the future.

FURTHER READING

“If the idea of being a ‘modern’ person and leading a ‘modern’ life still has an exciting ring to it, it’s at least in part down to the influence of an extraordinary Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who in the first half of the twentieth century wrote books, put up buildings and designed bits of furniture that conveyed the excitement, sleekness and glamour of the modern technological world. Le Corbusier began his career by attacking the architecture of the Victorian age – and contrasting it with what he saw as the beauty and intelligence of engineering. ‘Our engineers are healthy and virile, active and useful, balanced and happy in their work,’ he exclaimed in his polemical book, Towards a New Architecture (1923), while ‘our architects are disillusioned and unemployed, boastful or peevish. This is because there will soon be nothing more for them to do. We no longer have the money to erect historical souvenirs. At the same time, everyone needs to wash! Our engineers provide for these things and so they will be our builders.’...”

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CREDITS

Produced in collaboration with:

Mad Adam Films

Title animation produced in collaboration with

Vale Productions

[SirPerceval]

The man created the most soul crushing designs in existence. I would dread having to see, live or work in any of his buildings.

[helenadasilva]

"You can't find a person who are better to destroy the urban space, than a modernist" - Jan Gehl, one of the most influential urban theorist and designers.
Modern architects was so caught up in the newest technology and mashines, that they forgot about the human factor to design.

[seahawk]

"Well, now that he's (Le Corbusier) finished one building, he'll go write four books about it."
- Frank Lloyd Wright

I sure hope a Frank Lloyd Wright video is in the works.

[Aoiraider]

I worked in an office building in Japan that was built in 1958 by a Japanese architect inspired by Lecourbusier. It was the most dreadful work place I could have possibly imagined. The dense, uninviting concrete was impossible to remodel or decorate, it had been designed in an age before computers so the layout made no sense. It was drafty, ugly and foreboding. One of the worst buildings I have had the displeasure of being in.

[ree]

What a time to be alive! To see School of Life uploading again about philosophy and architecture💜

[LordProteus]

He had some interesting points, but I believe they are an example of a philosophical mind that lost it's sense of balance and became obsessed. Functionality and Efficiency are all well and good, but we shouldn't stop trying to make the world beautiful. Aesthetics and Culture are never irrelevant.

[PaulSyng]

I grew up in Chandigarh and lived there for over two decades and it's by far one of the most well-designed and beautiful places on earth!

[Torus]

I think his approach was sound, but as you said he didn't fully recognize the needs of human beings. It's all well and good to say you want to design a building or a neighbourhood purely around the practical needs of humans, but in order to do that properly you need to make sure you understand human needs and how to meet them. I've been inside many brutalist buildings that are very attractive and comfortable, and many that aren't. The difference, as far as I can tell, is the level of skill and respect for the human possessed by the people who built them.

[SRVo]

Livin in city made by him.. Chandigarh, India. Because of the vision he had. We dont have much traffic or pollution problem.

[LordProteus]

"Building taller buildings will solve overcrowding" he says, as if the Humans who live in those buildings will never leave the building... He actually didn't know what he was talking about in a lot of cases.

[Nero-oxtw]

His philosophy was so naive. He really had no idea just how important beauty is.

[seewhydoubleu]

Sadly, his most beautiful contributions that your video cited - the furniture and domestic interiors - were in fact designed by his female peers, Charlotte Perriand and Eileen Gray. The women were almost forgotten by the male-centric architectural history narrative until rediscovery in recent years.

[PjRjHj]

"He forgot..." implies that he ever knew, understood, or cared

[johnstelluto]

"One of the world's greatest architects but also one of the world's most disastrous urban designers"

[xSimranGuptax]

He designed Chandigarh one of the most well planned cities in India and it’s truly beautiful and EXTREMELY different from the other unplanned cities of India.

[curiousworld]

While I truly do understand what Corbusier and the Bauhaus were going for, it is cold and has never felt like 'humans' should inhabit their buildings. FL Wright also revolted against what he saw as the 'excesses' of the Victorians, but did it in a way that was beautiful - as did the Greene bros. and other Craftsman-style architects.

[Je.rone_]

The only time i want Saturday school is if it's the school of life

[Darkuiui]

I had the "chance" to grew up in a private house designed by Le Corbusier (rue des Arts, Boulogne Billancourt, France).
I was actually quite an awful design. The first floor was very dark with small large windows place at 1m80 height. Stairs was large and in concrete at the center of the building.

He made a distopian vision come true and, with the help of the politician of his time, he is responsible of many of the consequences we have in the French banlieu. Parking poors far away from the center of the city, in places designed for robots to be stored.

His work is in-human, ugly, non-functional, without emotions. Storage for robots.

[KannikCat]

As an architect it may be "sacrilege" to say this, but I'm very much not a fan of almost all of Corbu's work. Even beyond the 'towers in the park' urban planning mistake, I find his buildings lack any sense of refinement or delight. I love clean spare buildings -- Tadao Ando is one of my favs -- but they need a solid grasp of space and light to function, which most of Corbu's buildings seem to lack. Ronchamp is the only work of his that I'm enamored with (maybe La Tourette as well) and it's because there is a sense of space, refinement, and delight there.

[aarongladstein]

As an aspiring architect who has read Towards an Architecture and studied a good chunk of his work, I can tell you that his ideas on space, light and architectural form moved the entire profession of architecture into the 20th century. His ideas about city planning seem horrific to many of you. But you must understand why he proposed those ideas. The European city in the early 1900s was filled with soot filled air, dark, smelly(due to horse manure) and therefore breeding grounds for disease. While he was posing the problem of the city for himself he selected those issues as top priority to be solved. Hence his solution for tall skyscrapers spread apart surrounded by trees and parks.

As for his villas, the video didn't give them justice but they too, like his most popular book, were and still are architectural masterpieces that architects today can still pull ideas from. The way they arrange space, and dealt with issues of composition like paintings do. Le corbusier after all was also a painter who invented his own art style derived from his criticism of cubism. Which he called purism.
Also to discuss the reinforced concrete, Le corb was considered a master with reinforced concrete. he was one of the first to advocate for its use. He held that belief because one of his life long goals was to solve the issue of affordable housing that would be comfortable for the masses. Reinforced concrete was and still is the cheapest and most durable way to build. That allowed him to produce buildings for significantly less cost than most other buildings at the time.