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PROTAGONIST / VISIONS IN CONCRETE

N ame: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, man at its centre. Some of his sketches reflect this vision per-
known as Le Corbusier. Born: 6 Au- fectly, and express the elementary grandeur of his insight in
gust1887 at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzer- full. Examples. Many, in a variety of fields. With just a few
land. Nationality: French. Profession: strokes of the pen, the house went from being a traditional
man of letters. In actual fact, Le Corbusier building with a pitched roof, thick walls and windows, to a
only became Le Corbusier in 1920, at the age of 33 (a num- structure in thin concrete with a flat roof and a car on the
ber that turns up often, for better or for worse, in the lives ground floor. Suddenly our homes become flexible places,
of many geniuses). It stood for a metamorphosis in his life “a machine for living in” as he used to call them, capable
as an author on a quest for definitive illumination, up to his of being built very fast and even inhabited by our vehicles.
embodiment of the public personality ready to carry modern But Le Corbusier went further still, defining the five basic
architecture towards seemingly more reassuring shores. For principles for our homes: they should be detached from the
33 years, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, Swiss and residing ground so they do not occupy it with their volume, have a
in a small town hidden in the Alps, travelled, discovered and flexible layout, keep the facade free with long, ribbon win-
studied, crossing Europe as far as the Bosphorous. He often dows and, lastly, conceive the roof as a habitable garden.
returned to Italy and met some of the masters of modern ar-
chitecture, such as reinforced concrete whizz August Per- W e are in 1926 and this design, which was first and
ret in Paris, or the inventor of industrial design, German Pe- foremost a cultural and social intuition, afforded
ter Behrens, designing the first works yielded by talent and a preview of what our homes would be like in 100
youthful enthusiasm. Architecture was his destiny and his glo- years. The city is an organism, not just a set of homes, bu-
ry. Yet on an identity document he defined himself a “man ildings, streets and offices put together in a linear manner.
of letters”; this was not just because our Edouard would ne- And the elements, the matter and light, must be placed at
ver actually graduate in architecture, but above all because the disposal of this harmony. In those same years, his the-
of a vision of this discipline which was much broader. It was oretical work visions redefined the very idea of the metro-
deeply linked to the culture of Humanism in which art, de- polis, imagining buildings that could only grow upwards so
sign of details, architecture, urbanistics, theory, religion and they wouldn’t take up ground space, with a clear separa-
literature were all seen as one simple, enthralling unit, with tion between car traffic and pedestrians, dreaming of par-

Top, from left, two pages from the notebooks Le Corbusier was never separated from during his travels. This sketch dates back to 1934, © FLC/SIAE, 2015
the year in which he held two important conferences in Rome; Villa Turca in Rue du Doubs at La Chaux-de-Fonds, built in 1917;
“Design for the Ateliers d’Art réunis à le Chaux-de-Fonds”, from 1910. Opposite, in his Paris studio in 1951: photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

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