Download or read book Le Corbusier written by Nicholas Fox Weber and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2008-11-11 with total page 865 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From acclaimed biographer and cultural historian, author of Balthus and Patron Saints—the first full-scale life of le Corbusier, one of the most influential, admired, and maligned architects of the twentieth century, heralded is a prophet in his lifetime, revered as a god after his death. He was a leader of the modernist movement that sought to create better living conditions and a better society through housing concepts. He predicted the city of the future with its large, white apartment buildings in parklike settings—a move away from the turn-of-the-century industrial city, which he saw as too fussy and suffocating and believed should be torn down, including most of Paris. Irascible and caustic, tender and enthusiastic, more than a mercurial innovator, Le Corbusier was considered to be the very conscience of modern architecture. In this first biography of the man, Nicholas Fox Weber writes about Le Corbusier the precise, mathematical, practical-minded artist whose idealism—vibrant, poetic, imaginative; discipline; and sensualism were reflected in his iconic designs and pioneering theories of architecture and urban planning. Weber writes about Le Corbusier’s training; his coming to live and work in Paris; the ties he formed with Nehru . . . Brassaï . . . Malraux (he championed Le Corbusier’s work and commissioned a major new museum for art to be built on the outskirts of Paris) . . . Einstein . . . Matisse . . . the Steins . . . Picasso . . . Walter Gropius, and others. We see how Le Corbusier, who appreciated goverments only for the possibility of obtaining architectural commissions, was drawn to the new Soviet Union and extolled the merits of communism (he never joined the party); and in 1928, as the possible architect of a major new building, went to Moscow, where he was hailed by Trotsky and was received at the Kremlin. Le Corbusier praised the ideas of Mussolini and worked for two years under the Vichy government, hoping to oversee new construction and urbanism throughout France. Le Corbusier believed that Hitler and Vichy rule would bring about “a marvelous transformation of society,” then renounced the doomed regime and went to work for Charles de Gaulle and his provisional government. Weber writes about Le Corbusier’s fraught relationships with women (he remained celibate until the age of twenty-four and then often went to prostitutes); about his twenty-seven-year-long marriage to a woman who had no interest in architecture and forbade it being discussed at the dinner table; about his numerous love affairs during his marriage, including his shipboard romance with the twenty-three-year-old Josephine Baker, already a legend in Paris, whom he saw as a “pure and guileless soul.” She saw him as “irresistibly funny.” “What a shame you’re an architect!” she wrote. “You’d have made such a good partner!” A brilliant revelation of this single-minded, elusive genius, of his extraordinary achivements and the age in which he lived.

Download or read book The LeCorbusier archive 4 Centrosoyus written by Le Corbusier and published by Facsimiles-Garl. This book was released on 1982 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 4.

Download or read book Le Corbusier written by Cemal Emden and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This visual tour of every one of Le Corbusier’s buildings across the world represents the most comprehensive photographic archive of the architect’s work. In 2010, photographer Cemal Emden set out to document every building designed by the master architect Le Corbusier. Traveling through three continents, Emden photographed all the 52 buildings that remain standing. Each of these buildings is featured in the book and captured from multiple angles, with images revealing their exterior and interior details. Interspersed throughout the book are texts by leading architects and scholars, whose commentaries are as fascinating and varied as the buildings themselves. The book closes with an illustrated, annotated index. From the early Villa Vallet, built in Switzerland in 1905, to his groundbreaking Unité d'Habitation in Marseille, completed in 1947, this ambitious project presents the entirety and diversity of Le Corbusier’s architectural output. Visually arresting and endlessly engaging, it will appeal to the architect’s many fans, as well as anyone interested in the foundation of modern architecture.

Download or read book Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture written by Jonathan M. Reynolds and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-07-19 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japanese architecture's commanding presence on the world stage can be traced to the struggles of earlier generations of Japan's modernist architects. This first book-length study of Maekawa Kunio (1905-1986) focuses on one of the most distinctive leaders in Japan's modernist architectural community. In a career spanning the 1930s to the 1980s, Maekawa's work and critical writing put him in the vanguard of the Japanese architectural profession. Jonathan Reynolds illuminates Maekawa's role as a bridge between prewar and postwar architecture in Japan, focusing particularly on how he influenced modernism's ambivalence regarding "tradition" and contemporary practice and the importance of technology in modernist design and ideology. Maekawa studied architecture at the prestigious Tokyo Imperial University before moving to Paris in 1928 to work with Le Corbusier. The latter experience had a powerful impact on Maekawa; he became an advocate for Le Corbusier and modernism when he returned to Japan two years later. Throughout his career Maekawa designed residential, commercial, and government buildings in Japan and abroad. He became particularly well known internationally for his approach to public architecture, especially museums and public spaces such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall. These projects illustrated the principles that earned Maekawa the respect and admiration of architects the world over. Carefully researched, with numerous illustrations that complement discussions of Maekawa's principal projects, Reynolds's book will be welcomed in the fields of architecture and design. It will also attract readers interested in twentieth-century Japan, for in addition to highlighting Maekawa's architectural career, Reynolds portrays the broader cultural context within which Maekawa and other Japanese architects and artists sought to be heard and recognized.

Download or read book Scenes of the World to Come written by Jean-Louis Cohen and published by Flammarion-Pere Castor. This book was released on 1995 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Architectural Drawings of the Russian Avant garde written by Catherine Cooke and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Le Corbusier The Built Work written by Richard Pare and published by The Monacelli Press, LLC. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most thoroughgoing survey of nearly all of Le Corbusier's extant projects, beautifully photographed and authoritatively detailed. Le Corbusier is widely acknowledged as the most influential architect of the twentieth century. As extensively researched and documented as his works are, however, they have never been exhaustively surveyed in photographs until now. Photographer Richard Pare has crossed the globe for years to document the extant works of Le Corbusier--from his first villas in Switzerland to his mid-career works in his role as the first global architect in locations as far-flung as Argentina and Russia, and his late works, including his sole North American project, at Harvard University, and an extensive civic plan for Chandigarh, India. Le Corbusier: The Built Work provides numerous views of each project to bring a fuller understanding of the architect's command of space, sometimes surprising use of materials and color, and the almost ineffable qualities that only result from a commanding synthesis of all aspects of design. With an authoritative text by scholar and curator Jean-Louis Cohen, Le Corbusier: The Built Work is a groundbreaking opportunity to appreciate the master's work anew.

Download or read book The Lost Vanguard written by Richard Pare and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book includes seventy-three structures, starting with the Shabolovka Radio Tower in Moscow and concluding with the Lenin Mausoleum. In between are buildings from all over Moscow (where the greatest concentration of modernist buildings still remains), St. Petersburg, Ivanovo, Ekaterinburg, Kiev, Kharkov, Zaporozhe, Nizhi Novgorod, Sochi, and Baku. The buildings range from grand projects such as Gasprom in Kharkov to a modest bus shelter in Sochi, a rare survivor by an unknown architect." "In an essay, architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen surveys the history of the period, providing a context for the emergence of this startling new architecture in parallel to contemporary experiments in Europe."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Le Corbusier written by Mary A. Vance and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Australian Ugliness written by Robin Boyd and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2010-03-29 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years after its first publication, Robin Boyd's bestselling The Australian Ugliness remains the definitive statement on how we live and think in the environments we create for ourselves. In it Boyd rallied against Australia's promotion of ornament, decorative approach to design and slavish imitation of all things American. 'The basis of the Australian ugliness,' he wrote, 'is an unwillingness to be committed on the level of ideas. In all the arts of living, in the shaping of all her artefacts, as in politics, Australia shuffles about vigorously in the middle - as she estimates the middle - of the road, picking up disconnected ideas wherever she finds them.' Boyd was a fierce critic, and an advocate of good design. He understood the significance of the connection between people and their dwellings, and argued passionately for a national architecture forged from a genuine Australian identity. His concerns are as important now, in an era of suburban sprawl and inner-city redevelopment, as they were half a century ago. Caustic and brilliant, The Australian Ugliness is a masterpiece that enables us to see our surroundings with fresh eyes. This handsome anniversary edition is complemented by Robin Boyd's original sketches for the book and a new afterword by major contemporary architects.

Download or read book Le Corbusier written by Danièle Pauly and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Each day of my life has been dedicated in part to drawing. I have never stopped drawing and painting, seeking, where I could find them, the secrets of form."--Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier (1887-1965), is famous for transforming 20th-century architecture and urbanism. Less attention has been paid to his artistic production, although he began his career as a painter. Le Corbusier indeed studied under Charles L'Éplattenier and, together with the artist Amédée Ozenfant, founded the Purist movement in the manifesto After Cubism. Even after Le Corbusier turned to architecture, he continued to paint and draw. His thousands of drawings, rarely exhibited but meticulously stored in two watch cabinets from his family home, were particularly significant; he considered his work as a draftsman to be fundamental to his creative process. Beautifully illustrated with more than 300 drawings that have never before been published for an English readership, this revealing book charts the evolution of Le Corbusier's process from his youthful travels abroad to his arrival and maturation in Paris. Danièle Pauly shows how his drawings functioned within an intimate zone of private reflection and situates his work within the broader artistic and intellectual currents of Cubism, Purism, Primitivism, and Surrealism. In addition to providing a crucial new background against which to comprehend Le Corbusier's architecture and urbanism, this important volume advocates for understanding him alongside leading modern artists including Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger.

Download or read book Designing the Modern City written by Eric Paul Mumford and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive new survey tracing the global history of urbanism and urban design from the industrial revolution to the present. Written with an international perspective that encourages cross-cultural comparisons, leading architectural and urban historian Eric Mumford presents a comprehensive survey of urbanism and urban design since the industrial revolution. Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, technical, social, and economic developments set cities and the world's population on a course of massive expansion. Mumford recounts how key figures in design responded to these changing circumstances with both practicable proposals and theoretical frameworks, ultimately creating what are now mainstream ideas about how urban environments should be designed, as well as creating the field called "urbanism." He then traces the complex outcomes of approaches that emerged in European, American, and Asian cities. This erudite and insightful book addresses the modernization of the traditional city, including mass transit and sanitary sewer systems, building legislation, and model tenement and regional planning approaches. It also examines the urban design concepts of groups such as CIAM (International Congresses of Modern Architecture) and Team 10, and their adherents and critics, including those of the Congress for the New Urbanism, as well as efforts toward ecological urbanism. Highlighting built as well as unbuilt projects, Mumford offers a sweeping guide to the history of designers' efforts to shape cities.

Download or read book Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning written by Le Corbusier and published by Park Publishing (WI). This book was released on 2015-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of his death (August 27, 2015), one of Le Corbusier's most significant books becomes available again in English. We are doing a reprint of MIT Press's first edition of 1991, which again is based on the original French version of 1930, with an introduction added by the author in 1960. While the MIT Press version had black-and-white illustrations throughout, Park Books' new edition features some of Le Corbusier's drawings in color as they were in the earlier French editions. A new essay by British scholar Tim Benton, written for this new edition, contextualizes the book within Le Corbusier's oeuvre and comments on its lasting significance. An also new appendix explains specialist terms and provides background information on persons and historic events no longer necessarily known to a younger generation of architects. The Precisions, as the book is known commonly, emerged from a spontaneous and exuberant series of 10 lectures Le Corbusier gave in Buenos Aires during the fall of 1929. As he spoke, Le Corbusier improvised drawings on large sheets of paper with crayons. While similar drawings appear in other works, here all the lectures and images appear in their original context as Le Corbusier assembled them more than 80 years ago. The texts reflect a new maturity in Le Corbusier's thinking and an extreme confidence in the development of his ideas. The drawings and lectures are unique in their eloquent and concise summary of his philosophy of architecture and urban design, stating the principles that informed his work from the 1920s on. They contain some of his most compelling aphorisms, both verbal and visual, covering technique as the basis of architecture, the human scale in design, furniture, the private house, apartments and office buildings, the city, the League of Nations competition, teaching architecture, and a splendid analysis of the transformation of his own work in houses from La Roche-Jeanneret to the Villa Savoye. [Based on MIT Press's copy for their 1991 edition]

Download or read book Le Corbusier in America written by Mardges Bacon and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study of Le Corbusier's American tour, Mardges Bacon reconstructs his encounter with America in all its fascinating detail. It presents a critical history of the tour as well as a nuanced and intimate portrait of the architect.

Download or read book Modern Architecture and the Critical Present written by Kenneth Frampton and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Modern Architecture and Climate written by Daniel A. Barber and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-11 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How climate influenced the design strategies of modernist architects Modern Architecture and Climate explores how leading architects of the twentieth century incorporated climate-mediating strategies into their designs, and shows how regional approaches to climate adaptability were essential to the development of modern architecture. Focusing on the period surrounding World War II—before fossil-fuel powered air-conditioning became widely available—Daniel Barber brings to light a vibrant and dynamic architectural discussion involving design, materials, and shading systems as means of interior climate control. He looks at projects by well-known architects such as Richard Neutra, Le Corbusier, Lúcio Costa, Mies van der Rohe, and Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and the work of climate-focused architects such as MMM Roberto, Olgyay and Olgyay, and Cliff May. Drawing on the editorial projects of James Marston Fitch, Elizabeth Gordon, and others, he demonstrates how images and diagrams produced by architects helped conceptualize climate knowledge, alongside the work of meteorologists, physicists, engineers, and social scientists. Barber describes how this novel type of environmental media catalyzed new ways of thinking about climate and architectural design. Extensively illustrated with archival material, Modern Architecture and Climate provides global perspectives on modern architecture and its evolving relationship with a changing climate, showcasing designs from Latin America, Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and Africa. This timely and important book reconciles the cultural dynamism of architecture with the material realities of ever-increasing carbon emissions from the mechanical cooling systems of buildings and offers a historical foundation for today’s zero-carbon design.

Download or read book Seeing Like a State written by James C. Scott and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University