Product Description

No other architect since Palladio has exercised such an immense influence as Le Corbusier. As with Einstein and Picasso, Le Corbusier made an impact that was felt within but also outside his special discipline. Through numerous buildings, urban projects, paintings, sculptures, drawings, and publications, he succeeded to develop a unique poetics of machine and metaphor, revolutionizing the way people see, use, and make architecture. More than a modern architect, Le Corbusier was the architect of modern life.

The present monograph discusses Le Corbusier's oeuvre in a concise global manner in relation to the revolutionary developments of the century in which it was born. It shows how Le Corbusier worked within the context of new philosophical ideas; the avant-garde culture; the social, economic, and political movements; and new technology, achieving more than a delicate balance-- a synthesis. But it demonstrates also that Le Corbusier was a creator who conceived, enticed, and shaped many of these developments. As well as being the architect of the twentieth century, Le Corbusier is a prototype of human creativity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1778823 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-09
• Released on: 2002-02-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Alexander Tzonis holds the chair in Architectural Theory and Design Methods at the University of Technology of Delft and is director of DKS (Design Knowledge Systems), a multidisciplinary research center in architectural cognition. As the general editor of the Garland Architectural Archives, he published the complete archives of Le Corbusier in thirty-two volumes. Among his numerous publications is Santiago Calatrava: The Poetics of Movement, another volume in Universe's architecture series.

Customer Reviews

An evocation of Le Corbusier
A rather slight but very appealling work on Le Corbusier. Tzonis has distilled the rich and varied work of this master of Modern Architecture into a beautifully organized book. He covers Corbu's life from his humble origins in the Swiss Alps to the international influence his ideas would have on architecture. There are many illustrations of his buildings and evocative sketches from Corbu's journals, but this is less a study than it is an evocation of Le Corbusier.

Yet, Tzonis questions some of Corbu's positions especially in regard to his relationships with Stalin and Mussolini, making it seem that Le Corbusier was less an idealist and more a totalitarian when it came to his urbanistic visions. When Le Corbusier proposed the Plan Voisin for Paris, he paid homage to King Louis XIV, noting that only a despot could have carried out such grand visions.

Tzonis also discusses the important role Corbu's early travels had in shaping his views, particularly his "Journey to the East." It is here that he found many of the forms which he would reduce to a "kit of parts" that he employed over and over again in his later work, finding new meanings and many rich combinations.