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Architect Le Corbusier, born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, designed one of his early works in his mid-twenties: a rather old-fashioned villa in the Swiss Alps, with modest windows, an elegant two-story bay window and a sloping tiled roof. Thick walls, wood-paneled interiors and two generous fireplaces promised the residents a healthy indoor climate, cozy evenings beside the piano and warmth even in the snowiest Alpine winters. No wonder: the house was intended for his parents. A loving son, he was thinking of their health and comfort as he designed this welcoming nest. The Maison Blanche, built for his parents in 1912, is an early example of his work, although it was not his first architectural commission.
The buildings that followed, erected by the celebrated architect, left an indelible mark on the earth's surface in the most literal sense. But warmth and domestic comfort are not always the qualities for which they are remembered. Some wealthy Europeans who paid generously for the privilege of living in buildings by the “great” Le Corbusier soon found themselves paying again to repair them—or to escape them.
His reputation as a brilliant architectural innovator grew alongside accusations that he was an opportunist, a talker and a man quite willing to claim ideas developed by less fortunate colleagues. Whatever kind of person he really was, and whatever questionable things he may have done, a century later we can identify five elements of his work that shaped the appearance of modern civilization.
The First Element
After moving from Switzerland to Paris in the early twentieth century, Le Corbusier worked with designers and engineers on technical buildings and housing, among them concrete structures and industrial projects. The powerful shapes of water towers, power stations and workers' settlements seemed to lodge themselves permanently in his imagination, informing the functional language he developed. Paris at the time was alive with the modern avant-garde—Picasso, Braque and Modigliani. Le Corbusier entered these artistic circles and turned his attention to furniture as well as buildings.
Tables with glass tops supported by tubular metal frames, and severe rectangular chairs and sofas upholstered in leather, appeared at the Paris Salon d'Automne in 1929, in the artistic atmosphere created by the works of great modern sculptors and painters. Few buyers initially dared to embrace such extravagant furnishings. Today metal-framed furniture is commonplace in offices, while thick glass tabletops are familiar in homes everywhere. Yet the story has another author who must not be overlooked: Charlotte Perriand. She was not simply Le Corbusier's assistant but an independent designer whose work was central to the celebrated collection developed with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. Their furniture designs are now credited jointly to all three.
The Second Element
Le Corbusier did not confine himself to interior design. He also entered publishing, helping establish the Paris journal L'Esprit Nouveau—The New Spirit—which began appearing in 1920. Through its pages and through his subsequent books, he championed the theory that would earn him the title of a father of modern architecture. The famous “Five Points of a New Architecture” were formulated in 1926 and published in 1927.
The rules were these. First, modern buildings should be raised on slender supports, or pilotis, allowing the ground level to remain open and, in Le Corbusier's view, separating living spaces from the damp earth.
Second, reinforced-concrete frames would free interiors from the tyranny of load-bearing walls. Rooms could instead be divided by movable or nonstructural partitions, giving architects greater liberty in arranging their spaces.
Third, because the walls no longer needed to carry the weight of the building, long horizontal ribbon windows could admit more daylight across the façade.
Fourth, the architect would gain the freedom to design the exterior independently of the load-bearing structure: the free façade.
And fifth, the conventional sloping roof would give way to a flat roof terrace, an additional place to exercise, sunbathe, rest or grow a garden.
In his manifestos, these five principles were presented not merely as construction techniques but as the foundation of a new architectural aesthetic. Architecture from previous centuries was no longer to be the model for modern life. The timing was extraordinary. Young French architects, like their avant-garde colleagues in painting, were searching for a new language, and Le Corbusier offered them a persuasive creed.
Buoyed by success, he became a tireless advocate of his ideas, gathering followers in many countries. Conferences, exhibitions and symposia followed one another, and his books on architecture traveled far beyond France. Between these ambitious public campaigns, he also found time to build: villas, housing developments and institutional buildings, including work for the Salvation Army.
But such a visionary could hardly be satisfied with a few private houses. He wanted scale. Thus emerged his grand proposals for the Radiant City, or Ville Radieuse, and related plans for remaking the modern metropolis. The Athens Charter, published in 1943 and rooted in debates of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture, articulated many principles of functional urban planning, though it was not simply a single scheme announced by Le Corbusier alone.
Paris was one of his first targets. Under the controversial Plan Voisin of 1925, much of the historic central city would be demolished to make way for a regimented landscape of modern towers and open space. The Swiss architect evidently underestimated the French attachment to Paris as a national treasure. The proposal was never implemented, and it remains one of the most provocative images in the history of urban planning.
Meanwhile, the people who actually lived in some of his architectural experiments began to speak up. The residents of Villa Savoye in Poissy had particularly unhappy experiences. Pilotis did not save them from dampness. The famous flat roof leaked, and moisture infiltrated the building. The owners repeatedly complained that the house was uncomfortable and expensive to maintain; the account of a formal lawsuit against Le Corbusier is less firmly documented than the correspondence recording their frustration.
In the pre-internet age, news of Le Corbusier's fame traveled more quickly than warnings about the shortcomings of his buildings. Modernist villas modeled on his principles appeared across Europe, including in affluent German suburbs. In wet climates, poorly insulated concrete and experimental glazing could make life especially difficult.
It would be wrong, however, to say that four of his five principles disappeared from architecture. Open plans, nonstructural façades, expansive glazing and raised buildings remain influential. Modern engineering has merely transformed the materials and techniques used to achieve them. Villa Savoye, once a troubled family home, was ultimately restored and became a celebrated historic monument and museum; it is now recognized by UNESCO.
The Third Element
When the old European cities resisted being remade according to his vision, Le Corbusier turned his attention abroad. Soviet Russia, engaged in building a new society, appeared a promising audience for his ideas. In Moscow, he designed the Centrosoyuz building, an important monument of modern architecture. But the Soviet authorities did not adopt his sweeping proposal to rebuild central Moscow. Le Corbusier later crossed the Atlantic and delivered lectures in cities including New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia. Americans too were not about to demolish their older urban centers merely because a visiting architect said they should.
His ambitions carried him farther into South America. He contributed ideas and advice to Brazilian modernists, and his role as a consultant for the Ministry of Education and Health building in Rio de Janeiro helped spread the international architectural language of glass curtain walls and sun-shading devices. The building was principally designed by a Brazilian team led by Lúcio Costa, with Oscar Niemeyer among its members. Whether Le Corbusier invented the glass skyscraper is not a serious question of sole authorship: many architects and engineers were experimenting with such technology. His achievement was to champion and popularize a compelling version of the modern high-rise.
The Fourth Element
The Second World War, which devastated scores of European cities, inadvertently gave Le Corbusier's ideas a new urgency. Housing had to be rebuilt; governments had limited money; and economical structures of reinforced concrete, steel and glass suddenly looked attractive. His moment had come. During the postwar decades, he designed major residential projects in several French cities, most famously the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille.
This monumental apartment building, completed in 1952, incorporated duplex apartments and facilities intended to serve the residents: shops, a roof terrace and other shared amenities. The concept of the “housing unit”—a vertical community combining private living space and collective services—would influence residential design around the world. It was a compelling idea, although the notion that all subsequent apartment complexes were borrowed directly from it would overstate the case.
Le Corbusier was once again widely discussed, and the Catholic Church commissioned him to create a chapel at Ronchamp in eastern France and the Dominican monastery of Sainte-Marie de La Tourette near Lyon. In the monastery he interpreted the ascetic life of monks with a severity that many observers find almost brutal. Concrete, narrow cells and austere corridors replaced every conventional suggestion of domestic comfort. Yet the monastery was occupied and remains regarded as one of his important achievements; the often-repeated story that its intended inhabitants unanimously refused to move in is not supported by the record.
One curious contrast remains. The master of concrete, glass and steel spent many of his own later summers in a small wooden cabin at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the Mediterranean. Perhaps he simply found such modest surroundings more comfortable.
The Fifth Element
The architect's gaze continued to search beyond France. Germany had already welcomed his work at the Weissenhof Estate near Stuttgart in 1927; he would later contribute a modern residential block on Flatowallee in Berlin's Charlottenburg district. But Le Corbusier wanted to build an entire city. He looked east, and in newly independent India found the opportunity he had long awaited.
After the partition of British India, a new capital was required for Indian Punjab. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru supported the project as a symbol of a modern country. Chandigarh became Le Corbusier's most far-reaching opportunity to influence urban form. He was not its sole architect: Albert Mayer and Matthew Nowicki had worked on earlier plans, while Pierre Jeanneret, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry played major roles in the city and its buildings. Le Corbusier revised the master plan and designed the celebrated Capitol Complex and other major structures.
Chandigarh was built over many years. Its monumental administrative buildings, sector-based street plan, housing and public institutions gave the modernist experiment a scale impossible to achieve in Paris. Opinions about the result remain divided. Admirers praise the green spaces, legible planning and civic architecture; critics point to problems of urban scale, social separation and the practical demands of daily life. Nevertheless, Chandigarh remains one of the most consequential planned cities of the twentieth century.
In this sense Le Corbusier finally saw his vision of a new city partially realized. Other planned high-rise business districts would appear around the world: La Défense near Paris, Canary Wharf in London and Cuatro Torres in Madrid. These were developed at different times, by different teams, and not as projects of Le Corbusier, but the scale of their modernist ambitions reveals how widely the language of twentieth-century urban planning had spread.
Later, wealthy Gulf states called on leading architects to build dazzling new districts on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Kazakhstan followed its own path in developing a spectacular new capital. Perhaps, in another century, engineers will even build radiant cities on distant planets. For now, the experiment continues here on earth.
The architect's final decades also included work beyond housing and urban plans. The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard, completed in 1963, remains his only completed building in the United States. Modern American and European architecture adopted innumerable variations on the open plan, glass façade, concrete structure and flat roof—often with greatly improved insulation, weatherproofing and construction techniques. Russian cities too bear the unmistakable imprint of the international modernist movement, from prefabricated residential districts to daring contemporary towers and buildings elevated above the ground.
There is an irony here. Critics can point to failures in comfort, weatherproofing and the human scale of individual Le Corbusier buildings, yet his architectural ideas helped shape the world around us. Today's materials and technologies make many constructions in his tradition vastly more comfortable than their predecessors. In several respects the architect imagined forms that industry was not yet ready to perfect.
His influence is not simply a matter of opinion. In 2008, the Fondation Le Corbusier and France's Ministry of Culture, with support from the countries where his works stand, advanced an international proposal for UNESCO recognition. In July 2016, UNESCO inscribed seventeen Le Corbusier sites in seven countries on the World Heritage List.
And yet criticism will never entirely disappear. Today, as a century ago, a snow-covered little house with a fireplace, bay window and piano can still hold a special place in the human heart. Most importantly, its owner may want it to look nothing like the neighbor's.