Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier was the most influential architect of the twentieth century and among the most argued over. Born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in Switzerland in 1887, the son of a watch-case enameller, he trained in decorative arts, had no formal architectural education, and learned by travelling — working briefly for Perret in Paris and Behrens in Berlin, and journeying east through Greece and Turkey, where the Parthenon and the whitewashed vernacular both marked him. He adopted the name, taken from a relative, in 1920. Towards an Architecture, published in 1923, set out the arguments in slogans: that a house is a machine for living in, that engineers' work is closer to beauty than architects', and that architecture or revolution are the alternatives. His Five Points of 1927 specified the means — the building lifted on pilotis, a free plan and free façade made possible by a concrete frame, horizontal ribbon windows, and a roof garden. The Villa Savoye of 1931 demonstrates all five. His urbanism is the contested part. The Plan Voisin proposed demolishing much of central Paris for eighteen cruciform towers in parkland, and the Radiant City separated dwelling, work and traffic entirely. It was not built there and was built everywhere else, in postwar housing across Europe and beyond, generally without his rigour. His later work is the opposite of machine-like: the chapel at Ronchamp, the monastery of La Tourette, and the government buildings at Chandigarh, all in rough board-marked concrete. His wartime approaches to Vichy have been examined at length. He drowned swimming in 1965.

• Lived: 1887 CE – 1965 CE
• Nationality: Swiss
• Roles: architect, writer