Le Corbusier: And the Continual Revolution in Architecture

From Library Journal
It could be said that Le Corbusier was to 20th-century architecture what James Joyce was to its literature: each represents for his discipline an inventively pure, Modernist approach. Postmodern theorist, historian, and architect Jencks presents a critical biography of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, who took as a pseudonym a variation on his mother's ancestral name, Le Corbesier. Beginning with the architect's early regionalist work, Jencks examines Le Corbusier's growth into the role of master architect and innovator through detailed, original, and illuminating analyses not only of his building designs but also of his drawings and paintings, paying particular attention to his writings. Jencks argues for an appreciation of the deep sensuality in the architecture and its sources. The captions are lengthy and carefully descriptive, but a greater number of plans and color photographs of the higher-quality buildings as well as greater resolution would have enhanced this notable addition to our understanding of this ultimate architect as artist. For subject collections at all academic and larger public libraries.DPaul Glassman, New York Sch. of Interior Design Lib. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Famed Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier dominated 20th-century architecture much the way Picasso dominated painting. His outstanding achievements, his vision of a harmonious machine civilization, his paintings, drawings, sculpture, architecture, city planning, and writing together compose a portrait of the architect as ìprotean creator.î Like the classic Renaissance Man, Le Corbusier was versed in many fields and largely self-taught, and this gave his work a forceful personal stamp. These qualities also led to serious flaws with several of his ideas, particularly those on city planning, and to an unending conflict with society. This critical biography looks at Le Corbusier from all angels, including his personal life. Taking into account recent scholarship and new theories of architectural change, Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture explores the notion that the architect was driven by a prophetic voice to at once save and do battle with an industrialized society. Noted architectural historian Charles Jencks chronicles the transformation of Le Corbusierís early regionalist work, his emergence as a modernist leader in the 1920s, his use of metaphor and striking forms at Ronchamp and La Tourette, and the symbolism of his monumental forms at Chandigarh, demonstrating how Le Corbusier continually stayed well ahead of his followers to revolutionize the art of architecture over and over again.


About the Author
Architectural writer and designer Charles Jencks is the author of, among many other titles, Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, and The Architecture of the Jumping Universe.


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It could be said that Le Corbusier was to 20th-century architecture what James Joyce was to its literature: each represents for his discipline an inventively pure, Modernist approach. Postmodern theorist, historian, and architect Jencks presents a critical biography of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, who took as a pseudonym a variation on his mother's ancestral name, Le Corbesier. Beginning with the architect's early regionalist work, Jencks examines Le Corbusier's growth into the role of master architect and innovator through detailed, original, and illuminating analyses not only of his building designs but also of his drawings and paintings, paying particular attention to his writings. Jencks argues for an appreciation of the deep sensuality in the architecture and its sources. The captions are lengthy and carefully descriptive, but a greater number of plans and color photographs of the higher-quality buildings as well as greater resolution would have enhanced this notable addition to our understanding of this ultimate architect as artist. For subject collections at all academic and larger public libraries.--Paul Glassman, New York Sch. of Interior Design Lib. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.


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