Le Corbusier

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier was born on the 6^th October of 1887 and died of the 27^th August of1965. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930.  He was an architect, designer, a painter, as well as an urban planner, and writer. Le Corbusier is known as one of the innovators of what is now called modern architecture. Le Corbusier was devoted to providing living conditions which were better suited for the residents of crowded cities and he was influential in urban planning.

When he was still young, he was interested in the visual arts and so he was a student at La-Chaux-de-Fonds Art School. A large influence that occurred during the time he spent at this school was by his architecture teacher in the Art School was the architect René Chapallaz.

At about 1907, he found work with Auguste Perret, the French pioneer of reinforced concrete, in Paris. Here he initiated to form his own ideas about architecture. He furthered upon his studies in architecture 1908, in Vienna with Josef Hoffmann and this lead him to work with the architect Peter Behrens, where he may have met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius.

In his early career Le Corbusier taught at his old school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds during World War I, during which he worked on theoretical architectural studies using modern techniques. Further connections were made this time in 1918, when he met the Cubist painter Amédée Ozenfant, who invigorated Le Corbusier to paint, and the two began a period of collaboration.

Le Corbusier was also responsible for seeking an effective way how to be able to house large numbers of people in Paris, in response to the urban housing crisis. He believed that his new, modern architectural forms would provide an organizational solution  to this problem and in result would increase the quality of life for the lower classes. His Immeubles Villas (1922) was such a project, that needed large blocks of apartments which were stacked one on top of the other, with plans that included a living room, bedrooms, and kitchen, as well as a garden terrace.

Le Corbusier also contributed to the L'Esprit Nouveau movement that supported the use of modern industrial techniques to alter society into a more efficient environment with a higher standard of living. It was here where he  strongly argued that this alteration was needed to escape the effects of revolution.

It was in the 1930s, that Le Corbusier expanded his ideas in relation to urbanism. He visioned a city that was clean and pure, and so brought calm and powerful architecture in relation to it. After World War II, Le Corbusier tried to realize his urban planning schemes on a small scale.

Villa Savoye

It was Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye that was mostly successful in attaining together the five points of architecture that he had explained in L'Esprit Nouveau.

First, Le Corbusier lifted the mass of the structure off the ground, supporting it by pilotis, reinforced concrete stilts which helped him to clarify both a free facade, and an open floor plan. The second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows that permit the views of the nearby yard, and which constitute the fourth point of his system. The fifth point was the roof garden to balance for the green area consumed by the building.

Bibliography:

Wikipedia. Le Corbusier. [Online] Available at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier  [Accessed on 2^nd January 2014]