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Definition: Le Corbusier from Philip's Encyclopedia

Swiss-born French architect (Charles Édouard Jeanneret). His early work exploited the qualities of reinforced concrete in cube-like forms. His Unité d'Habitation, Marseilles (1946-52), was a modular design widely adopted for mass housing. Later, he evolved a poetic style, of which the Chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp (1955) is an example. In the 1950s, he laid out the town of Chandigarh, India, and built its Supreme Courts. His last major work was the Visual Arts Center at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1963). His book Towards a New Architecture (1923) is a key text of the international style.


Le Corbusier

From Encyclopedia of Urban Studies
Le Corbusier was one of the most influential yet controversial architect-planners of the twentieth century, as well as being a prolific writer, painter, sculptor, and poet. He occupies a troubled place in architectural scholarship. Some cannot forgive him his arrogance and political opportunism. Others see a designer of genius and a polemically brilliant writer. Born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in Switzerland in 1887, he seemed destined for a career in watch-case engraving before developing an interest in architecture. The first house he built was the Villa Fallet (1907), which reflected his hometown vernacular with its steep roof and ornamented façade. Between 1908 and 1911, however, Jeanneret was apprenticed to Auguste Perret and Peter Behrens, early pioneers of reinforced concrete construction and industrial design. He traveled extensively around Europe and the near East, where the Hagia Sophia and Parthenon had a profound effect on him. It was also around this time that he read the…
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Full text Article LE CORBUSIER

From The Dictionary of Alternatives
Born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris in Switzerland, this architect, planner and self-publicist (1887–1965) adapted his grandfather’s name as his pseudonym in 1920. Like the Italian futurists, Le Corbusier was fascinated by the streamlined designs of cars, aeroplanes and massive US grain elevators. …
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Full text Article Le Corbusier

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
pseudonym of Charles Édouard Jeanneret 1887-1965 French architect Born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, he worked in Paris with the architect Auguste Perret , then associated with Peter Behrens in Germany (1910-11). In 1918 he published in Paris (with Amédée Ozenfant ) the Purist manifesto, "Après…
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Full text Article LE CORBUSIER

From Great Lives: A Century in Obituaries
With the death of Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris), the world has lost one of its greatest architects and certainly the most controversial architectural figure of our time. Le Corbusier was both a major pioneer of the modern architectural movement and a visionary who saw in the…
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Full text Article Le Corbusier (1887-1965)

From The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Design Since 1900
Is the pseudonym of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, who was perhaps the most influential figure in modern architecture from 1920 to 1960. He was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds in the Swiss Jura, the son of a watch-case engraver. His earliest training was in his father's trade at the civic art school. Here his…
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Full text Article Le Corbusier (1887–1965)

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Swiss-born French architect. He was an early and influential exponent of the Modern Movement and one of the most innovative of 20th-century architects. His distinct brand of Functionalism first appears in his town-planning proposals of the early 1920s, which advocate ‘vertical garden cities’ with…
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Full text Article ARCHITECTURE

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
Houses are built to live in and not to look on; therefore let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had. BACON, Francis Essays (1625). Sir Christopher WrenSaid,‘I am going to dine with some men.If anybody callsSay I am designing St Paul’s.’ BENTLEY, Edmund Clerihew Biography…
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Full text Article Modernism (also Modernity)

From Palgrave Key Concepts: Key Concepts in Business and Management Research Methods
Modernism is a philosophy and a movement that takes the concept of rationalism as a central principle. As such it values objectivity , and linear representations of events and objects. Modernism finds its roots and origins in a broad range of British and European continental philosophers who were…
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Full text Article Corbusian style

From Dictionary of Architecture and Construction
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Some of the finest Art Deco furniture was produced in France, where designers reacted against the Art Nouveau style, and were inspired instead by the lines of 18th- and early 19th-century French furniture. Cabinet-makers such as Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann (1879-1933) created one-off pieces in exotic…
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View of Manhattan from the East River with the United Nations Secretariat Building (photo)
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