Le Corbusier | |
---|---|
Le Corbusier in 1933
|
|
Born |
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris October 6, 1887 La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland |
Died | August 27, 1965 Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France |
(aged 77)
Nationality | Swiss, French |
Occupation | Architect |
Awards | AIA Gold Medal (1961), Grand Officiers of the Légion d'honneur (1964) |
Buildings |
Villa Savoye, Poissy Villa La Roche, Paris Unité d'habitation, Marseille Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp Buildings in Chandigarh, India |
Projects | Ville Radieuse |
Signature | |
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier (French: [lə kɔʁbyzje]; October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades; he constructed buildings in Europe, Japan, India, and North and South America.
Dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities, Le Corbusier was influential in urban planning, and was a founding member of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Le Corbusier prepared the master plan for the city of Chandigarh in India, and contributed specific designs for several buildings there.
On July 17, 2016, seventeen projects by Le Corbusier in seven countries were inscribed in the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites as "an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement".
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret was born on October 6, 1887 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small city in the French-speaking Neuchâtel canton in north-western Switzerland, in the Jura mountains, just 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) across the border from France. It was an industrial town, devoted to the manufacture of watches. (He adopted the pseudonym of Le Corbusier in 1920). His father was an artisan who enameled boxes and watches, while his mother gave piano lessons. His elder brother Albert was an amateur violinist. He attended a kindergarten that used Fröbelian methods.
Like his contemporaries Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier did not have formal academic training as an architect. He was attracted to the visual arts and at the age of fifteen he entered the municipal art school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds which taught the applied arts connected with watchmaking. Three years later he attended the higher course of decoration, founded by the painter Charles L'Eplattenier, who had studied in Budapest and Paris. Le Corbusier wrote later that L'Eplattenier had made him "a man of the woods" and taught him painting from nature. His father took him frequently into the mountains around the town. He wrote later, "we were constantly on mountaintops; we grew accustomed to a vast horizon." His architecture teacher in the Art School was the architect René Chapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusier's earliest house designs. However, he reported later that it was the art teacher L'Eplattenier who made him choose architecture. "I had a horror of architecture and architects," he wrote. "...I was sixteen, I accepted the verdict and I obeyed. I moved into architecture."