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Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse rooftop gym transformed into art space

2013-04-15T18:36:00-04:00

French designer Ora-Ïto is converting the famous Marseille roof terrace into a haven for contemporary art

Breaking new ground : Le Corbusier still a key figure for young architects

2012-10-07T18:35:00-04:00

Le Corbusier, Herzog & De Meuron, Mario Botta and Peter Zumthor - to mention only the most prominent names - have put Swiss architecture on the world map. The younger generation has not yet achieved the same celebrity, but it is striking out in new directions of its own. For the 125th anniversary of the birth of Le Corbusier, swissinfo.ch talked to art historian Lorette Coen about current trends in Swiss architecture.

Le Corbusier in Color

2012-09-23T12:52:00-04:00

Toward the end of 1953, Willy Rizzo took a series of portraits of the architect Le Corbusier, three of which were published in the magazine Paris Match. Much of Rizzo’s work was done in medium-format color. These photographs have not been published since.

We are most familiar with iconic b&w photographs of Le Corbusier. Le Journal de la Photographie re-publishes beautiful color photographs by the artist Willy Rizzo shot in 1953 and three of which were published in the magazine Paris Match at the time. These photographs shed a rare light to architect's persona. Enjoy.

Le Corbusier by Willy Rizzo

From Septembre 19th to December 20th, 2012
Maison La Roche
10, square du docteur Blanche
75016 Paris - France

Corbu's Izmir

2012-09-12T21:03:00-04:00

In 1948 Le Corbusier was retained by the municipality of Izmir (my home town) to develop a visionary master plan for the city. He disregarded the historic core of Izmir which is laced with artifacts and buildings as old as 3500 years old and eventually was forced to resign from the job and most of his fees were cancelled. There are some faint lines from his plan remains today like the International Fair grounds, a purple colored oval area on the plans. His ideas would be very inadequate and lose their initial vision for a city of 4 million residents today on a relatively small footprint surrounding its bay.

Iraq aims to revive Baghdad's 'lost' Le Corbusier building

2012-04-23T14:09:00-04:00

Designed by the famed architect Le Corbusier, built under Saddam Hussein then forgotten: such was the fate of a gym in Baghdad that Iraq now wants, with the help of France, to restore to its former stature. Located in the east of the capital, the massive concrete structure has surprisingly withstood the decades of war, internecine fighting and sanctions that have hit the country.

Megastructures are the Shopping Malls of the Avant-Garde

2012-03-27T12:51:00-04:00

What About ideal cities, and counter revolutionary master plans?

Avant-Garde
The avant-garde is a paradoxical state. In order to exist, it relies on its incongruous condition of being both fundamentally contemporary and ahead of its time. A conceptual palimpsest, the avant-garde requires writing its history over its own past keeping a vulnerable balance between present problems, and possible future solutions. All about contextualizing the perfect timing, what happens when the avant-garde goes out of sync; when its solutions are overlooked for being too premature, or ridiculed for being delayed?

In the past century alone, the avant-garde was victim of two untimely appearances. In the first one, its proposals arrived too early; the world was taken aback by the boldness of its ambitions, by the audacity of its delirium. In the second coming, the avant-garde was too late. Here its stratagems were on a futile mission of inventing a program that already existed.

These consecutive...

Corbu's Marseille's Cité Radieuse damaged by fire

2012-02-10T11:22:00-05:00

One of France's most important landmarks of modernist architecture, La Cité Radieuse housing estate in Marseille, built by the architect Le Corbusier, has been damaged by fire. Fire services fought for over 12 hours to put out a blaze that began on Thursday afternoon in a first floor flat in the nine-storey concrete complex which is protected by special heritage status in France.

Exhibition Sitio of Santiago Borja - Villa Savoye of Le Corbusier, Poissy (France)

2011-07-25T20:03:00-04:00

The exhibition Sitio is an intervention of the artist Santiago Borja designed for the Savoye Villachef-d’œuvre of Le Corbusier - based on the statute of icon out of the time and deterritorialized ofthe Villa. It appears a such floating object in space and time, fighting against the possibility ofconstituting only one remarkable enclosure but vacuum; a ’’machine à habiter’’ on diverted. TheSpanish term Sitio - which means ''site' '- insists on the concept of place in the anthropologicalmeaning : a place symbolically given. It also implies, as Roland Barthes defines it in Le Neutre(1978), an ideal place, a place of foundation or an esoteric place where we feel good. In thisdirection, Sitio proposes a multiple reading of the various cultural phenomena which developedaround the Villa, a such kind of plea for what one could name ’’anachronistic contemporaneity’’.

While being based on the thesis that Adolf Max Vogt develops in Le Corbusier le bon sauvage(2003), explaining why Le C...

Tokyo museum's World Heritage hopes shaken

2011-05-28T16:18:34-04:00

An advisory body to UNESCO has counseled against registering 19 buildings designed by French architect Le Corbusier, including the National Museum of Western Art in Taito Ward, Tokyo, as world cultural heritage sites, it has been learned. The recommendation was made by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), a cultural conservation organization, the central government's Cultural Affairs Agency said Saturday.

Architect as Auto Designer: Le Corbusier's Minimum Car

2011-05-13T14:38:26-04:00

“Voiture Minimum: Le Corbusier and the Automobile” ($49.95) focuses on Le Corbusier’s design for a “minimum car,” a two-seat, bare-bones people mover with a sheer, angled front. His design existed only in drawings during his lifetime, but became probably the most famous of all automobile designs contributed by architects.