Archinect - News

Gordon Kipping to present Maison de Cartes in the SCI-Arc Gallery

2024-04-02T14:59:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by SCI-Arc, an Archinect Partner School

This month, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is set to unveil Maison de Cartes, an exhibition by Gordon Kipping that delves into the innovative use of timber in contemporary architecture. Inspired by the principles of Maison Dom-ino by Le Corbusier, Kipping reimagines construction for the modern era, with a particular emphasis on combatting climate change.

Kipping champions the use of mass timber as a sustainable alternative to the carbon-heavy materials of steel and concrete, which are major contributors to global CO2 emissions. "Building in steel and concrete...is a huge contributor to CO2 emissions," Kipping highlights, underlining the environmental benefits of using wood, a material that not only captures carbon dioxide but is also renewable.

A unique aspect of the Maison de Cartes exhibition is its blend of the physical and digital realms through an augmented reality (AR) application....

Le Corbusier protégé and longtime Knowlton School professor José Oubrerie dies aged 91

2024-03-12T19:42:00-04:00

José Oubrerie, a French architect with ties to many leading modernists, has died at the age of 91.

The longtime Knowlton School professor was noted for his academic accomplishments and for being one of the last surviving members of Le Corbusier’s studio. He inspired many generations of students to long careers in architecture, departing with his own being both highly decorated and admired within the broader community of professional design.

"He showed a direction for architecture during a time of great confusion," friend Steven Holl wrote in a tribute published to his firm’s website yesterday. "Now at a time where architecture seems to have drifted into commercial activity with firms of hundreds of people, he reminded us that in the office of Le Corbusier, at the end, there were only six employees including José. His dedication to architecture came with a jolly sense of humor and enormous bank of stories, which shall be passed down by many as dedicated as he was."

Oubrerie and Holl...

Architects comment on Le Corbusier's 100-year legacy

2023-06-26T15:36:00-04:00

Le Corbusier was to architecture what Picasso was to painting, a towering and egomaniacal creative force who transformed his discipline for ever. His buildings have inspired admiration, sometimes devotion. He is an icon, granted the nickname “Corb” or “Corbu” by architects. He has also been vigorously attacked, as a mechanistic fanatic whose ideas inspired inhumane tower blocks and concrete jungles.

In his latest Guardian piece, critic Rowan Moore remembers the 100-year anniversary of the seminal modernist manifesto Toward an Architecture by one of the profession's most revered and controversial figures, Le Corbusier.

Acknowledging that the book's thoughts about the future were now "firmly in the past," Moore asked acclaimed present-day architects about the impact Le Corbusier's work has had on them and which of his buildings was most relevant in their view.

Among the respondees are Pritzker Prize and Gold Medal winners Frank Gehry, Denise Scott Brown, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron's founding partner Jacques Herzog, Grafton Architects' Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, Yasmeen Lari, Kate Macintosh, as well as contemporary architects and designers Jayden Ali and Adam Nathaniel Furman.

Balkrishna Doshi on the road that led to his RIBA Royal Gold Medal

2022-02-23T13:37:00-05:00

India based Balkrishna Doshi will be awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in April. He gave Eleanor Young a rare insight into how Ahmedabad and his studio there taught him the importance of sound and silence to design, about flexibility and rejoicing, and putting people first

The recent RIBA Royal Gold medalist Balkrishna Doshi spoke about various episodes and challenges in his six-decade career, stating that in his view, client directives are the single-biggest obstacles he faces as a designer.

“As architects, we say ‘I have made a nice verandah, but somebody has encroached’ — we think encroaching or deviating is incorrect ethics. But when you are living and celebrating life, you forget the original purpose, and that is important.”

Previously on Archinect: Balkrishna Doshi awarded the Royal Gold Medal 2022 by the RIBA

Doshi also described his passion for working with young people and credited an early incident outside the Parisian offices of his mentor Le Corbusier as a formative event in his life and career.

“I clearly remember my first day at 35 Rue de Serves, when I entered Monsieur Corbusier’s office with a suitcase on my head. I had crossed the road without thinking about the traffic light, and suddenly there was a huge honking, everybody braked, an...

Create kirigami paper models of Le Corbusier's iconic works with this step-by-step guide — and win a copy of the book!

2020-01-23T12:26:00-05:00

For all you diehard Le Corbusier fans or architectural model enthusiasts out there, you don't want to miss out on the upcoming Le Corbusier Paper Models: 10 Kirigami Buildings to Cut and Fold, which will be released on February 4. Thanks to Laurence King Publishing, Archinect is giving away five copies of the book to our readers!

Authored by design director and kirigami paper artist Marc Hagan-Guirey, this step-by-step guide teaches you how to create 10 of Corbusier's iconic works using the cutting and folding art of kirigami, a variation of origami. You'll learn how to create paper models of: Villa Savoye, Maison Citröhan, Villa Stein-De Monzie, Maison de Week-end, Maisons Jaoul, Unité d’Habitation, Maison de la Culture, Villa Sarabhai, High Court Chandigarh, and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.

Villa Savoye. Photo courtesy of Laurence King Publishing.

High Court Chandigarh. Photo courtesy of Laurence King Publishing.

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. Photo courtesy of L...

José Oubrerie's Miller House finally finds a buyer

2019-06-05T18:13:00-04:00

After spending months idled on the real estate market, José Oubrerie's Miller House in Kentucky exchanged hands twice in late 2018.

As noted on real estate website Zillow, the home sold in September 2018 for $415,000, significantly lower than the $490,000 sale that had taken place just one month before, and well-below the $550,000 price it had been listed at previously.

Both sales are a far cry from a $1,950,000 listing made for the home in 2010. The home was sold for $1,000,000 in 2008, following the 2006 death of its namesake patron. The identity of the most recent buyer is unclear, as is the future of the iconic house.

Obrerie's Miller House has exchanged hands a few times recently and its future is unclear.

The legendary home was designed by Oubrerie in 1987 while he was dean at the University of Kentucky's School of Design, and represents a key conceptual work in the realm of residential design of the era. Created to house a real estate developer's four-person family, the cube...

A new book highlights Le Corbusier's secret passion for photography

2019-05-09T18:21:00-04:00

On top of being known as a man of architecture and a man of letters, Le Corbusier can now also be known as a man of photography.

View of Charles IV Bridge, toward castle, Prague, May 1911. Photo by Le Corbusier.

LC Foto, a book released by Lars Müller Publishers, is an archive of the architect's photos taken in secret, given that he publicly stated that he saw little value in photography. Between 1907 and 1917 alone, Le Corbusier took almost 6,000 photographs, bringing his cameras on trips to Istanbul, Brazil and the cargo ships which inspired much of his theories on modern architecture.

LC Foto (Le Corbusier, Secret Photographer. Published by Lars Müller.

Walter Maria Förderer is the masterful modern architect you've never heard of

2019-05-07T13:48:00-04:00

In the 1960s, Walter Maria Förderer designed eight churches in Switzerland and Germany. Influenced by Le Corbusier, and even more so by the collages of Kurt Schwitters and Gothic architecture, Förderer designed cascades of concrete blocks and strange totemic objects that now form some of Europe’s most avant-garde religious buildings.

It is always a delight and a mystery when one learns of a new name to add to their account of architecture history — a delight because with their name comes new buildings, textures, contexts and drawings to discover; a mystery because their near erasure from historical canon can appear suspiciously willful.

While Gottfried Böhm and Le Corbusier are perhaps the first to come to mind when considering the significant architects of Post War European churches, Walter Maria Förderer rightly deserves a spot on the list. Like Corbusier, Förderer was a Swiss architect obsessed with the structural and material properties afforded by concrete, and was uniquely determined to treat the material as he had during his earlier career as a sculptor.

The Church of St Nicholas, by Walter Maria Förderer. Photo by David Willen.

The Church of St. Nicholas (above) is one of his most exemplary works. Though the building does employ a small handful of modernist principles, it signals an interest in post-func...

Le Corbusier's built works have been exhaustively documented by Richard Pare

2019-03-12T14:00:00-04:00

Le Corbusier has been the subject of countless books, but this is a first: Richard Pare visited every known building designed by the Swiss architect over his 60 year career.

Le Corbusier, The Built Work. Photography by Richard Pare

Published by Monacelli Press, Le Corbusier: The Built Work is also a significant feat for Richard Pare, its principal photographer. Pare traveled the world, from Le Corbusier's only built work in America to his only built work in Tokyo and everywhere in between, to document the architect's oeuvre in a way never before seen. The texts provided by historian Jean-Louis Cohen add a depth to projects that other publications had deemed too insignificant to document, let alone analyze in detail.

Villa Savoye, by Le Corbusier. Photo by Richard Pare

Le Corbusier: The Built Work is available for purchase at Archinect Outpost.

You can now visit Le Corbusier's restored Parisian studio apartment

2018-10-30T18:06:00-04:00

Le Corbusier’s Parisian studio apartment has reopened to the public following a two-year restoration to its storied bones...French architect François Chatillon was tapped for the €1m restoration project, which marks the 50th anniversary of the Fondation Le Corbusier. Chatillon has brought back the original colour palette and textures of the 240 sqm Modernist home as well as replacing degraded materials.

The modernist Parisian apartment, where Le Corbusier and his wife Yvonne Gallis lived from 1934 to 1965, is located on Rue nungesser et coli 24 and is open to the public on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays.

'Burst of space:' Blair Kamin reviews Tadao Ando's new Chicago art venue and Ando/Corbusier opening show

2018-10-19T13:54:00-04:00

Amid today’s polarizing political noise, Wrightwood 659 offers a comparable oasis. The building greets the visitor with a refurbished facade adorned with arches, festoons and other Beaux-Arts details. But the decorous facade turns out to be a mask. [...] Upstairs are clean-lined, contemplative galleries —“white boxes with a twist,” you might call them — filled with a trove of material about Corbusier and Ando.

Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin shares his impressions from the opening night at Tadao Ando's new Wrightwood 659 art venue in Chicago as well as its inaugural exhibition Ando and Le Corbusier: Masters of Architecture—and the review is full of praise: "The space is so good that it compels you to set aside the contradiction of a self-professed anti-elitist architect laboring once more in the service of a wealthy man," Kamin writes.

Tadao Ando-designed Wrightwood 659 art venue to open in Chicago with exhibition on Ando and Le Corbusier

2018-09-28T14:36:00-04:00

Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood is getting an exciting new art place, and it's been designed by none other than Tadao Ando. Wrightwood 659 is a major transformation of a historic building from the 1920s and will be dedicated to exhibitions on architecture and on socially engaged art.

The place has an impressive lineup of exhibitions and other events, including the inaugural show Ando and Le Corbusier: Masters of Architecture with more than 100 drawings, photographs, and models by Le Corbusier as well as 106 small models of his architectural works crafted by Tadao Ando's students. The show opens on October 12th and will run through December 15th.

A day before the opening, there's also a chance to see Tadao Ando discuss his work at the Art Institute of Chicago's annual Butler-Vanderlinden Lecture on Architecture, co-presented this year with Alphawood Foundation Chicago.

On November 8th and 9th, Wrightwood 659 will host the accompanying symposium Ando's Le Corb...

Le Corbusier's influence on Japanese modernism

2018-08-09T15:31:00-04:00

Thanks to the overwhelming clarity of [Le Corbusier's] positions, the bewitching nature of his epigrammatic style and the already-powerful international movement for Modernism, the impact he had on a rising generation of Japanese architects would prove to be immense. But it would be the nature of that impact to be felt only in conditions of overwhelming ambivalence.

Nikil Saval traces Japan's modernism back to Le Corbusier citing influences on Kunio Maekawa and Kenzo Tange. Japan was the earliest country in all of East Asia to engage with Le Corbusier's work in the late 19th century, and by the 1930's many of his books has been translated into Japanese.

The piece navigates conflicting views in Japan with the introduction of modernism and the “Japan tradition debate”. Saval explores the struggle around a desire to embrace global modernity while also retaining a sense of tradition or “Japaneseness” in the culture.

Is that Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye floating in a Danish fjord?

2018-07-31T13:57:00-04:00

A five-tonne, 6m tall model of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye has been towed into a fjord in Denmark and subsequently sunk as part of a summer art exhibition. Created by Danish artist Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen, the installation appears as a half-submerged vision of a once visionary future. It’s also a critical comment on the importance of modernity today.

"The project is a critical comment on the current status of modernity after the scandals of Cambridge Analytica, the Trump election and Brexit," Danish artist Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen tells ICON Magazine.

"After these scandals, I think our sense of democracy and the public sphere has been distorted through the new use of digital technologies to manipulate elections. Our sense of Modernity has been 'flooded'. I sense the need to 're-state' our political institutions - because our old ones have 'sunk'."

The Floating Art 2018 festival is still running until September 2 in the Danish town of Vejle.

Here's your chance to own an apartment in Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse

2018-03-13T13:50:00-04:00

A duplex apartment in Le Corbusier’s Modernist icon La Cité Radieuse has hit the market for €598,000. [...] This 140 sq m apartment sits on a high floor of the colourful Modernist landmark, built from béton-brut concrete and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016. The Marseille property is on the market via 20th and 21st century architecture specialists Architecture de Collection.

Photo © Architecture de Collection

Be it the béton brut appeal or the prospect of owning an appartement in the South of France, now's your moment to get both: a 1,500-square-foot unit on a higher floor in Le Corbusier's iconic Unité d’Habitation housing block in Marseille just hit the market, and it's pretty sweet. The asking price is €598,000 ($741,000).

Photo © Architecture de Collection

More interested in Corb's pre-Modernism oeuvre? Check out our From the Ground Up episode about his very first completed architectural design: Villa Fallet, completed in 1906-1907 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.

Are mental disorders behind modernism? Le Corbusier and Gropius get diagnosed

2018-02-08T13:53:00-05:00

Two researchers recently suggested that autism and post-traumatic stress disorder led to the minimalist stylings of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. Their questions and tools are useful, but there’s danger in mistaking one piece of a puzzle for its entirety. The places we inhabit influence the way we see the world [...] Equally and inevitably, psychology has shaped architecture.

Darran Anderson responds to the piece “The Mental Disorders that Gave Us Modern Architecture” by Ann Sussman and Katie Chen, arguing against their totalizing narrative of two influential figures and modernism as a whole.

Sussman and Chen suggest modernist architecture originated from autism in regard to Le Corbusier, and post-traumatic stress disorder in regard to Walter Gropius. The final argument is one against modernism, claiming its origin derives from mental dysfunction.

While it is interesting to consider a possible excuse for Le Corbusier's callousness or the effects of serving in WWI on Gropius, Anderson argues, "the evidence that modern architecture is founded on 'disorders' is highly questionable".

His response reveals an empathetic side to Le Corbusier, and delves into Gropius' immense achievements unimpeded by trauma. Read the full article and go deeper into Anderson's argument for modernism and two of its key figures.

...

The Archisutra is an architect's manual to sex positions

2017-12-05T17:59:00-05:00

London-based architect Miguel Bolivar recently released his side project Archisutra, an architecture and design take on the Kama Sutra. This manual gives you all the data with annotated scale drawings and informative descriptions including categorizations of 'Typical Location' and 'Sustainability'. Each position is inspired by an iconic building and often incorporates the use of designer furniture.

Truss Me, in 'Archisutra' by Miguel Bolivar. Photo: The Archisutra/Facebook.

Archisustra's precise drawings were inspired by da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and Le Corbusier's standard model of the human form, The Modulor. Bolivar explains the project arose from questioning how sex should be considered in design, and furthering the idea that architecture should be centered around human life.

The Pompidou, 'Archisutra' by Miguel Bolivar. Photo: The Archisutra/Facebook.

SoapBox: Manifestos

2017-11-13T16:14:00-05:00

Soapbox is a new weekly series delivering a curated set of lectures, talks and symposia concerning contemporary themes but explored through the archives of lectures past and present. With the plethora of lectures, talks, symposia and panels occurring world wide on a daily basis, how can we begin to keep up and if not, find them once they are gone? Soapbox looks to assemble a selection of recent, archived and outlier lectures surrounding a given theme. Soapbox looks to curate this never-ending library of ideas into an engaging and diverse list of thoughts and provocations. Soapbox is just that, a collection aimed at discovering the occasional needle in a haystack.

This week, in its first offering, we present. Manifestos. A selection of videos whose topics or purpose was to present if not reinforce, Manifestos.

1. GSAPP: What happened to the Architectural Manifesto Series

a. Enrique Walker, Felicity Scott and Anthony Vidler on the architectural manifesto. (2011)

b. Beatriz Colomina,...

Le Corbusier's Chandigarh to be removed from Swiss 10-Franc bills

2017-10-12T13:59:00-04:00

Swiss francs, like most world currencies, have long featured notable faces from the past. But now, each beautiful note is designed around an abstract theme related to Switzerland. For the 10-franc note, instead of the retired portrait of the controversial genius Le Corbusier, the theme focuses on Switzerland’s organizational talent – expressed by time.

Le Corbusier and his plan for Chandigarh won't be featured on the new 10-Franc bill anymore. The new bill is inspired by Switzerland’s "organizational talent" and punctuality; it represents a pair of hands conducting time, the country's longest railway tunnels, and a map of the country and of its railway network. The Corbusier 10-Franc bill was introduced and in circulation since 1995; it has been highly controversial in Switzerland due to his affinities with fascism and the Vichy government.

A pair of hands conducting the time with a baton on the new 10-Franc bill from 2017.

Two rail tracks connecting in the world's longest railway tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, part of the world's densest railway network reducing the time for traversing the Alps in Central Switzerland.

For Le Corbusier's Birthday, we've rounded up some playful pics of the pioneering modernist

2017-10-06T12:30:00-04:00

Today is everyone's favorite modernist architect Le Corbusier's birthday. Well, almost everyone's that is...

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Kris might find him to be a bit boring, but over here, he is one of the most revered architects of the 20th century. In honor of what would be his 130th, here are some celebratory pics of the Swiss-born French architect and funnyman.

Le Corbusier / Photo by Letburii

Le Corbusier in the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, May 10, 1928.

Le Corbusier in Saint-Tropez bay, 1938.

Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret relaxing on the Shukna Lake on a pedal boat manufactured by Pierre Jeanneret, c. 1950. Photo by Sureh Sharma.

Le Corbusier in C...

The Corner of Lovecraft and Ballard

2017-06-20T17:22:00-04:00

For Lovecraft, the ubiquitous angle between two walls is a dark gateway to the screaming abyss of the outer cosmos; for Ballard, it’s an entry point to our own anxious psyche.

H.P. Lovecraft and J.G. Ballard both put architecture at the heart of their fiction, and both made the humble corner into a place of nightmares. Will Wiles delves into the malign interiors of their imagined worlds and the secret history of the spaces where walls meet.

Federica Buzzi's critique on the Le Corbusier Modulor

2017-05-31T14:20:00-04:00

The Modulor Man is a healthy white male enhanced by mathematical proportional gimmicks ‘of nature’, such as golden ratio and Fibonacci series. He represents the normative and normalised body around which Le Corbusier conceived his designs. As a result, most modern architectural forms are all tellingly calibrated on a similar standard, the healthy white male body.

"Given the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s groundbreaking research regarding medicalisation in architecture and its extensive Le Corbusier collection," the author Federica Buzzi writes, "I think it is time to address the role of norm and standard in Le Corbusier’s work and its legacy."

GSAPP displays unusual + intriguing photographs of famed architectural models with "Stagecraft: Models and Photos"

2017-02-02T18:31:00-05:00

Photographer James Ewing was given a studio and several weeks to creatively photograph architectural models made by students of the Columbia GSAPP between 1994 and 2003. The resulting work will form a show, "Stagecraft: Models and Photos," that opens at the GSAPP on February 9th.

Featuring photographs of models of structures such as Le Corbusier's Pavillon des Temps Nouveaux, Norman Foster's Renault Distribution Center, and Peter Zumthor's Saint Benedict Chapel among others, the photographs avoid the atmosphere of your typical two-in-the-morning-on-a-work-day professional studio snaps, instead investing each of these models with unusual drama.

Because the models and the photographer are so removed from the original architectural design process, the work is necessarily interpretive. These are miniature echo chambers of history, models of models of structures some of these students undoubtedly visited in real life, photographed against occasionally surreal backdrops.

...

17 of Le Corbusier's buildings are now UN world heritage sites

2016-07-18T10:35:00-04:00

The UN's cultural organisation has listed 17 works by pioneering Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier as world heritage sites. Le Corbusier spearheaded the modern movement after World War One, using iron, concrete and glass in a new focus on bold lines and functionality that did not appeal to everyone. The sites are in seven countries.

17 of Le Corbusier's buildings, including Unité d’habitation in Marseille and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo were announced as new UN world heritage sites. The 17 buildings meet three of the selection criteria for World Heritage status:

(i) A masterpiece of human creative genius.

(ii) An important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design.

(vi) Directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance.

The inclusion of Le Corbusier's works as world heritage sites marks the culmination of a significant shift in attitudes towards Modernist architecture. His Unité d’habitation is often considered the forefather of high-rise living. Le Corbusier's forms are often cited as a key inspiration for the much maligned Brutalism. Could t...

Le Corbusier's Cité de Refuge in Paris to reopen after restoration

2016-04-05T20:21:00-04:00

Public tours of a newly-restored Salvation Army shelter in Paris designed by Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret start in April. The tour guides for the 11-storey building, known as the Cité de Refuge, will be the residents of the building themselves who have been trained by the Fondation Le Corbusier. The Cité de Refuge, which opened in 1933..., is historically significant as Le Corbusier’s first urban housing project and one of only two completed buildings in Paris.

Does Le Corbusier have you crowing? Check out these related links:

Archinect Sessions #58: Last week’s architecture news. When it wasn’t so depressing.

2016-03-31T18:58:00-04:00

Collecting the most important news of the past week – that is, from the recording date's perspective of March 30th, the day before Zaha Hadid's sudden death – this episode brings stories on: the winning below-grade skyscraper (sinkscraper?) of eVolo's Skyscraper Competition; a long-lost Le Corbusier tapestry returning to the Sydney Opera House; another twist on co-habitation in the co-work startup, PodShare; Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects taking "revenge" on Charles Moore's Hood Museum; and our future of eating sandwiches while robots do our work.

We'll discuss the late Dame Zaha Hadid's legacy on next week's podcast.

Listen to episode 58 of Archinect Sessions, "Last week’s architecture news. When it wasn’t so depressing.":

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Jørn Utzon's final touch to the Sydney Opera House: a Le Corbusier tapestry

2016-03-29T16:52:00-04:00

[Utzon] wrote to his idol, boldly sending his designs of the Opera House and asking Le Corbusier to contribute in the form of “decoration, carpets and paintings”. His idol wrote back, and by October 1960 the young Utzon was the proud owner of a striking tapestry [...] The piece is now hanging behind glass in the far end of the Utzon-designed western foyer: a holding place while the Opera House continues the “decade of renewal” that will lead up to its 50th anniversary in 2023.

Another look at the tapestry, as it was hung in Jørn Utzon's home in Denmark:

Related on Archinect:

Renault issues Coupé Corbusier: a concept car to explore "a new way forward", inspired by Le Corbusier

2015-10-26T13:12:00-04:00

Le Corbusier, who died 50 years ago, is widely recognised as one of the founding fathers of modern architecture. Renault tells us this long, chamfered concept was “inspired by the architect’s modernist principles and theories”, and references the “golden era of the automobile of the 1930s”. Top Gear is no historical expert, but does not remember seeing anything like the Corbusier concept in photos from the Thirties.

Would Le Corbusier have chosen "suicide doors"? Renault whipped up the design for part of an exhibition put on by Centre des Monuments Nationaux in France, “Cars for living: the automobile and modernism in the 20th and 21st centuries,” which focuses on the history and legacy of the heyday of French automotive manufacturing in the 1930s. No word yet as to how it actually drives.

The Coupé doesn't seem to take much from Le Corbusier's Minimum Car, which exists only as sketches, and was born out the architect's obsession with the manufacturable precision of the automobile industry.

h/t Highsnobiety

More on the ongoing influence of Le Corbusier:

“Le Corbusier was a combination of blind and naïve about all politics”

2015-07-13T15:08:00-04:00

“There’s still a myth surrounding Le Corbusier, that he’s the greatest architect of the 20th century, a generous man, a poet,” [journalist Xavier] de Jarcy said. That vision, he added, is “a great collective lie.” [...] “He is someone who thought that reform, social change, could only be made by an authority.” [...] “That’s why Le Corbusier is interesting, because of his own passions and the way he crosses the passions of the century.”

For more on the tug-of-war over Le Corbusier's politics and architectural ideology:

Works by Le Corbu and Louis Kahn in Ahmedabad left off historic conservation list

2015-06-16T15:38:00-04:00

The father of modern architecture Le Corbusier and the most influential architects of the 20th century Louis Kahn will not find place in the latest heritage conservation list of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC). Ahmedabad happens to be the only place in the world where Le Corbusier had designed four different buildings. Louis Kahn's IIM-A building too does not figure in the list of heritage buildings.

"The list, which consists of 2,247 buildings and havelis in the walled city and 382 buildings outside the walled city area, will be notified in a day or two. Inclusion in the list will mean that the new conservation building bye laws would now be applicable."