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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.
— The Spaces
Photo © Architecture de CollectionBe 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... View full entry
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.
— citylab.com
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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 News
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... View full entry
Today is everyone's favorite modernist architect Le Corbusier's birthday. Well, almost everyone's that is... <span id="selection-marker-1"... View full entry
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. — Places Journal
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. View full entry
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. — failedarchitecture.com
"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." View full entry
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... View full entry
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.
— BBC News
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... View full entry
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.
— The Art Newspaper
Does Le Corbusier have you crowing? Check out these related links:Jørn Utzon's final touch to the Sydney Opera House: a Le Corbusier tapestryRenault issues Coupé Corbusier: a concept car to explore "a new way forward", inspired by Le Corbusier“Le Corbusier was a combination of blind and naïve... View full entry
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... View full entry
[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.
— theguardian.com
Another look at the tapestry, as it was hung in Jørn Utzon's home in Denmark:Related on Archinect:The Sydney Opera House by Jørn Utzon Celebrates Its 40th AnniversaryJørn Utzon dead at 90Rare film of Le Corbusier in his Paris home and studioLe Corbusier in Color View full entry
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. — topgear.com
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... View full entry
“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.”
— nytimes.com
For more on the tug-of-war over Le Corbusier's politics and architectural ideology:Pompidou responds to "fascist" Le Corbusier claimsLe Corbusier "militant fascist" claims overshadow 50th death anniversaryIs Le Corbusier the real grandfather of hip-hop? View full entry
