Le Corbusier's architectural masterpieces

Swiss citizen Charles-Édouard Jeanneret aka Le Corbusier (1887-1965) needed to broaden his horizons. During the decade before WW1, he travelled to Paris and found work in the office of the modernist French pioneer of reinforced concrete. Then he studied architecture in Vienna and Berlin with the Bauhaus architects Josef Hoffmann and Peter Behrens, even before Bauhaus had been planned. Presumably he also met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius there.

In 1922, Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret opened an architectural studio in Paris at 35 rue de Sèvres. And since Paris was going to be his permanent home, Charles-Edouard became a French citizen in 1930.

In a new industrial spirit, Le Corbusier contributed to a journal called L'Esprit Nouveau that advocated the use of modern industrial techniques and strategies to transform society into a more efficient environment ....with a higher standard of living for all. He argued that this transformation was necessary to avoid the spectre of revolution that would otherwise shake society. His "Architecture or Revolution" rule, developed in his articles in this journal, became his rallying cry.

His book Toward an Architecture was made from scholarly articles he con­tributed to L'Esprit Nouveau between 1920-3. In this book, Le Corbusier followed the influence of my second favourite architect, Walter Gropius!

Le Corbusier was certainly an innovator, but he originally based himself on the existing models he knew and loved. By examining the work of Theo van Doesburg and other architects of the De Stijl Group, Le Corbusier reviewed their principles and then created his own five important rules for architecture.

Villa La Roche

Auteuil, Paris

1. Pilotis—narrow columns made of reinforced concrete—for structural support;
2. An open floor plan;
3. A free façade;
4. A roof garden, designed to incorporate the house more thoroughly into the landscape; and
5. Long rows of horizontal windows for the best uninterrupted view and natural light.

When Swiss banker Raoul La Roche commissioned his friend Le Corb­us­ier to design an urban villa in Auteuil (then on the outskirts of Paris), it had to be three-storeys high and modernist. And it was the first chance for Le Corbusier to test his own five rules for architecture. But this building was not going to be simply the La Roche family home; it was also to be a gallery to house the stunning La Roche art collection of cubist art. In what was only his third important commission in Paris, Le Corbusier designed La Roche House as a double house i.e pair of semi-detached houses, at right angles to each other, one with a curved front. The structure itself went up during the years 1923–1925.

When the visitor climbs the stairs from the entrance, he/she discovers the ex­tent of the lobby as it appears in relation with the dining room. At the height of the treetops, the walk leads to the picture gallery, whose curved wall supports a ramp that leads to the terrace garden. The gallery shines light on cubist paintings owned by Raoul La Roche.

e-architect also recommends that the visitor proceeds to the culmination, La Roche’s curved gallery. And up the ramp to the left is Le Roche’s aerie, his top-lit library. Le Corbusier’s term Architectural Promenade was clearly a structural design by which movement through the house would become a three-dimensional, theatrical experience.

    Villa La Roche

lobby and stairs leading up to the Le Roche gallery

In 1928, Le Corbusier and Pierre Perriand designed furniture for Villa La Roche. Notable were the chrome-plated tubular steel chairs.

Maison La Roche is now a museum holding thousands of original architectural drawings, studies and plans by Le Corbusier, in collaboration with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret from 1922-1940. Additionally there are 450 of his paintings, 30 enamels, 200 works on paper, and good photographic archives. It describes itself as the world's largest collection of Le Corbusier treasures.

Villa La Roche was renovated in 2008-9 and the interior colours have returned to the originals, bright white surfaces with strong contrasting colours to highlight the stairs etc. The villa is open to the public, administered by Fondation Le Corbusier, which is based in the adjoining Villa Jeanneret.

                               

 Le Corbusier's own studio apartment, Paris

1931-4

Near Villa La Roche in Paris, visitors can inspect the studio-apartment that Le Corbusier designed for himself a decade later (1931-34). The white walls and blocks of primary colour accenting large door frames, which open to living, working and entertaining spaces, reminded Le Corbusier of his triumph at Villa La Roche

To examine the enormous influence of Le Corbusier’s laws of architecture, we need look no further than the architectural staff and students at Bauhaus. German Jews who made aliya to Israel in the l930s brought with them the then-newest architectural ideas: the modernist ideas of ar­ch­itects Le Corb­usier and Walter Gropius. And at the VERY time the brand new city of Tel Aviv was getting going, modernist archit­ects at the heart of the Bauhaus movement were leaving Germany: 1933! While many of the lead­ing Bau­haus ar­chitects fled to Britain and the USA, at least 20 Bauhausers and their colleagues migrated to British Palestine. Had Le Corbusier travelled to Tel Aviv between 1933 and 1939, he would have been very proud indeed to see 4,000 blocks of flats designed and built in his taste. 

Bauhaus graduates and colleagues built 4,000 blocks of flats in Tel Aviv, during the years 1933 and 1939.