Le Corbusier (1887-1965)

Swiss-born French architect. He was an early and influential exponent of the Modern Movement and one of the most innovative of 20th-century architects. His distinct brand of Functionalism first appears in his town-planning proposals of the early 1920s, which advocate ‘vertical garden cities’ with zoning of living and working areas and traffic separation as solutions to urban growth and chaos. From the 1940s several of his designs for multistorey villas were realized, notably his Unité d'Habitation, Marseille, (1947-52), using his Modulor system of standard-sized units mathematically calculated according to the proportions of the human figure (see Fibonacci, golden section).

His white-stuccoed, cubist-style villas of the 1920s were designed as ‘machines for living in’, making the most of space and light through open-plan interiors, use of pilotis (stilts carrying the building), and roof gardens. He moved on to a more expressive mode (anticipating Brutalism) with rough, unfinished exteriors, as in the Ministry of Education, Rio de Janeiro, 1936-45, designed with Lucio Costa (1902-98) and Oscar Niemeyer. In the reconstruction period after World War II, Le Corbusier's urbanization theories were highly influential, disseminated through the work of the urban planning body CIAM, although only in the gridlike layout of the new city of Chandigarh, India, 1951-56, was he able to see his visions of urban zoning fully realized. His sculptural design for the church of Notre-Dame du Haut du Ronchamp 1950-54, worked out in the minutest detail, is a supreme example of aesthetic Functionalism.

Le Corbusier was originally a painter and engraver, but turned his attention to the problems of contemporary industrial society. His books Vers une Architecture/Towards a New Architecture 1923 and Le Modulor 1948 have had worldwide significance for town planning and building design.