Editors: Ana Tostões, Zara Ferreira
Guest editors: Benedicte Gandini, Michel Richard
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Le Corbusier, Conservation of modern architecture, World Heritage.
Le Corbusier (LC) prolific personality as theorist, painter, sculptor, architect, urban planner, researcher, disseminator, thinker, and provocative activist, helped to make him a universal author. His dual and inseparable theoretical and practical activities represented a source for LC’s balanced inspirational and systematic method. Envisaging “la planète comme chantier”, LC drove his obsessive constructive impulse around the whole world, to nations such as Japan, Russia, Argentina and India. Thinking deeply about the human condition in the contemporary age, he looked for solutions to solve social, technical and spatial problems, believing that architecture could have the power to improve the world. To the question “architecture or revolution?” he answered “revolution can be avoided” through modern architecture.
Published:
2015-09-01
Editorial
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Le Corbusier (LC) prolific personality as theorist, painter, sculptor, architect, urban planner, researcher, disseminator, thinker, and provocative activist, helped to make him a universal author. His dual and inseparable theoretical and practical activities represented a source for LC’s balanced inspirational and systematic method. Envisaging “la planète comme chantier”, LC drove his obsessive constructive impulse around the whole world, to nations such as Japan, Russia, Argentina and India. Thinking deeply about the human condition in the contemporary age, he looked for solutions to...
Essays
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Le Corbusier died on 27 August 1965 at Roquebrune-CapMartin, near his Cabanon. Without direct heirs and driven by the fear that his carefully conserved archives and works be scattered after his death, Le Corbusier spent the last fifteen years of his life conceiving and implementing, down to its smallest details, the project of a Foundation that would bear his name. Today the activity of the Fondation Le Corbusier comprises two main undertakings: circulating his work and spreading his ideas; preserving the architect’s work and collections. Indeed as the legatee and direct offshoot of its...
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The Petite Maison, or the villa Le Lac was built by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret at Corseaux, near Vevey, in 1924 for the parents of the former. Various modifications were made from then until 1973. The exteriors, façades, gardens and enclosures of this emblematic work were repaired and restored based on detailed research of the fabric and a well judged program of conservation which concluded in June 2015. This essay reports on some of the specifics of the project, the construction itself, the problems of ageing that the architects had to address, and the most recent conservation...
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In 2011, the Fondation Le Corbusier took the fortunate initiative of requesting a historical study prior to the restoration of the villa Le Lac, built in 1924 at Corseaux-sous-Vevey in Switzerland. Submitted in 2012, the study sought to provide objective and factual information about the construction and physical evolution of the building, by exposing the initial intentions of the architect and his wishes, fulfilled or not, for its transformation, restoration or improvement, through research in several archives (Fondation Le Corbusier, Communal Archives of Corseaux and Vevey, G.T.A. in...
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The Maison Curutchet is the only house by Le Corbusier in America. The project was developed between 1948 to 1949 and built between 1949 to 1955 as a single-family dwelling and as a professional medical office to the well-known Dr. Pedro Domingo Curutchet in La Plata, Buenos Aires. In 2013–2014, Colegio de Arquitectos de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (CAPBA) which head office is settled there, decided to carry out a full maintenance, done with the strict criteria of minimizing the impact on the house and using as reference the original documentation. The process was coordinated by CAPBA's...
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This is a study of the microhistory of Villa Savoye that has already been realized, which thus does not concern its genesis (almost too studied by others). In the construction site of microhistory the reduced scale of observation is the space which may permit the reconstruction of interpersonal relationships as a historical subject and to experiment with new procedures and put interpretative categories to the test. The problem regarding the construction defects is more or less a constant in the work of Le Corbusier, in addition to the speed of the processes of both ageing and decay which...
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The restoration of the paintings of Le Corbusier in the Villa E-1027 was preceded by an important study phase including systematic sampling of the paintings. One purpose of the study was to determine the presence of the original paintings under the global over-paint made by a local craftsman in the seventies. Four of the eight paintings have been rediscovered, in a much better condition than expected. These paintings are a fragile testimony of the particular use of “Ripolin” by Le Corbusier, in the context of its use by others famous artists as Picasso or Picabia in the same period.
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The Cité de Refuge, for the Salvation Army, was built in Paris by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, in 1933. For Le Corbusier, it represented a formal, technical and mainly social architectural manifesto, as part of his idea of new society published in La Ville Radieuse, in 1935. Seventy years after, the building is deeply transformed because the everyday use is inadequate for the contemporary community standards for the reception of homeless and current climate standards. The challenge of the last restoration campaign (2007–2015) was to reconcile the current demanding standards while...
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The La Tourette Convent, built by Le Corbusier in Eveux (1953–1960) was subjected to interventions very soon after its inauguration. The article presents a critical analysis of these interventions: those overseen by Fernand Gardien (until 1964) right after completion; those undertaken before the complex was listed and for which limited documentation is available (1964–1979); the restoration campaign led by the Architecte en Chef des Monuments Historiques (ACMH) Mortamet, who followed an approach based on the completion of Le Corbusier’s work; lastly the most recent campaign, overseen by...
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Starting with the conception of the World Museum as part of the 1929 Mundaneum project, Le Corbusier continued to develop and refine that concept. The main building of the National Museum of Western Art completed in 1959, was also designed as a Museum of Unlimited Expansion prototype. NMWA has undergone conservation work and seismic base isolation work a number of times, and is therefore in generally good condition. The principal conservation works to the main building since its completion is summarized in this essay, along with other construction, extension and maintenance work carried...
Heritage in danger
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Le Corbusier’s vision for the Capitol Complex as the crown of Chandigarh city nestled in the backdrop of the Himalayas responded well to the aspirations of a modern and independent India in 1948. As recorded by several researchers of modern architecture, the Capitol Complex was strategically designed by Le Corbusier to share an intended visual transparency with its natural setting of the hills and forests in the backdrop. While Chandigarh has expanded to the south-west with the initial designed sectors now giving way to large scale housing structures on the outskirts, the original...
Lectures
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The following article is an edited version of the keynote address presented at the 13th International docomomo Conference that took place in Seoul, Korea, in September 2014. In this essay, Fumihiko Maki's urban design theory and practice are traced through nearly 60 years of written and built work. Extensive travel and observations of village formations (under the auspices of the Graham Foundation) in 1958, research and writing "Investigations in Collective Form" at Washington University in St. Louis, and associations with the Metabolist Group and Team X are elements which Maki has...
News
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In the editorial of docomomo Journal 28 , published in March 2003 and inaugurat- ing her tenure — as editor-in-chief of the magazine, Maristella Casciato undertook to consider “modernism outside the West” and to encourage “new cultures and new histories”, whilst simultaneously enriching the docomomo International network. She brought this intellectual endeavor with her to the position as Associate Director, Research at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCa) in Montreal. Working alongside Tom Avermaete, she co-curated the exhibition: How Architects, Experts, Politicians, International...
