Corbusier, Le - a Life

The first full-scale life of Le Corbusier, one of the most influential, admired, and maligned architects of the twentieth century-leader of the controversial modernist movement that sought to create a better society through innovative urban planning, and designer of some of the most iconic buildings of our time, the United Nations headquarters among them. Nicholas Fox Weber delves more deeply than ever before into the details of Le Corbusier’s life and work, illuminating his influences, idealism, and discipline, and the evolution of his pioneering architectural and design theories. We see Le Corbusier’s childhood in the Swiss Alps, a setting that shaped his ideas about light and space. We follow him to Paris in 1907 at the age of nineteen and witness the beginnings of a career that would see his designs brought to fruition in countries around the globe. Weber examines his long marriage (to a woman who detested architecture) and his numerous love affairs (with Josephine Baker, for one). And he makes clear how Le Corbusier’s single-minded belief in the possibilities for change inherent in his designs, combined with his lack of personal political convictions, allowed him to work across the political spectrum: with Mussolini, in Communist Russia, and with both the Vichy and de Gaulle’s provisional French governments. Here is a revelation of a previously elusive genius, a mercurial innovator whose extraordinary achievements helped define the age in which he lived.