Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier

His work was featured especially prominently in the landmark exhibition in 1932 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York - and subsequent book - that gave the movement its name.

Le Corbusier is one of the major originators of the International Style, along with such contemporaries as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, with whom he once worked, among many others.

Widely praised as a visionary whose imaginative plans for urban agglomerations and spaces dramatically transformed our understanding of what a city should be and could look like, he is equally reviled for the soulless monotony that his strand of modernism encouraged and the wanton destruction of the urban fabric that he both championed and prompted among his followers in urban planning during the latter half of the 20 th century.

Le Corbusier was and remains a highly polemical figure in the history of modern architecture.

His complex ties to politics and the sociological dimensions of architecture - along with his voluminous records and archives - mean that he will continue to be the subject of debates for decades to come.

Over fifty years after his death, Le Corbusier still manages to exercise influence and arouse hatred for his ideas and buildings.

Le Corbusier's ideas about immense, rationalized, zoned, and industrially-constructed cities both shocked and seduced a global audience, and while they never came to fruition as a cohesive vision, his disciples put many of their pieces into place around the world, both during and after his lifetime. He was one of the key designers who formulated the ideas behind a truly modern, avant-garde architecture during the interwar period. This highly polemical designer hailed from obscurity in the Swiss Jura Mountains to become (arguably) the most influential urban planner and architect of the 20 th century. And there are few architects who can compare with the stature of Le Corbusier. Fewer still use their deceased schnauzer's skin and hair as the binding for a copy of Don Quixote. Few architects have a schnauzer that they name 'Pinceau' ('Paintbrush').

Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier