From Publishers Weekly
A huge influence on big Hamptons builder Charles Gwathmey, not to mention on many others, was Swiss genius Charles douard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier (1887-1965). Columbia University architectural historian Kenneth Frampton, author of the standard textbook Modern Architecture, here offers his entry in the T&H World of Art series. The book covers Le Corbusier's life and projects, from blocks of the 1920s Ville Contemporaine to Ronchamp Cathedral in Notre Dame-du-Haut to work in India and for Harvard. As a short introduction, it complements Charles Jenck's massive, opinionated Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture from Marsilio last year. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Le Corbusier is probably the most famous and certainly the most controversial architect of the twentieth century. His impact on the urban fabric around us and on the way we live has been gigantic because of the richness and variety of his work and his passionately expressed philosophy of architecture. Weaving through his long and prolific life are certain recurrent themes—his perennial drive toward new types of dwelling, from the early white villas to the Unité d'Habitation at Marseille; his evolving concepts of urban form, including the Plan Voisin of 1925 with its cruciform towers imposed on the city of Paris and his work at Chandigarh in India; and his belief in a new technocratic order. The distinguished critic and historian Kenneth Frampton reexamines all these facets of his artistic and philosophical worldview in the light of recent discoveries, and presents us with a Le Corbusier for the twenty-first century. 200 b/w illustrations.


About the Author
Kenneth Frampton is Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and the author of the best-selling Modern Architecture in the World of Art series.

FROM THE PUBLISHER