©Richard Weil

Known for its striking form and beautiful interior experiences, the Church at Firminy by Le Corbusier was another evolution of the core thoughts and practices of the architect throughout his many years of designing. This church also carries special significance, as it was the last major work of Le Corbusier and was left unfinished upon his death in 1965. It was finished forty-one years after his death in 2006, keeping his essence alive.

More on the Church at Firminy by Le Corbusier after the break.

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©Samuel Ludwig

The Convent of La Tourette is Le Corbusier’s final building completed in Europe, and is also thought by many to be his most unique program. It was built to be a self-contained world for a community of silent monks, and to accommodate the unique and specific lifestyle of the monks, the monastery is made of one hundred individual cells, a communal library, a refectory, a rooftop cloister, a church, and classrooms.

The one request to the architect by Father Marie-Alain Couturier was that he “create a silent dwelling for one hundred bodies and one hundred hearts.”

More on Le Corbusier‘s Convent of La Tourette after the break.

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© Thomas Lewandovski

After World War II, post-war Europe was suffering from a lack of housing with many displaced people from the extensive bombing raids.  In response to the housing crisis in Europe, Le Corbusier began delving into designing large scale, communal residences for the victims of World War II. One of the most notable projects in this series was the Unite d’ Habitation in Marseilles, France. This project had inspired a continued implementation of the design type across Europe. The fourth building in the series is the Corbusierhaus in Berlin, Germany. Completed in 1959, it was designed as a symbol for the modernization of Germany after the war and the Cold War. read more »

© Wojtek Gurak

After World War II, the need for housing was at an unprecedented high.  The Unite d’ Habitation in Marseille, France was the first large scale project for the famed architect, Le Corbusier.  In 1947, Europe was still feeling the effects of the Second World War, when Le Corbusier was commissioned to design a multi-family residential housing project for the people of Marseille that were dislocated after the bombings on France.  Completed in 1952, the Unite d’ Habitation was the first of a new housing project series for Le Corbusier that focused on communal living for all the inhabitants to shop, play, live, and come together in a “vertical garden city.” read more »

© Cara Hyde-Basso

In the commune of Ronchamp, slightly south of east of Paris, sits one of Le Corbusier’s most unusual projects of his career, Notre Dame du Ronchamp, or more commonly referred to as Ronchamp.  In 1950, Le Corbusier was commissioned to design a new Catholic church to replace the previous church that had been destroyed during World War II.

The site of Ronchamp has long been a religious site of pilgrimage that was deeply rooted in Catholic tradition, but after World War II the church wanted a pure space void of extravagant detail and ornate religious figures unlike its predecessors.  Ronchamp is deceptively modern such that it does not appear as a part of Corbusier’s aesthetic or even that of the International Style; rather it sits in the site as a sculptural object.  The inability to categorize Ronchamp has made it one of the most important religious buildings of the 20^th Century, as well as Corbusier’s career. read more »

© Flavio Bragaia

Situated in Poissy, a small commune outside of Paris, is one of the most significant contributions to modern architecture in the 20^th century, Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier.  Completed in 1929, Villa Savoye is a modern take on a French country house that celebrates and reacts to the new machine age.  The house single handedly transformed Le Corbusier’s career as well as the principles of the International Style; becoming one of the most important architectural precedents in the history.  Villa Savoye’s detachment from its physical context lends its design to be contextually integrated into the mechanistic/industrial context of the early 20^th century, conceptually defining the house as a mechanized entity.

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Courtesy of TDO Architecture

TDO was commissioned by Wallpaper* Magazine to re-approach the design of a doll’s house.  They were asked to consider Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye as an inspirational starting point, and from there developed a concept that successfully responded with a functional doll’s house with a contemporary design.

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Courtesy of Fondation Le Corbusier

Pratt Institute School of Architecture and the Pratt Library will present “Le Corbusier – Miracle Boxes”, a multidisciplinary, three-part exhibition on the work of renowned Swiss-French architect, urbanist, designer, writer, and painter Le Corbusier (born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris), who is considered by many to be the most important architect of the 20th century, starting August 30, 2010.

“Miracle Boxes,” the first New York exhibition dedicated entirely to the work of Le Corbusier, is curated by Ivan R. Shumkov, Ph.D., adjunct associate professor of architecture at Pratt Institute. Shumkov will deliver an opening lecture that will be followed by a reception on September 13, 2010 at 6 p.m in Higgins Hall Auditorium located at 61 St. James Place in Brooklyn. The exhibition, opening lecture, reception, and an upcoming related symposium will be free and open to the public.

More information and images on the event after the break. read more »

Interesting video by Rob Carter:

“Stone On Stone” is a stop-motion video animation that uses the architectural language of High Gothic and Modernism to invent a contradictory history of their evolvement. The theme starts and finishes with the vast and unfinished Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, NYC. It is contrasted with Le Corbusier’s La Tourette monastery in France, competed in 1960. The video uses this anomalous but single-minded architectural vision as the foundation for a new emergence of Gothic religious expression, resulting in a complete and unified fantasy cathedral – akin to the building that the Church of Saint John might have aspired to be.

2009, 7 minutes 44 seconds
1080 x 1080 pixel digital video projection
B&W/Color/Sound
(Clip taken from the 3rd to 6th minute)

“Slumdog Millionaire” is the movie of the year. Its story of a young guy from Mumbai’s slum of Dharavi, who manages to change its destiny through the “Who wants to be a Millionaire” game has charmed many people, including the Oscars’ jury, who awarded the movie with 8 prizes.

At the same time, the movie has created a debate around slums and how the movie portrays them. “Slumdog Millionaire” follows the mainstream vision of slums, described in the XIX century by writers like Daniel Defoe or Charles Dickens: dark, dirty places, with people packed in small rooms with no water facilities. In slums, riots are frequents, and police can hardly enter: the perfect place for criminals to hide and plan their threats to the society, and the perfect incubator for all sort of diseases.

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Easily regarded as one of the most adroit architects of 20th century, Le Corbusier was a relentless designer, urban planner and writer dedicated to industrializing almost every city he came across.

This spring The Barbican – London’s colossal multi-arts venue – is hosting an all-encompassing showcase of Le Corbusier’s work, a survey which will include an abundance of original models, interior settings, drawings, furniture, photographs, films, tapestries, paintings, sculpture and books designed and written by the architect himself. More of a celebration than an exhibition, the festivities include concerts, films, guest speakers and a photo competition all in his honor.

Seen at coolhunting.

World Expositions have been an architectural playground since they started to appear: London World Exposition of 1851 (Crystal Palace), Paris World Exposition of 1889 (Eiffel Tower), and more recently, Hannover 2000 and Zaragoza 2008.

But also at the Brussels World Exposition in 1958, where Le Corbusier created the very first multimedia project, in collaboration with Edgar Varèse and Iannis Xenakis: The Phillips Pavillion. This unique experience only lasted through the Exposition, being demolished after it, but The Virtual Electronic Poem (VEP) project, co-funded by the European Union through the Culture 2000 programme, realized a virtual reality (VR) environment capable of reproducing the global experience of the Poème électronique through a philologically accurate reconstruction of the original installation and a technologically innovative VR implementation, that you can see on the above video.