“UNE PETITE MAISON is a fine example of Le Corbusier’s largely unnoticed skills as a graphic artist and book designer. His use of type and images in his books were truly revolutionary for twentieth-century design. Corbu described his approach as, “This new conception of a book, using the explicit, revelatory argument of the illustrations, [which] enables the author to avoid feeble descriptions: facts leap to the reader’s eye through the power of imagery.” Le Corbusier distanced himself from Modernist typography, while truly embracing the spirit of Bauhaus functionalism. In common with the German avant-garde, he took not only images but also graphic methods from the popular press, breaking continuous text with small illustrations of damn near everything: pell-mell, photographs of animals, buildings, everyday objects, clippings from newspapers and sales catalogues, cartoons, old-master paintings, scientific diagrams and more.”

The beloved photographer Takashi Homma captures the distinctive character and light of Le Corbusier’s windows in this elegant softcover volume

Internationally acclaimed photographer Takashi Homma (born 1962) first encountered Le Corbusier’s work in Chandigarh, a city in India whose master plan was primarily designed by the architectural pioneer. Since then, Homma has traveled around the world to capture the iconic Le Corbusier style with a particular focus on windows.

Both an homage to Le Corbusier’s architecture and a partial study of the window as a form, Homma’s photography series conveys the extent to which windows function as their own artistic element within the overall design of a building. Rather than simply looking through the windows at the landscapes contained within their frames, Homma’s photographs encourage viewers to also look at the windows and consider them as subjects unto themselves. With Homma’s exquisite compositional instincts, his images offer a new perspective on the overlap between architectural photography and fine-art photography.

This visual tour of every one of Le Corbusier’s buildings across the world represents the most comprehensive photographic archive of the architect’s work. In 2010, photographer Cemal Emden set out to document every building designed by the master architect Le Corbusier. Traveling through three continents, Emden photographed all the 52 buildings that remain standing. Each of these buildings is featured in the book and captured from multiple angles, with images revealing their exterior and interior details. Interspersed throughout the book are texts by leading architects and scholars, whose commentaries are as fascinating and varied as the buildings themselves. The book closes with an illustrated, annotated index. From the early Villa Vallet, built in Switzerland in 1905, to his groundbreaking Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, completed in 1947, this ambitious project presents the entirety and diversity of Le Corbusier’s architectural output. Visually arresting and endlessly engaging, it will appeal to the architect’s many fans, as well as anyone interested in the foundation of modern architecture.

Between 1945 and 1967, Le Corbusier (1887–1965) planned and built five “Unités d’habitation” in Marseille, Rezé, Berlin, Briey-en-Forêt and Firminy. Due to an acute shortage of housing after the war, he developed a new type of building―multifunctional blocks of flats that combined a large number of apartments on a small plot. These buildings included a roof landscape, as well as such urban structures as schools, cinemas, pharmacies and grocery stores. Le Corbusier’s revolutionary idea of a vertical city offered novel solutions to urban planning issues and social, aesthetic and structural challenges.
The five Unités, now in various states of repair, have been photographed by photographer Arthur Zalewski (born 1971). This catalog collects Zalewski’s photographs alongside texts by curator Peter Ottmann, Arthur Zalewski and Anne König.

Enjoy the first, comprehensive inside account of Le Corbusier’s Shodhan Villa. This book is a thorough examination of the least known of Le Corbusier’s buildings in India, Villa Shodhan in Ahmedabad. As a privately owned home, it has been protected from fame and only a few have been granted access to this fantastic villa, the last one to be designed by Le Corbusier. This book takes you on a journey through the deep innards of this unexplored architectural masterpiece.

PREMIÈRE PARTIE : ATMOSPHÈRES

I. – GRANDEUR DES CHOSES
1. – Quand les cathédrales étaient blanches

II. – DÉCADENCE DE L’ESPRIT
1. – Sommaire d’un quotidien
2. – L’argent
3. – Saint-Front de Périgueux
4. – Gare de Bordeaux
5. – M. Raoul Dautry a déclaré
6. – De l’air exact
7. – Le Conseil Municipal se réserve toutefois le droit

III. – NATURE DU VRAI
1. – La grandeur est dans l’intention

DEUXIÈME PARTIE : U. S. A.

I. – VILLES DU MONDE
1. – Lecteur de situation
2. – Motif du voyage
3. – New-York, ville debout

II. – I AM AN AMERICAN
1. – I am an American
2. – New-York n’est pas une ville finie
3. – C’est une ville sauvage !
4. – Les rues sont orthogonales et l’esprit est libéré
5. – Orthogonal, signe de l’esprit
6. – Les gratte-ciel de New-York sont trop petit !
7. – “Les gratte-ciel sont plus grands que les architectes”
8. – Dans des caves !
9. – C’est une chose acquis
10. – Un million et demi d’autos, quotidiennement
11. – Aucun arbre dans la ville
12. – Un lieu insigne de l’architecture
13. – Un lieu de grâce radieuse
14- – Le pont gigantesque de Brooklyn
15. – “Le Grand Central Railways”
16. – Trains de banlieue
17. – La catastrophe féerique

III. – FRANCE-AMERIQUE
1. – Vous êtes les forts
2. – Orgueil
3. – Est-ce un cancer ?
4. – Un déjeuner d’affaires au Plaza
5. – Un dîner d’hommes d’affaires à Boston
6. – Mr C. Albert Barnes de Philadelphie
7. – Les raids des Indiens ne sont pas si éloignés
8. – Crescendo
9. – L’École des Beaux-Arts de Paris

IV. – RECHERCHES ET MANIFESTATIONS DE L’ESPRIT
1. – Recherches de l’esprit
2. – Esprit de tradition et instinct de la vie présente
3. – Tous des athlètes
4. – Le Caravage et surréalisme
5. – Du salpêtre
6. – Quat’z’arts à New-York
7. – La famille coupée en deux
8. – Esprit funèbre
9. – Esprit mécanicien et nègres d’U.S.A.
10. – Mannequins de cire de la Cinquième Avenue

V. – NÉCESSITES DES PLANS ET ENTREPRISES COMMUNAUTAIRES
1. – Méditation à propos de Ford
2. – Le grand gaspillage
3. – L’autorité mal renseignée
4. – Où est le problème américain ?
5. – Réponse à un questionnaire
6. – Au calendrier du monde
7. – Au revoir, New-York !

LE CORBUSIER LE GRAND is the only book you’ll ever need on the world’s most influential architect.

”He is the Leonardo of our time.” – Eero Saarinen

”He has provided enough for a whole generation to live on.” – Walter Gropius

”The world’s greatest architect.” – Oscar Niemeyer

”Without question No. 1.” – Philip Johnson

Le Corbusier (1887-1965) is known as of one of the giants of twentieth-century architecture and design. The Swiss-born, self-named architect was not only the creator of some of the most impressive buildings of the last century, he was also an accomplished painter, sculptor, furniture designer, urbanist, and author. His work and social theories continue to be a dominant force today, and his elegant manner, typified by his iconic round black eyeglasses, is still the signature look for architects around the world. Only a book grand in size could encapsulate such a legendary figure.

Phaidon Press is pleased to announce the publication of LE CORBUSIER LE GRAND, a spectacular visual biography of the life and work of the father of Modern architecture. Weighing in at 20 pounds, this massive book is packed with 2,000 images and documents, many rare or previously unpublished. Drawing on an array of archival materials, this sumptuous volume depicts not only the vast and varied output of Le Corbusier, but also the major events, people, and forces that shaped the life of a man who continues to fascinate those in and outside the architectural world.

LE CORBUSIER LE GRAND follows the same dramatically oversized design of the critically acclaimed Andy Warhol Giant Size (Phaidon, 2006). The large format enables the reader to explore in detail a myriad of fascinating photographs, letters, personal correspondence, art works, notes, press clippings, sketches, and ephemera all featured in this one of a kind publication. The rarely seen photographs and correspondence shed new light on Le Corbusier’s relationships with Josephine Baker, Eileen Gray, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, and many others. A separate booklet includes transcriptions and translations (from French to English) of all featured documents.

LE CORBUSIER LE GRAND includes an insightful introductory essay by Jean-Louis Cohen, one of the world’s most authoritative architectural historians, and incisive chapter introductions by Tim Benton, a highly regarded Le Corbusier scholar. This luxurious book is a striking addition to any coffee table, making it an extraordinary gift for anyone with an interest in art, architecture, or design.

Si les édifices de Le Corbusier sont des emblèmes établis de l’architecture du XXe siècle, sa production éditoriale n’est guère connue et n’a jusqu’alors pas été appréciée à sa juste valeur. En effet, entre 1912 et 1965, Le Corbusier a minutieusement imaginé et conçu plus de quarante livres. Dans le présent ouvrage, l’auteur de la monographie Le Corbusier, architecte du livre Catherine de Smet approfondit la question et analyse dans le détail l’œuvre éditoriale de l’architecte. Avec des documents d’archives inédits à l’appui, la spécialiste de Le Corbusier reconstitue le processus de création de ces œuvres et invite à découvrir l’architecte du livre qui se cache derrière le grand maître bâtisseur. Cet ouvrage dévoile une facette nouvelle et peu connue de Le Corbusier et constitue une précieuse source d’inspiration pour toutes les personnes intéressées par le graphisme éditorial. Du matériel iconographique nouveau et des analyses détaillées font de cet ouvrage le complément indispensable du précédent titre de Catherine de Smet Le Corbusier, architecte du livre.

In Le Corbusier: Secret Photographer Tim Benton reflects on the famous architect’s use of photography, starting with the young Charles-Edouard Jeanneret’s attempts to take professional photographs during his travels in central Europe, the Balkans, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. While Le Corbusier always claimed that he saw no virtue in taking photographs, he actually bought three cameras and took several hundred photographs between 1907 and 1917, many of them of publishable quality. In 1936 he acquired a 16mm movie camera and took 120 sequences of film and nearly 6,000 photographs with it. This previously unpublished material is the basis for the publication. It reveals Le Corbusier to be a sensitive and brilliant manipulator of a wide range of photographic styles. Le Corbusier: Secret Photographer provides dramatically new insights into Le Corbusier’s visual imagination, his changing attitudes towards nature and materials in the 1930s, and his distrust of progress.

In the nineteen-fifties the architectural profession turned its gaze towards India where Le Corbusier had been commissioned to build an ideal modern city. Today, Chandigarh is a pulsating metropolis while, at the same time, the originally planned city was able to retain its garden city character. In her extensive urban portrait, the photographer and ethnologist Bärbel Högner investigates the alleged contradiction between European modernism and Indian lifestyle. This book presents a range of photographs and texts that exemplify the local modernism of the gesamtkunstwerk that is Chandigarh. With ethnographic flair, the author looks at the adoption of the star architect’s systems of rules and regulations. Alternating between architecture and scenes from daily life, her images paint a multifaceted picture of Living with Le Corbusier in this unique planned city in India.

Le Corbusier`s buildings have long been part of the inalienable canon of 20th century architecture. But le Corbusier`s work as a book designer and author is scarcely known, and has hitherto not been acknowledged – Le Corbusier meticulously planned and realized over 40 books in his lifetime. Architect of Books shows that Le Corbuiser accorded great importance to books as an essential part of his output. Using unpublished archive material, Catherine de Smet traces the process by which these books emerged and makes it possible to discover the great construction architect as a book artist.

This exceptional Complete Works edition documents the enormous spectrum in the oeuvre of one of the most influential architects of the 20th Century. Published between 1929 and 1970, in close collaboration with Le Corbusier himself, and frequently reprinted ever since, the eight volumes comprise an exhaustive and singular survey of his work. Includes eight volumes in a slip case box. This boxed set will be the crown jewel in anyone’s library of architecture books.

Cet ouvrage de référence a été conçu par deux passionnés de design et d’architecture : Éric Touchaleaume et Gérald Moreau,qui ont séjourné plusieurs fois par an en Inde depuis 1999. Il illustre et inventorie ainsi les réalisations architecturales indiennes des deux créateurs et pour la première fois le mobilier conçu pour la ville nouvelle de Chandigarh. En 1951, le Premier Ministre Jawaharlal Nehru choisit Le Corbusier pour la réalisation de la nouvelle capitale du Penjab : Chandigarh, symbole d’une Inde libre et moderne. Le Corbusier dessine le plan directeur de la ville et les bâtiments du Capitole : l’Assemblée, le Secrétariat et la Haute Cour, il propose à son cousin Pierre Jeanneret de superviser les chantiers sur place. Il réalise également le Palais des Filateurs, deux luxueuses villas et un musée, pour de riches commanditaires d’Ahmedabad, capitale de l’état du Gujarat. Pierre Jeanneret accomplit, en outre, un travail indépendant du « maître » et réside en Inde de 1951 à 1965.Nommé architecte urbaniste de l’Etat du Penjab et directeur de l’Ecole d’Architecture de Chandigarh, il réalise une oeuvre personnelle d’une grande qualité : maisons, écoles, campus universitaire, bibliothèques… Avec l’humanisme qui le caractérise et son souci constant de mettre le beau et le confort de vie à la portée de tous, il excelle à créer des bâtiments modestes, architectures écologiques et poétiques utilisant les ressources locales : brique de terre cuite déclinée de multiples façons, galets de la rivière voisine, traitement des murs à la chaux blanche ou teintée au pigment bleu… En plus de son activité d’architecte, Pierre Jeanneret met au point une gamme de meubles très épurés, en teck, cannages ou revêtement de coton, secondé par de jeunes assistants indiens, au sein d’un programme intitulé « Low Cost Furniture » destiné à équiper les différents bâtiments privés et publics de Chandigarh. Il puise son inspiration dans l’artisanat local traditionnel,et dans ses créations antérieures réalisées en France, seul, ou aux côtés de Le Corbusier, de Charlotte Perriand, ou de Jean Prouvé qui rendra hommage à son ami : « (…) Avec lesmoyens les plus simples,il proposait timidement des merveilles qu’il s’agisse d’architecture ou de meubles (…) » Jean Prouvé

Le Corbusier, who famously called a house “a machine for living,” was fascinated-even obsessed-by another kind of machine, the automobile. His writings were strewn with references to autos: “If houses were built industrially, mass-produced like chassis, an aesthetic would be formed with surprising precision,” he wrote in Toward an Architecture(1923). In his “white phase” of the twenties and thirties, he insisted that his buildings be photographed with a modern automobile in the foreground. Le Corbusier moved beyond the theoretical in 1936, entering (with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret) an automobile design competition, submitting plans for “a minimalist vehicle for maximum functionality,” the Voiture Minimum. Despite Le Corbusier’s energetic promotion of his design to several important automakers, the Voiture Minimum was never mass-produced. This book is the first to tell the full and true story of Le Corbusier’s adventure in automobile design. Architect Antonio Amado describes the project in detail, linking it to Le Corbusier’s architectural work, to Modernist utopian urban visions, and to the automobile design projects of other architects including Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright. He provides abundant images, including many pages of Le Corbusier’s sketches and plans for the Voiture Minimum, and reprints Le Corbusier’s letters seeking a manufacturer. Le Corbusier’s design is often said to have been the inspiration for Volkswagen’s enduringly popular Beetle; the architect himself implied as much, claiming that his design for the 1936 competition originated in 1928, before the Beetle. Amado, after extensive examination of archival and source materials, disproves this; the influence may have gone the other way. Although many critics considered the Voiture Minimum a footnote in Le Corbusier’s career, Le Corbusier did not. This book, lavishly illustrated and exhaustively documented, restores Le Corbusier’s automobile to the main text.

One of the most ambitious undertakings of legendary architect Le Corbusier was the complete design of Chandigarh, the capital of the Indian state of Punjab. In the 1950s, Ernst Scheidegger traveled to India to witness the construction of the city and now the photographs that he took on his visits are collected here. Fifty years in the making, Chandigarh 1956 is a testament to Scheidegger’s innovative efforts to promote architecture and urban planning through photography. His striking images show Chandigarh in its raw, evolving state, as he not only documented the rising government buildings and the unfurling streets of a modern designed city, but also captured images of the local people and their living conditions. The volume also features a facsimile of Scheidegger’s original book mock-up with sketches by Le Corbusier, and an essay by Stanislaus von Moo, which analyzes the images as well as the importance of Chandigarh and the work of Le Corbusier’s own office to promote the project through different media. A captivating account of architectural history, Chandigarh 1956 forges crucial connections between the pioneers of modern architecture and photography and the future of architecture and urban planning today.

The Unite in Marseille (1945-1952) was a pioneering achievement at a time when social housing in the post WWII years posed an immense problem. Freed from restrictive regulations for the first time Le Corbusier was able to put into practice his concept of modern social housing. A milestone of modern architecture and subject of controversial debate, the Unite in Marseille continues to attract numerous visitors and students of architecture. This volume is the latest addition to Birkhauser’s series of guides to Le Corbusier’s most acclaimed buildings, and includes an additional chapter on his Unites in Reze-les-Nantes, Briey en Foret, Firminy and Berlin. The author, a practising architect and well known le Corbusier specialist, lives in Marseille and teaches at the Ecole d’architecture de Marseille-Luminy.

This book presents 123 calling cards of artists (painters, sculptors, photographers, architects, graphic designers, illustrators etc.) from the 18th century to the present day. The facsimiled cards are slipped like bookmarks into a book by several authors on the history of the use of calling cards, the social context in which they were produced, and related historical and fictional narratives. The often unexpected graphic qualities of these personalized objects, each designed to capture an individual identity within the narrow confines of a tiny rectangle card, implicitly recount a history of taste and typographic codes in the West. But this calling card collection also lays the foundations for a microhistory of art, inspired by the Italian microstoria, or a looser narrative that breaks free from geographic contexts and historical periods. We can imagine how social networks were formed before the advent of Facebook, and how artists defined themselves in the social sphere, whether they were students or teachers, dean of the art school or museum curator, founder of a journal, firm, restaurant or political party, and so on. Superimposed on this imaginary or idealized network formed by chance encounters is a living network of students of art or history, historians or anthropologists, librarians, archivists, gallerists, museum curators and artists themselves, the network upon which this pocket museum is constructed. The sheer variety of perspectives and stories brought together here makes this book a prodigious forum for discussion. The carded artists include: Absalon, Anni and Josef Albers, John Armleder, Iain Baxter, Larry Bell, Joseph Beuys, Joseph Binder, Max Bill, Pierrette Bloch, Rosa Bonheur, Irma Boom, Aglaüs Bouvenne, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Broodthaers, Antonio Canova, Caran d’Ache, A.M. Cassandre, Chenue malletier, Iris Clert, Claude Closky, Le Corbusier, Silvie Défraoui, Sonia Delaunay, Fortunato Depero, Marcel Duchamp, A.R. Dunton, Céline Duval, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Yan Duyvendak, Daniel Eatock, Edward Fella, Sylvie Fleury, Schwestern Flöge, Piero Fornasetti, Hans Frank, Lene Frank, Emile Gallé, General Idea, Dan Graham, Wolfgang von Gœthe, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Walter Gropius, Guerrilla Girls, Hector Guimard, Friedrich Haeffcke, Raymond Hains, Keith Haring, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Anton Herrgesell, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Ray Johnson, Ana Jotta, Wassily Kandinsky, André Kertész, Martin Kippenberger, Paul Klee, Johann Adam Klein, Yves Klein, Július Koller, Joseph Kosuth, Yayoi Kusama, Carl Gotthard Langhans, Fernand Léger, Pierre Leguillon, George Maciunas, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Edouard Manet, Piero Manzoni, Christian Marclay, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Karel Martens, Annette Messager, Lucia Moholy, Piet Mondrian, Valérie Mréjen, Félix Nadar, Isamu Noguchi, The Offices of Jenny Holzer, Peter Nadin, Richard Prince and al., Yoko Ono, Claes Oldenburg, Nam June Paik, Francis Picabia, Adrian Piper, Emil Pirchan, Man Ray, Les ready made appartiennent à tout le monde®, Carl August Reinhardt, Gerrit Rietveld, Auguste Rodin, Edward Ruscha, Alexander Search, Willem Sandberg, Erik Satie, Gino Severini, Johan Gottfried Schadow, Egon Schiele, Oskar Schlemmer, Käthe Schmidt, Roman Signer, Alec Soth, Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, Jack Smith, Hélène Smith, Harald Szeemann, Sophie Taeuber, Karel Teige, Oliviero Toscani, Theo van Doesburg, Roman Vishniac, Andy Warhol, Weegee, Neill Whistler, Heimo Zobernig, Piet Zwart, Emmy Zweybrück Prochaska With texts by: Samuel Adams, Damarice Amao, Daniel Baumann, Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey, Géraldine Beck, Paul Bernard, Christian Besson, Christianna Bonin, Véronique Borgeaud, Marie de Brugerolle, Garance Chabert, Kyrill Charbonnel, Yann Chateigné, Manuel Cirauqui, Chiara Costa, Caroline Coutau, Jean-Baptiste Delorme, Carla Demierre, Dakota DeVos, Corinne Diserens, Eva Fabbris, Patricia Falguières, Arthur Fink, Sophie Gayerie, Kati Gegenheimer, Mark Thomas Gibson, Nicolas Giraud, Victor Guégan, Andrea Gyorody, Nastassja Haidinger, Dean Inkster, Aurélie Jacquet, Elisabeth Jobin, Vincent Jolivet, Moritz Küng, Angela Lampe, Charlotte Laubard, Anaël Lejeune, Quentin Lannes, Pierre Leguillon, Charlotte Magnin, Nicole Marchand-Zañartu, Valérie Mavridorakis, Aurélien Mole, Michael J. Moore, Adrien Mouginot, Christiane Mühlegger, Émilie Parendeau, Ying Sze Pek, Corine Pencenat, Mathias Pfund, Fabien Pinaroli, Raphaël Pirenne, Paulo Pires do Vale, Carrie Pilto, Frans Postma, Jeanne Quéheillard, Fabienne Radi, Ivan Ristić, Vincent de Roguin, Paul-Louis Roubert, Margot Sanitas, Gilles Saussier, Elana Shapira, Klaus-Peter Speidel, Friedrich Tietjen, Rebecca Topakian, Gesine Tosin, Xiaoda Wang, Christophe Wavelet, David Zerbib, Célia Zuber Co-published by HEAD – Genève (Geneva University of Art and Design) and Edition Patrick Frey under the patronage of the Museum of Mistakes Editors: Pierre Leguillon in collaboration with Barbara Fédier and Kyrill Charbonnel, Pauline Cordier, Aurélie Jacquet, Aline Melaet, Anaïs Perez, and Charlotte Schaer, students of WorkMaster at HEAD – Genève

In Please send this book to my mother, artist Sarah Entwistle dismantles the traditional form of the architectural monograph and artist biography. In 2011, the astounding personal effects of her grandfather, architect Clive Entwistle (1916 76), emerged from a Manhattan storeroom. This book welds together original text fragments and extensive visual material from the collection and Clive Entwistle s years in Paris, London, Tangiers, and New York. Clive Entwistle described his cardinal points as: Philosophy, Architecture, Intellect, and Sex. He was an autodidact whose unconsolidated practice tackled utopian city plans, product design, structural engineering, formal experimentation, and architectural critique. The one-time translator and collaborator of Le Corbusier, Entwistle s proposal for the Crystal Palace (1946) was described by Corbusier as, one of the great projects of our time. However, none of his ambitious proposals was realized, and Entwistle s presence was largely erased from the landscape of modernism. Sarah Entwistle has constructed an ambiguous portrait, an evocative rendition of an extraordinary life, which provokes questions on the authority of the biographer and the monograph. This publication reaches beyond these genres to resemble an artist s book of poetry and prose fiction.

The 20 architects are Le Corbusier, A. Lawrence Kocher, Eric Friberger, M. E. Haefeli, M. Breuer, Vernon de Mars, W.M. Moser, W. van Tijen, Richard J. Neutra, Beaudoin & Lods, Alvar Aalto, A. Boeken, J. Sakura, Max Bill, etc.