Le Corbusier was a pioneer in modern and rational design whom also worked in cultural creativity of art, architecture, planning, furniture, and technology. He was an avid writer and builder with innovative and influential views on urban living, modern architectural design, and a proponent that architecture had to embrace the future. He worked on designs of machine aesthetic and urban nature where his buildings were simple and made of glass, steel and reinforced concrete.
INTERESTING FACTS
The eldest of three children and his father was a surveyor.
Born as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, and sometimes known as Corbu,
He had very little architectural training, similar to as
Mies van der Rohe.
In collaboration with the artist Amédée Ozenfant, he developed a new theory called Purism where architecture would be as efficient as a factory assembly line. The code of purist rules would be to refine and simplify design, dispensing with ornamentation. Many of his ideas were documented in his book "Towards a New Architecture", his radical ideas at the time, still continues to be one of the best-selling architecture books of all time.
He called his private homes “machines to be lived in” and their importance was based on a balance of aesthetics, the mental and social well being of humans, light, air and harmony.
Designed furniture that was lines are clean, straight and precise.
Coins were minted in dedication to Le Corbusier by the Swiss Mint.
Albert Einstein also has coins minted by the Swiss Mint as well.
One of the fathers of the Modern movement/The International Style - and shares this honor with Walter Gropius,
Mies van der Rohe, Theo van Doesburg, Philip Johnson, and
Alvar Aalto.
DEPARTURE
August 27, 1965: Against his doctor's orders, at age 78, he went for a swim in the Mediterranean Sea later to be found dead by bathers. It is assumed he died of a heart attack.
When he died many came to praise his works including his worst artist enemy, the painter Salvador Dalí.