Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier was a Swiss-French architect, urban planner, and writer whose buildings, city plans, and theories helped shape modern architecture.
Five Points of Architecture: Le Corbusier’s principles of pilotis, roof gardens, free plans, free façades, and horizontal windows. This manifesto distilled the design principles behind many of his buildings.
Villa Savoye: A 1928–1931 house in Poissy, France, designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. It is the clearest built demonstration of the Five Points of Architecture.
Ville Radieuse: Le Corbusier’s proposed linear, high-density city organized around towers, green space, and separated traffic. This unrealized plan expresses his most systematic vision of modern urban order.
Pierre Jeanneret: A Swiss architect who collaborated with Le Corbusier on buildings, furniture, and urban plans. He was a close collaborator whose contributions are often overshadowed by his cousin’s fame.
Frank Lloyd Wright: An American architect known for organic architecture and buildings designed in relation to their sites. His site-responsive approach contrasts with Le Corbusier’s more universal planning principles.
Dom-Ino House: A 1914–1915 structural proposal using reinforced-concrete slabs, columns, and stairs as an adaptable building system. Its independent frame anticipated the free plans and façades central to his architecture.
Unité d’Habitation: A large 1947–1952 residential building in Marseille, designed by Le Corbusier. It turns his ideas about collective housing into a self-contained vertical neighborhood.
Plan Voisin: Le Corbusier’s 1925 proposal to replace much of central Paris with high-rise towers and open space. It shows the drastic clearance his urban planning could demand.
Charlotte Perriand: A French architect and designer who worked with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret from 1927 to 1937. Her work helped shape the studio’s furniture and interior designs.
Alvar Aalto: A Finnish architect and designer who combined modernist methods with attention to materials, landscape, and human experience. Aalto’s humane regional modernism offers a counterpoint to Le Corbusier’s more abstract language.