Le Corbusier -Charles-\u00c9douard Jeanneret; La Chaux-de-Fonds, 1887 – Cap Martin, 1965- was a\u00a0 French architect of Swiss origin that was on of the main protagonist of the international architectural renaissance of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

In addition to being one of the greatest innovators of modern architecture, Le Corbusier was a tireless cultural agitator, a task he carried out with passion throughout his life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With an artisan background, he built his first house at the age of seventeen. He then learned from the best architects of his time: Joseff Hoffmann, Auguste Perret, and Peter Behrens. In 1919 he founded together with Amad\u00e9e Ozenfant, the Purism, a derivation of Picasso and Braque’s cubism. He had also created a magazine, L’Esprit Nouveau, from which he launched his proclamations against the School of Fine Arts.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1921 Le Corbusier published an article in which he set forth an entirely new concept of housing. The house had to be a “living machine” and be homologated to the rest of the goods that make up the technological society. In doing so, he did not defend aesthetics or the machine spirit but tried to make a house as functionally efficient as the machines were in the tasks for which humans have invented them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Modern life brought with it a series of demands whose satisfaction was impossible to find in the survival of traditional architecture; that’s why architecture had to be adapted to the civilization that emerged from the industrial revolution. “We like the pure air and the sun in abundance -The house is a living machine, bathrooms, sun, hot and cold water, temperature adjustable at will, food preservation, hygiene, beauty through convenient proportions. An armchair is a sitting machine… toilets are washing machines… The world of our work has created its things: the clothes, the fountain pen, the razor, the typewriter, the telephone… the limousine, the steamer, and the airplane”.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was, therefore, necessary to create a new architecture as well. Le Corbusier founded it around five essential points: the use of pilotis (supporting elements), roof gardens, open conformation of the plants, continuous windows, and free formation of the facade, all within a strict geometric order as the only generator of “pure volumes.” These solutions would become the fundamental and paradigmatic characteristics of architectural rationalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Le Corbusier’s utopia was to create a new urban reality, a city that would synthesize nature and technological development. To do this, architecture and urbanism had to be perfectly integrated. Le Corbusier conceived urbanism as the interaction of the space of civilization in the space of nature. His ideal city, designed in 1922, is built vertically, leaving large land surface areas free, which become green areas to run underneath the buildings. These are raised on pilotis, leaving the first floors as open communication spaces. The roofs, converted into gardens, are no longer useless spaces; the streets are broad, and the traffic is organized in large roads of rapid circulation, clearly separated from the pedestrian areas.<\/span><\/p>\n