PERSONAL

INFORMATION

NAME- CHARLES-EDOUARD JEANNERET-GRISNATIONALITY-SWISS / FRENCHBIRTH DATE – OCTOBER 6, 1887BIRTHLACE – LA CHAUX DE FONDS, SWITZERLANDDATE OF DEATH – AUGUST 27, 1965(AGED 77) PLACE OF DEATH – ROOUEBTUNE-CAP-MARTIN, FRANCE

LE- CORBUSIER

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, who chose to be known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and also painter, who is famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called Modern architecture or the International Style. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in his 30s.

He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America. He was also an urban planner, painter, sculptor, writer, and modern furniture designer

Le Corbusier's designs in architecture, urban planning and furniture, are based on his theory of functionalism and in the use of new symbols. One of these is concept of flat roofs, that the introduction of the use of reinforced concrete in architecture made attainable; these types of roofs have an alternative look to that of the traditional sloping ones, and give room to creative experiments like the realization of recreation open spaces and gardens hosted on their top. In Le Corbusier’s philosophy the creation of new functions in design is aimed at originating modern values.

FIVE POINTS OF ARCHITECTURE

Stilt biuldings Free façade Open floor plans Long Ribbon windows Roof gardens

HIS QUOTATIONS "Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent

play of masses brought together in light." "Space and light and order. Those are the things that

men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep."

"The house is a machine for living in." "Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind

of plan, both for the house and the city." "Architecture or revolution. Revolution can be

avoided."

1951-1955 CHURCH OF NOTRE-DAME-DU-HAUTCOLLINE DE BOURLEMONT, RONCHAMP,FRANCE

1951-1955 CHURCH OF NOTRE-DAME-DU-HAUTCOLLINE DE BOURLEMONT, RONCHAMP,FRANCE

The visual revolution of the ronchamp church astounded le corbusier`s supporters and followers and is the product of his encounter with ecclesiastical architecture .

On the borlemont hill , the last spur of the vosges range, rising to 500 metres , he was asked to rebuilt the church of Notre-Dame-du-Haut, a historic of pilgrimage that had been leveled by bombing during world war II .

On his first visit ,in 1950 ,he was won over by a site akin to the jura peak he had discovered with L`Eplattenier 40 years earlier . He pounced on the chance to “ unite men with the cosmos “, like the indian observatories he had discovered around the same time . His project would thus be “site specific” .He learned about its history ,reading a book written on the church by Canon Belot, and came up with the idea of formulating “a word addressed to the site,” something like a “response to horizon”.

The terrain and its location were certainly determining factors of the design, but not the only ones.

The basic idea went back to the discovery on a long island beach of the empty crab`s shell, similar to those painted on his canvases in the 1930s, which lent the roof of the chapel, perched on four stout wall, its form.

Based on this initial idea , he designed successive maquettes of wire and wood, on which the final plan of 1952 was modeled . contruction continued till 1952 . The shell of the roof is made like an airplane wing with two frames and an envelope ; the wlla which are independent are separated from the shell by a narrow slit, are assemblage of veils and reinforced- concrete pillars , skeleton on which the inner and outer cladding is fixed. The south wall is both thicker and more tapered than the others , and during the design phase the load bearing east wall, initially so slender as to resemble a tent peg , was transformed into honeycomb church. The floor tilting and alters are made of stone . The chapels plan , which became increasingly asymmetrical as the planning phase progressed , was governed , inside and out, by the position of altars .

A 17th century polychrome statue of the virgin, the sole vestige of the vestige of the destroyed church , is placed such that it is visible to the congregation , priest and acolytes alike.

Besides the crab`s shell , other , disparate images fueled Le Corbusier`s inventiveness ; modern images , like ”ski-jumping”gargoyles protruding from the roof, borrowed from hydroelectric dams,as well as those drawn from his earliest memories . The shaft of light penetrating the side chapels conjure up the serapeum in hadrian`s villa, sketched by jeanneret in 1911.

He described it as a “mysterious hole” where he had “discovered a trick” . The surprising brise lumiere on the south wall , with its niches imbued with a clarity modulated by colour, conjures up the wall of the sidi brahim mosque in El Atteuf, which the architects discovered during his visit to pentapolis in algeria`s M`zab in 1031.

The interplay of matter and light introduced at Ronchamp broke with smooth surfaces and homogeneous clarity of 1920s . Light and shadow now became insrtuments for sculpting space. And the façade , the sole virtue of which used to be its “freeness”, now makes it possible to apply these instruments, owing to the thickness of the wall.

Under this dramatic lighting ,the white, grainy concrete of the roof replace the smooth, homogeneous facades of the “machines of living in” , by bearing the unmistakable mark of human labor.

1951-1962 ASSEMBLYSECTOR I – CHANDIGARH, PUNJAB, INDIA

1951-1962 ASSEMBLYSECTOR I – CHANDIGARH, PUNJAB, INDIA At the northwest tip of the capitol Le Corbusier erected two buildings designed to

house the political and administrstive heart of the indian punjab- the secretariate(seven ministers) and the assembly. When looking at the ensemble from the high court, the secretariate serves as a backdrop for the assembly, the most complex building in chandigarh. In its design it recalls the monastry of La Tourette whose courtyard has been filled in and , in its siting on the periphery of the district, anexpanded villa savoye.

The three main components are portico, facing the rest of the complex, and the assembly rooms, with their distinctive roofs. These three volumes are surrounded by U- shaped offices.

The forms used have very different origins, and the building seems to reflect Le Corbusier`s artistic findings as well as his thoughts on cosmic forces. The revolutionary hyperboloid housing the lower chambers derives from the cooling towers studied and drawn in ahmedabad ca. 1951, but it also recalls the pyramidal smoke houses in which lura farmers smoke pork, which had so impressed jenneret in his youth. In a moral general way, the interplay of this object, its access tower and the pyramid covering the upper chamber on the roof calls to mind a strange sun ritual. Le Corbusier declared that “ this hat become a veritable physics lab., equipped to ensure the play of light and shadow….. This cork will be used for solar festivals, reminding man once a year that he is son of sun “ if the two odd horns perched atop the hyperboloid evoke the horns of indian cows that Le Corbusier drew, then the roof landscape recalls the astronomical instruments of the jantar mantar ,the 18th –century observatory that he had visited in delhi.

The most majestic entrance to the assembly, reflected in a large pool of water, creating a kind of virtual cube, is not reached via the footbridge linking the building with the secretariate, but instead via the large portico opposite the esplanade. The main entrance is fitted with a door made entrance is fitted with a door made of enameled steel, a gift from france to the punjab, on which Le Corbusier depicted many of the motifs thet then permeated his work ,in particular Le poeme de l`angle (the poem of the right angle) of 1955.

Beneath the cource of the sun , alongside the tortoise, the bill, the fish and the “modular” man, we see the eagle of zarathustra. The dazzling brightness outside is followed by the shady “forum” a hypostyle room where a forest of columns determines the basic visual rhythm-punctuated by individual elements like stairways and ramps. The large volumes of the Lower Chamber, which is slightly offset, is the “main event” with its unique circular extrados, which let in fresh air and light. The assembly, which was inaugurated in 1962, has been shared since 1967 by the states of the punjab and haryana.

THANKU………