Le Corbusier

About the Author

Le Corbusier, born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in 1887 in Switzerland, was a pioneering architect, urban planner, and theorist whose visionary ideas reshaped modern design and urban living. Trained in La Chaux-de-Fonds and influenced by travels across Europe, he settled in Paris in 1917, adopting his now-iconic pseudonym. As a founder of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM), he championed functionalism, standardization, and the integration of technology into everyday spaces, famously declaring that 'a house is a machine for living in.' His seminal book, Towards a New Architecture (Dover Architecture), articulated these principles, advocating for purity of form, pilotis, roof gardens, and the horizontal window to liberate architecture from ornamentation. Le Corbusier's legacy endures in iconic projects like the Villa Savoye and the Unité d'Habitation, influencing generations of architects worldwide until his death in 1965.