A revised and updated edition of a bestselling introduction on one of the leading architects of the 20th century

Le Corbusier is probably the most famous architect of the 20th century. The richness and variety of his work and his passionately expressed philosophy of architecture have had a gigantic impact on the urban fabric and the way we live. Weaving through his long and prolific life are certain recurrent themes – his perennial drive towards new types of dwelling, from the early white villas to the Unité d’Habitation at Marseilles; his evolving concepts of urban form, including the Plan Voisin of 1925 with its cruciform towers imposed on the city of Paris and his work at Chandigarh in India; and his belief in a new technocratic order.

The distinguished critic and architecture historian Kenneth Frampton re-examines all the facets of his artistic and philosophical world-view in light of recent thinking, and presents us with a Le Corbusier for the 21st century. This revised edition features a new introduction; some illustrations have now been replaced with colour.

Contents List

Introduction
1. The Formative Years 1887-1916
2. Towards a New Architecture 1917-1927
3. The City of Tomorrow 1910-1933
4. Decorative Art Today 1925-1937
5. A House, A Palace 1923-1929
6. World Architect: Czechoslovakia, Russia, Brazil, North Africa, North America, France and Switzerland 1928-1936
7. The Politics of the Unpolitical: Le Corbusier and Saint-Simonian Technocracy 1923-1947
8. From Intermediate Technology to Regional Urbanization 1929-1946
9. Towards a New Habitat 1922-1960
10. The Sacred and the Profane: Le Corbusier and Spiritual Form 1948-1965
11. Passage to India 1950-1965
12. Le Poème de l’Angle Droit
13. Fin d’un Monde: The Last Works 1939-1965

Kenneth Frampton was born in 1930 and trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. He has taught at a number of leading institutions in the field, including the Royal College of Art in London, the ETH in Zürich, the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam, EPFL in Lausanne and the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio. From 1972 to 2019 he served as Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York. He is the author of numerous essays on modern and contemporary architecture, has served on many international juries for architectural awards and building commissions, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2018 he was awarded the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale. His publications include Studies in Tectonic Culture (1992), Labour, Work and Architecture (2005), American Masterworks (2008), Kengo Kuma: Complete Works (2012) and A Genealogy of Modern Architecture (2013). The fifth edition of his classic text Modern Architecture: A Critical History was published by Thames & Hudson in 2020.