Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier

Towards a New Architecture Reviews

• 
  Jon Boorstin

  When I was in architecture school in England, Corb, as we called him, was the master (and Alvar Aalto the disciple). He stated the case for modern architecture so convincingly that it seemed the only possible altenative. In his hands, it was beautiful and practical, and also economical. He had a zen spareness about his work, and a sculptural gift. His drawings and his furniture are exciting, without being gaudy. Quite the opposite. He exemplified Less is More. And he taught me, and a generation of architecture students, 'the discipline of the route.' Buildings, as he taught us, are not experienced whole, but as a series of experiences. Orchestrating those, and making sure that the visitor is always oriented to the whole, is the basic given of good architecture, like writing a grammatical sentence is a given for a good writer. Unfortunately, this is often forgotten today.
  
  This book is his concise statement of his philosophy. Most architecture since then either follows its dictates or rebels against them.
  
  
• 
  Uaba

  I don't like the way Le Corbusier writes, but this book is epic. As a student of architecture I learned a lot from this book, mostly about the five principles of Modern Architecture. It isn't a boring book, but you have to be careful to interpretate some things he writes. It is definetly a must-read.
• 
  ALLEN

  The Swiss-French architect Charles-Edouard Jenneret, better known as "Le Corbusier" (1887-1965), was so innovative in his choices of building materials, arrangement of mass and flexibility of purpose that his very name became synonymous with "modern architecture." In this 1933 book, originally published in French as Vers une Architecture, he championed the use of cast concrete, plate glass, open staircases and curtain walls, designed ambitious public-housing schemes (and had most of them built), and saw his projects spread over the world.
  
  This is an absolutely marvelous book and fundamental to any understanding of 20th-Century architecture. It is profusely illustrated with line drawings and black-and-white photographs; no color, alas.
  
  A typical cast-concrete granary of the era (Hutchinson, KS, USA):
  
  
  
  
  Cité de Refuge, Le Corbusier, Paris, 1933. Per curbed.com:
  "[T]he innovative, 11-story building featured a series of internal concrete columns, floors without load-bearing walls, and a sealed glass curtain wall. This was almost two full decades before curtain wall construction became widely used in the United States":
  
  
  
  
  United Nations headquarters, New York City, 1952 (beyond the scope of this book):
  
  
• 
  Camila

  I absolutely loved this book!! To think Le Corbusier wrote these series of essays almost a century ago, and how many of his ideas are now a reality in urban planning, house design, etc. He truly was a visionary and has helped me understand the concepts of modern architecture. I want to keep on learning about his work, his legacy. The passionate way he writes would often make me laugh, since his ideas come up as bold, even in 2021. Simply amazing!
• 
  Alina

  I read this book for a class assignment, I was looking forward to it because Le Corbusier is the biggest influence of the modern era of architecture, his principles are still up to date and architects all around the world still learn and apply his theories today (though I am not sure they should).
  I found interesting to learn his reasonings for sustaning his Principles of Architecture,and for a thorough understanding I recommend also reading:
  The Athens Charter where his influence is noticeable on the statements about city planning.
  
  Apart form reading this and other books of his, I think it is much interesting and insightful to study his projects (real and theoretical) because they demonstrate how possible (or not) it was for Le Corbusier to stick to his principle and make them work (most of them didn't). I have also read about his life and relationships with clients and other artists and colleagues (which is fascinating to me)and one can learn that his personality affected his work enormously; and tragically I concluded that his ego and stubbornness didn't allow him to accept reality (I think he really disliked people)and adapt his theories to people actual needs.
  
  In conclusion, Le Corbusier taught me that, even when you have The Solution, it is impossible to change people.
• 
  Mary Soderstrom

  I'm giving this book a four star rating, not because it is such good reading, but because it and the ideas of Swiss architect Le Corbusier were so influential in making the world as we know it.
  
  His model of separation of work and residential sectors of cities, with vehicular traffic on the edges was followed all over the world for much of the 20th century. All those apartment blocks--both luxury and urban renewal--are the direct descendants of his tower in the park plans. So was the draconian remaking of cities by removing old housing and changing street patterns. Ditto, although a little indirectly, for the suburban communities where you must have a car to get around, where through traffic goes around development, and where a corner store that you could walk to is non-existent.
  
  The model lies behind a great deal that is wrong with our cities. Read the book, and then think about what a mess it has brought about.
• 
  Sheldon Doney

  Much of what Le Corbusier advocates for in this book is terrific, though I wonder if he actually believed his own words. In practice, he fits the mold of a conventional engineer, while the prose of this work is written with lofty, creative, artistic sentiments. Le Corbusier's philosophy was largely detrimental, not beneficial, for society. His super blocks created isolated ghettos, his planning utopias ultimately influenced urban renewal horrors. Ironically, his actions were at odds with his words in this book, and consequently comes off as disingenuous and superficial, though much of the ideas are notable.
• 
  Andrew

  After years, I finally decided to read Le Corbusier in full-length form. It's pretty much the nearest thing modernism has to a manifesto, and by that, I mean modernism in all its forms. The premises are simple: tradition is restrictive, things should be functional, and our art should take our technological advances into account. These all seem like good things to me.
  
  Of course, a lot of his beliefs seem naïve now -- the idea that good architecture = good people is thoroughly, thoroughly flawed. But it's important to read books like this, ones that suggest things could be better, because anyone who tells you that we are living in the best of all possible worlds deserves a kick in the pants.
• 
  arjn

  in which corbusier attempts to be architecture's rouchefoucauld. ambitious but confused, modernism deserved a better manifesto.
• 
  Hamish

  Fantastic book. Disagreed with most of it.
• 
  Tim Drummond

  a bit esoteric and socialist for my taste, but i spose i can still appreciate what Corbu is about. in a very broad sense, this manifesto is his urge to keep the pace of architecture at the pace of the rest of society's advancements. he points out the simple efficiency of things like grain silos, and how we strive to make our airplanes and automobiles as functional and streamlined as possible, but our houses haven't changed. where we differ begins with this statement:
  "The house is a machine for living in."
  
  other themes are things like being true to the time and purpose for which you are designing, and creating the new rather than making surface copies of the old.
  
  it's a bit of a dry read, but if you're into architecture at all, Le Corbusier is a must
• 
  David McCormick

  I'm not a student of architecture by any means, but Corbu is a visionary. Perhaps this is why his ideas about architecture and society may seem either funny/crazy or scarily authoritarian to us today. Writing during the 20's he couldn't have known about Hitler or Stalin and the danger of trying to create a literal utopia. He accurately reflects the more optimistic sensibilities of the time. A recommendation: Read this one and then Jane Jacobs "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" for a great introduction to major themes of twentieth century architecture and/or city planning.
• 
  Defne

  A must read for every architecture student.
  It was interesting to dive into Le Corbusier’s mind to discover how he became the architect he was. There are a lot of similarities to his way of seeing his world a century ago and how we are living now.
  ”The elements of architecture are light and shade, walls and space. The arrangement is the gradation of aims, the classification of intentions.” ”Contour and profile are a pure creation of the mind; they call for the plastic artist.”
  His manifesto is universal and timeless.
• 
  Petroula

  must read for architects
• 
  Aggrey Odera

  I'd had two prior "interactions" with Le Corbusier before reading this book. The first was via James Scott's "Seeing Like A State" (in my view one of the towering works of social science) which I read in late 2018. There, Scott had persuasively argued against Corbusier-ian high modernism. Oscar Niemeyer, the Brazilian Marxist architect who'd been influenced by Corbusier, had designed Brasilia with an eye towards high modernist goals of legibility, functionalism, and scientific notions of order. It had, however, quickly became clear that Brasilia was a failed project: high modernism did not take into account the fact that urban space was complex, shaped by people as much as they were shaped by it. There thus arose in Brasilia town squares that no one used because all sense of pedestrian traffic had been destroyed, and residents who were ghettoised into "superquadra", based on their occupation and income statuses. A destroyed social fabric, in essence. Moreover, the entire effect was aesthetically monotonous: drab and uninspiring, it caused feelings of alienation in people, and gave the dystopic vibe of a Benthamite panopticon. I decided I disliked Corbusier.
  
  The next time I heard about Corbusier was while walking around the streets of Haifa and Tel Aviv in March 2019 with Waleed Kakabi, an architect who headed the building conservation team for the City of Haifa. I mentioned to Waleed how many "International Style" buildings there were, and how ugly I thought they were. Waleed, deftly brushing aside my confident ignorance, kindly decided to give me a short but thorough survey on the Bauhaus school and modernism.
  
  Waleed explained the intensely democratic ethos of modernism: houses had to be mass produced for a quickly growing population, but, so the founders of Bauhaus believed, this did not mean that aesthetics had to be sacrificed. Function and individual artistic vision could be unified. He explained to me how the houses were designed to maximize on light, how regulating lines worked, making the houses wonderful to live in even if, by my uneducated standards, they were ugly.
  
  Later, Waleed and I got to talking about Corbusier (or, rather, he talked and I absorbed) and his influence on the latter Bauhaus school (Bauhaus had started in Weimar, but being mostly Jewish, most of the architects had immigrated to then mandatory Palestine after Hitler came into power. This is why Israel has the highest per capita number of International style buildings). Waleed was, in fact, in charge of conserving one of the most important Bauhaus buildings - the old Technion building in Haifa's Hadar HaCarmel neighbourhood.
  
  I also mentioned to Waleed that I had visited a number of Louis Kahn buildings. I lived in Philadelphia at the time, and on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, the buildings most frequented by architectural enthusiasts were the Gothic revival "College Hall", followed by Kahn's modernist Richards building. Waleed and I got to talking about how Corbusier had influenced Kahn (whom I liked). By the end of my time with Waleed, I had come to understand modernism a little bit more, and I decided that i didn't dislike Corbusier that much. Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner.
  
  After finishing this book, I now think that I kind of like Corbusier.
  
  Corbusier envisions modernism as responding to the needs of the industrial age, both in terms of housing, but also in how cities and urban life more generally is structured. Modernism saves architecture in multiple ways: From a building perspective, it refocuses architects on what really matters in the actual trade of architecture; taking into account mass, surface and plan - which for Corbusier are the three necessary considerations in architecture. From the point of view of philosophy of aesthetics, modernism sees architecture as a means by which raw materials are assembled in particular ways in order to establish emotional relationships in human beings, affectively linking human beings with their built environment. Finally, modernism displays a a social ethos: mass production, which modernism is uniquely situated to bring forth, is seen by Corbusier as democratically solving the problems of the industrial age without any need to compromise on aesthetic beauty.
  
  A Corbusier-ian maxim: Architecture has nothing to do with the various "styles". Styles "are to architecture what a feather is on a woman's head; it is sometimes pretty, though not always, and never anything more"
  
  So Art deco, with its influence from the cubists and the Vienna secessionists; eclecticism (a la Gaudi's Sagrada familia) etc. are meaningless, nothing more than fanciful experiments that have no social ethos and thus do not respond to the questions of the time. Instead, modernism calls for an architecture that ties the functionality of buildings with purity in form; an architecture that transforms the built environment into something that is to be lived in and interacted with by human beings.
  
  There is a risk that such an ethos as Corbusier puts forward here necessarily leads to brutalist buildings, as indeed happened in England from the 1950s (and we seem to all have agreed that brutalism is ugly). But perhaps the social ethos and the democratic nature of it all outweighs the drabness? Regardless, Corbusier's insistence that the architect goes beyond utilitarian aims; that she is not merely a builder or an engineer but rather someone who, in addition to possessing the requisite building skills, also uses her art to produce buildings that are aesthetically pleasing, ought to make us hesitant in attributing to him the view that all he sought to produce was ugly houses for poor people.
  
  All in all, shoddy writing that was sometimes too polemic, but the ideas were weighty and greatly interesting. I learned a lot.
• 
  ik.ben.henri

  To all people giving this a low rating:
  
  Don't forget that this is a manifesto aimed towards an audience of architects, engineers and other artists living in the 1920s.
  
  It criticizes the then still popular, but fading in popularity, styles of romanticism such as neoclassicism, Victorian architecture, Belle Époque, but even goes back to baroque, or further the renaissance. And puts it in the daylight of an era that happened even after the optimism of futurism. It was an optimistic time after the war, and this book is the groundwork of modernism: a new way of thinking that is still relevant today. Not all of it, but mostly aesthetically still relevant: it's history.
  
  So some of it may seem dated, or totally wrong... Like when he explains how the roman renaissance and french baroque is a failure. How rococo of Louis XIV is a failure. But he had a vision, wanted to maybe shock, and wake people up and make them ready to embrace the modern lifestyle. Comparing architecture to engineering, which is totally different, and being influenced by something like steamboat or the then new airplane. Architecture is more than engineering, but just as with engineering, which solves an engineering/practical problem, architecture solves an aesthetic and almost philosophical problem: architecture can determine the soul of culture and the lifestyle of the people.
  
  Also keep in mind when he talks about maids, barbarism, peasantry (probably translated from le peuple in French, which has a bad connotation in comparison with the word people in English) , and other descriptions on what would now be described as racist or whatnot. This is a 100-year-old book, and we are currently living in a time of cancel culture. We are currently very sensitive to these kinds of terms and opinions. But that is not a reason to doubt his architectural views. You have to see through it.
  
  EDIT - had to add this part after thinking about it Remember that his solutions to build social housing projects for millions at a time, by building huge skyscrapers in a very mechanical, clean and effective way, "a machine for living", is his solution for the sad situation the poor working class of France after World War 1 was in. And he tried to improve the living qualities of the cité's in cities where people lived with huge families on top of each other, and in each others dirt. He tried to do something about it. So see those social projects in light of those times and not the dirty big and sometimes ugly projects they are today. Do also be reminded that social housing based on his idea in certain communist, or ex-communist countries as Russia, eastern Europa or North-Korea is a failed version of what is here envisioned.
  
  It's a shame I only read this now, this would have helped me a lot when I was a student. Because his explanations on axis, grids, the plan, mass, light, surface is really clear. And it will help you understand his vision.
• 
  Blue Morse

  Hard to imagine that a book written in 1931 by a French architect could apply so readily to the varying problems faced in multiple 21st Century fields of study... in my case in regards to military design.
  
  I swapped the word “architecture” for “military design” in one of the sections and here’s how it read:
  
  “Military design finds itself confronted with new laws. Disturbed by the reactions which play upon him from every quarter, the military designer of today is conscious, on the one hand, of a new world which is forming itself regularly, logically and clearly, which produces in a straightforward way things which are useful and usable, and on the other hand he finds himself, to his surprise, living in an old and hostile environment ... there reigns a great disagreement between the modern state of mind, which is an admonition to us, and the stifling accumulation of age-long detritus. The problem is one of adaptation, in which the realities of our life are in question. To pass the crisis we must create the state of mind which can understand what is going on.”
• 
  ~**~Kait

  honestly, way over my head! so i feel like i cant adequately rate this. but the visuals were incredible
• 
  Katri

  3.5 stars. Interesting thoughts. He kind of lost me in all the talk of Greek architecture (because I'm just not a fan).
• 
  Evaldas Svirplys

  Corbusier turi stiprią objektofiliją Partenonui.
• 
  lahoradelasmusas

  I absolutely loved this book!! To think Le Corbusier wrote these series of essays almost a century ago, and how many of his ideas are now a reality in urban planning, house design, etc. He truly was a visionary and has helped me understand the concepts of modern architecture. I want to keep on learning about his work, his legacy. The passionate way he writes would often make me laugh, since his ideas come up as bold, even in 2021. Simply amazing!
• 
  Andrew Fairweather

  "Rome is the damnation of the half-educated. To send architectural students to Rome is to cripple them for life."
  
  
  For whatever the GR star system is worth, I've never awarded such a low score for a writer I had so much respect for. Le Corbusier has such a powerful vision in 'Towards a New Architecture.; When we take into consideration the traditional currents he was swimming against, it's even more impressive an achievement. The writing is pretty airy, allowing thoughts to navigate freely around the points Corb makes like traveling through big massive superhighways as overstated as the ALL CAPS he sometimes chooses to hammer as if he were writing an angry streak on a comments board.
  
  
  During this journey I had to revisit Anna Chave's essay on the rhetoric of power in minimalism—her equation of Minimalism's masculine power with the classical Doric reminded me of Corb's love of the Parthenon, a monument which made many appearances throughout this work (that, and American grain elevators...). What Corb argues for is at once functional, a house as a "machine for living in," yet poetic in its timeless geometry which reflects the highest spiritual endeavors of mankind. The cancer Corb wishes to operate on is the sort of excess that permits asymmetry—that which yearns, the Gothic, which hysterically reaches out towards infinity as if to "fight gravity." Or that which allows for pockets of silence within calamity like the Rococo, with it's irregularities and crevices. For Corb, these monstrous nightmares are nothing if not excessive, exposing some embarrassing fixation like a wound.
  
  
  Corb's excess (for there is nothing without excess) is his unwavering commitment to symmetry and space. To clean lines and clean living. What is essentially called for here is a guarantee against the sort of willfulness which may fester in the crevices of feminine flowerings of the decorative arts (another named enemy of Corb). In the New Architecture, the machine itself is the excess, and the will must become subordinate to the rites of efficiency and convenience which will be manifest in the new order of work and leisure. Entire cities will have to be reconstructed!
  
  
  Back to Chave's essay on minimalism—Chave mentions that Barbara Rose and Lucy Lippard said of Minimalism that it was a categorical refusal of the humanist mission of art: "a negative denial and renunciation [...] a rejective art." I understand Corb's New Architecture in very much the same way. Corb is allergic to any architecture which would allow for a fold in the social fabric. In his project he seeks to remove spontaneity and the unpredictable from our cities—and it's not that there's anything all that special about spontaneity in itself, but the attempt to eradicate willfulness and desire is not just impossible, but a harmful premise for architecture and the people who must live with such a paranoiac program. Anna Chave characterized Minimalism as an objection to relationships and intimacy in art. I see Corb's New Architecture an analogous objection.
  
  
  When Le Corbusier presents our dilemma at the end of 'Towards a New Architecture' as a choice between "architecture or revolution," we begin to fully understand the architectural program as an attempt to build what many in following decades would rightly come to criticize as the "control society." For all its calls to revolution in architecture, the relationship towards revolution of society was taken for granted. When Le Corbusier offers us a choice along these lines, we, as those who have seen the way these modern monoliths had such an effect on the character of society as it calcified into a nameable *style*, must ponder what the fantasy of a new architecture allowed us to ignore—which, for my part, was nothing other than discarding the husk of the decaying and (at that point) decadent culture of the West. What came to replace it was a program of convenience—all at once a realization of a great Western dream as well as its demise which took the simple form of outgrowing its cultural specificity. Corb's architecture (and Worringer's art) was the first which we can properly understand to have had pretensions (and I would say, a legitimate claim) on the "international," enabled by the technology and engineering which Le Corbusier constantly celebrates throughout 'TNA.'
  
  It will take an even greater vision to triumph over the New Architecture. I often wonder what (if any) form this "new-er" architecture will take... will it be a massive program which seeks to marshal a "new mankind" by essentially reorganizing society, like Corb's program? I doubt it. My admiration for this book lies almost entirely with its ability to dream of a robust future... and we don't dream too much these days...
• 
  Μιχάλης Παπαχατζάκης

  Το βιβλίο αυτό έκανε πάταγο όταν εκδόθηκε και αποτέλεσε αντικείμενο προβληματισμού στις χώρες που πρωτοστάτησαν στην αρχιτεκτονική του 20ου αιώνα, στη Γαλλία, στη Γερμανία, στη Σοβιετική Ένωση, στην Ιταλία, στις ΗΠΑ και αλλού. Ο Λε Κορμπυζιέ δεν ανέπτυξε μόνο τις ιδέες του σε αυτό, αλλά του έδωσε και συγκεκριμένη μορφή-πρόταση με την χρήση εικόνων συγκεκριμένων, σε συγκεκριμένη θέση εντός του και με συγκεκριμένο, λίγο πολύ αυτοτελές, κείμενο να τις συνοδεύει. Έκανε μια εκπληκτική χρήση λόγου και εικόνας και ο ίδιος απαγόρευε ή δεν ενέκρινε οποιαδήποτε έκδοση ξέφευγε από την μορφή που πήρε τελικά το βιβλίο του.
  Πρόκειται για πραγματικά εκπληκτικό βιβλίο και ντροπή του ελληνικού καθηγητικού κατεστημένου που δεν ένοιωσε την ανάγκη να κυκλοφορήσει αυτό το μανιφέστο την εποχή που η Ελλάδα ήταν σχεδόν τάμπουλα ράσα στο θέμα της κατασκευής. Τι ντροπή δηλαδή, απλά ήταν (πλην εξαιρέσεων) συνένοχοι στον παρασιτισμό και την στρεβλή ανάπτυξη της χώρας σε όλα τα επίπεδα.
• 
  Carey

  "You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work.
  But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: "This is beautiful." That is Architecture. Art enters in."