Le Corbusier: And the Continual Revolution in Architecture [Hardcover]

Charles Jencks (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1580930778 | ISBN-13: 978-1580930772 | Publication Date: December 18, 2000 | Edition: 1ST

Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier dominated twentieth-century architecture much the way Picasso dominated painting. His outstanding achievements, his vision of a harmonious machine civilization, his paintings, drawings, sculpture, architecture, city planning, and writing together compose a portrait of the architect as "protean creator." Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture is a fascinating study of this genius.

Taking into account recent scholarship and new theories of architectural change, noted architectural historian Charles Jencks traces the personal and professional development of Le Corbusier. In association with the Purist painter Amédée Ozenfant, he gained fame in the 1920s, publishing the journal L'Esprit Nouveau and four seminal modernist tracts: Towards a New Architecture, The City of Tomorrow, The Decorative Art of Today, and La Peinture Moderne (Modern Painting). Jencks demonstrates the influence of these classic texts by way of the architect's major projects of the period: Villa La Roche, Workers' Housing at Pessac, the Plan Voisin for Paris, Villa Stein, Villa Savoye, and the steel furniture, including the famed grand confort and chaise longue. Through the 1930s and into the 1940s Le Corbusier embraced a new worldliness that included not only hand-built masonry but also an awakened sensuality and a shift in politics; after World War II, he embarked on yet another transformation, this time towards a new brutalist mode that saw the realization of the controversial Unité d'Habitation and the truly revolutionary chapel at Ronchamp.

Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture presents over two hundred illustrations including architectural drawings, plans, and photographs, as well as paintings, sketches, and publication facsimiles. With this illuminating collection of images and his revealing and provocative text, Charles Jencks has produced a compelling and comprehensive analysis of the twentieth-century master who stayed well ahead of his followers to reinvent the art of architecture over and over again.

Architectural writer and designer

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

It could be said that Le Corbusier was to 20th-century architecture what James Joyce was to its literature: each represents for his discipline an inventively pure, Modernist approach. Postmodern theorist, historian, and architect Jencks presents a critical biography of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, who took as a pseudonym a variation on his mother's ancestral name, Le Corbesier. Beginning with the architect's early regionalist work, Jencks examines Le Corbusier's growth into the role of master architect and innovator through detailed, original, and illuminating analyses not only of his building designs but also of his drawings and paintings, paying particular attention to his writings. Jencks argues for an appreciation of the deep sensuality in the architecture and its sources. The captions are lengthy and carefully descriptive, but a greater number of plans and color photographs of the higher-quality buildings as well as greater resolution would have enhanced this notable addition to our understanding of this ultimate architect as artist. For subject collections at all academic and larger public libraries.DPaul Glassman, New York Sch. of Interior Design Lib.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Charles Jencks is the author of, among many other titles, Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, and The Architecture of the Jumping Universe.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: The Monacelli Press; 1ST edition (December 18, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580930778
• ISBN-13: 978-1580930772
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 1.6 x 10.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,025,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More Artist Than Art, February 21, 2006

By 

Alexander K. Naylor - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Le Corbusier: And the Continual Revolution in Architecture (Hardcover)

Jencks gives us a well-researched biography of Le Corbusier, but unfortunately he does not give the reader enough on Le Corbusier's art. While the insights into Le Corbusier's life are intriguing, we are only given a cursory look at his buildings and paintings themselves with little analysis beyond the typical Jencks "multivalence" routine. It is an excellent biography, but I was shopping more for a detailed look at Le Corbusier's work itself so I was a bit disappointed in the end.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Expanded, refined, April 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Le Corbusier: And the Continual Revolution in Architecture (Hardcover)

Jencks third work on LC is an expanded and revised take since his first 'tragic view of architecture'. The author makes his point well and the change of focus over the two books - a tragic view/ a continual revolution is a shift in Jencks focus on LC. The continual revolution can be seen to be light on pictures however it is not so much a primary LC text but rather a supplementary viewpoint - as such it is appropriately illustrated. Although Jencks covers the ideas of the tragic view in this edition it is worth also reading the original, where the younger author takes a more ardent stance - taking a tragic line from beginning to end. Jencks books are more than biographical studies of common LC history they follow a consistent objective course to a well directed conclusion. Though in this case there are revolutions (repetition) in information, relative to LC and the stance taken in this book; appropriately so.