Le Corbusier: The Swiss architect, his life and work
A century since Le Corbusier began his journey as an architect, he remains one of the profession's most influential and controversial figures. Here, Joe Lloyd explores how he got there
Notre Dame du Haut, built in Ronchamp, France, in 1955. Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel
No modern architect is as simultaneously acclaimed and despised as Le Corbusier (1887-1965). To his admirers, he was the ultimate modernist visionary, redefining how a building could feel, be formed and function in the 20th century — as well as the artful creator of a suite of architectural masterpieces across the world. To his detractors, however, he represents the paradigm of the hubristic megalomaniac, treating people, buildings and even whole cities as test subjects for his top-down reorganisation of society.
没有一个现代建筑师像勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)(1887-1965)那样同时受到赞誉和鄙视。在他的崇拜者看来，他是终极的现代主义梦想家，重新定义了一座建筑在20世纪的感觉、形式和功能——同时也是世界各地一系列建筑杰作的巧妙创造者。然而，在他的批评者看来，他代表了自大狂的典范，他把人、建筑甚至整个城市都当作自己自上而下的社会重组的实验对象。
The truth naturally falls between the two, and in the disjunct between his activities as an architect and his ambitions as an urban planner. Both sides might agree that he possessed an extraordinary sense of self-definition. His very name, which translates into English as ‘the crow-like,’ was a nom de guerre chosen aged 30. He was born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris in the Swiss watchmaking city of Le Chaux-de-Fonds.
事实自然介于两者之间，在他作为建筑师的活动和作为城市规划师的抱负之间的分离中。双方可能都认为他有一种非凡的自我定义感。他在30岁时以化名被选中，在英文中被翻译为“the crowlike”。他出生在瑞士手表制造城市Le Chaux-de-Fonds，原名Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris。
He did not initially intend to become an architect, but rather studied applied and decorative arts the local art school. There, his painting tutor Charles l'Eplattenier pushed him towards his future profession. ‘I had a horror of architecture and architects,’ he later wrote, ‘I was sixteen, I accepted the verdict and obeyed.’ He instead taught himself through reading and sketching, and between 1908 and 1910 worked as a draughtsman for Auguste Perret – one of the first practitioners to use reinforced concrete – in Paris.
他最初并不打算成为一名建筑师，而是在当地的艺术学校学习应用和装饰艺术。在那里，他的绘画导师查尔斯·雷登尼尔(Charles l’eplattenier)把他推向了未来的职业道路。他后来写道:“我讨厌建筑和建筑师，当时我16岁，我接受了判决并服从了。1908年至1910年间，他在巴黎为奥古斯特·佩雷特(Auguste Perret)当绘图员。佩雷特是最早使用钢筋混凝土的绘图员之一。
In 1912, he embarked on his first major project: a house for his parents. The resultant Maison Blanche had a not dissimilar profile to the historicist residences build by the Swiss bourgeoise at the time, but was denuded of ornamentation and painted white, and organized around four load-bearing pillars. Five years later, he moved to Paris and took the name Le Corbusier. He eventually set up practice with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, a partnership that, beyond a rift over wartime activities, would endure until Le Corbusier’s death.
1912年，他开始了自己的第一个大工程，为父母建一所房子。由此产生的住宅与当时瑞士资产阶级建造的具有历史主义色彩的住宅没有什么不同，只是没有装饰，被漆成白色，围绕着四根承重柱子。五年后，他搬到了巴黎，取名勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)。他最终与堂兄皮埃尔·让内雷(Pierre Jeanneret)建立了合伙关系，这种关系超越了战时活动的分歧，一直持续到勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)离去。
In Paris without commissions, Le Corbusier threw himself into the artistic avant-garde. In 1918, with the painter Amédée Ozenfant, he found the Purist movement: a simplified spin-off of cubism that embraced contemporary technology. His 1923 essay collection Towards an Architecture – almost certainly the most influential architecture book published in the 20th century – established several ideas that would reverberate through his later career. His Five Points of Architecture provided a blueprint for the open plan modern house, while his phrase ‘a house is a machine for living in’ came to epitomize the modernist notion that houses should be functional, identical and mechanically produced.
在巴黎没有受到委托，勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)投身于前卫艺术。1918年，他与画家阿梅迪·奥赞方(Amedee Ozenfant)一起创立了纯粹主义运动，那是一种拥抱当代技术的立体主义的简化分支。1923年，他出版了散文集《走向建筑》(Towards a Architecture)，几乎可以肯定，这是20世纪出版的最具影响力的建筑书籍。他的建筑有五个指标点为开放式的现代住宅提供了蓝图，而他的“房子是居住的机器”这句话集中体现了现代主义的概念，即房子应该是具有功能性、完全相同和机械制造的特质。
Villa Savoye in Poissy, near Paris. Photo by August Fischer, Flick
He knew what he was doing. Buoyed by his growing profile as a provocative writer, he was commissioned to design a pavilion for the 1925 Paris International Exhibition. The success of this structure led to a string of residential projects, all of which have become classics of modernism. The most acclaimed of all, Villa Savoye (1928-31), might be the archetypal modernist house. Constructed from reinforced concrete and raised above the ground by load-bearing piloti, it featured a free floor plan, a roof terrace and horizontal strips of window.
他知道自己在做什么。受其日益增长的煽动性作家形象的鼓舞，勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)被委托为1925年的巴黎国际展览设计一个展馆。这种建筑结构的成功催生了一系列的住宅项目，它们都成为了现代主义的经典。其中最受欢迎的是萨伏伊别墅(Villa Savoye, 1928-31)，它可能是典型的现代主义住宅。它由钢筋混凝土建造，并通过piloti(底层架空柱)的承重从地面向上升起，它有一个自由的平面，一个屋顶露台和水平的窗户条。
Plan Voisin, Le Corbusier's plan to raze Paris and replace with cruciform skyscrapers. Photo by Amber Case via Flickr
If Le Corbusier had solely continued as a creator of elegant minimalist villas, he would likely be an uncontroversial figure to everyone but the most dogged traditionalist. Where the waters start to muddy is with his full pelt gallop into the burgeoning field of urban planning, most notoriously with the Plan Voisin (1925). Funded by the aeronautical pioneer Gabriel Voisin, this scheme would have seen the Marais – one of Paris’s oldest and most architecturally rich districts – replaced by 18 cruciform-shaped concrete towers, 60 storeys apiece, set in parkland.
如果勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)只是继续作为一个优雅的极简主义别墅的创造者，那么除了最顽固的传统主义者之外，他可能是一个没有争议的人物。当水开始变得浑浊时，他就会立刻奔向蓬勃发展的城市规划领域，最著名的是1925年的《沃辛计划》(Plan Voisin)。由航空先驱加布里埃尔·沃辛(Gabriel Voisin)资助的这个项目，将把巴黎最古老、建筑最丰富的街区之一——玛莱区(Marais)，替换为18座十字形混凝土塔楼，每座60层，坐落在公园绿地上。
In 1928, Le Corbusier entrenched his reputation by co-founding the International Congresses of Modern Architects (CIAM). From 1928 to 1959, this saw leading architects meet to discuss the problems facing the modern city and their solutions. In doing so, they helped define a rationalist, functionalist view of modern architecture that would — for better or worse — come to thrive the world over.
1928年，勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)与人共同创立了国际现代建筑师大会(CIAM)，从此奠定了他的声誉。从1928年到1959年，主要的建筑师们聚集在这里讨论现代城市面临的问题和解决方案。在此过程中，他们帮助定义了一种现代建筑的理性主义和功能主义观点，这种观点将(无论好坏)在世界各地蓬勃发展。
As prominent as his ideas were becoming among the architectural intelligentsia, demand for bespoke villas cooled down in the depressed 1930s, and the years leading up to the Second World War saw him work in a piecemeal manner; one particularly diverting episode saw him court the communists in Moscow, where he built a major public building and entered the competition for the Palace of the Soviets. The war itself represents a particularly murky patch: while his cousin Pierre joined the French Resistance, Le Corbusier tried (and failed) to ingratiate himself with the Vichy government.
尽管他的想法在建筑知识分子中变得越来越突出，但定制别墅的需求在上世纪30年代的大萧条中逐渐降温，而在二战之前的几年里，他的工作也变得零零碎碎;一个特别有趣的情节是，他在莫斯科向共产主义示好，在那里他建造了一座大型公共建筑，并参加了苏联宫殿的竞赛。这场战争本身就代表着一个特别模糊的阶段，当他的堂兄皮埃尔(Pierre)加入法国抵抗运动时，勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)试图讨好维希(Vichy)政府(但以失败告终)。
Who or what is the Modulor Man?
模块化的人是谁或是什么?
Nevertheless, in 1947 he received his first public commission from the Fourth Republic, an experimental housing block in the southern suburbs of Marseille. Named prosaically Unité d’habitation de grandeur conforme (‘Standard size unit of housing’), and more poetically Cité Radieuse (‘Radiant City’) after an earlier utopian scheme, it was meant to provide a template for redevelopment across the country. This didn’t quite happen – Le Corbusier’s sculptural use of concrete and his custom-designed fittings did not come cheap – though four identical structures were built in France and Germany.
然而，在1947年，他收到了来自第四共和国的第一份公共委托，这是马赛南部郊区的一个试验性住宅区。它被命名为朴素的“宏伟公寓”(“标准尺寸的住房单元”)，更诗意地引用了Radieuse(“辐射城市”)，这是一个早期的乌托邦计划，旨在为全国的再开发提供一个模板。这并没有发生——勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)对混凝土的雕塑式运用和他定制设计的配件并不便宜——尽管在法国和德国建造了四个相同的建筑结构项目。
Glowing white in the Mediterranean light, it remains a marvel: a vast concrete superstructure into which modular apartments were slotted, it housed 1,600 people over 337 two-storied apartments, and included shops and a hostel. It was scaled according to Modulor: an anthropomorphic set of proportions developed by the architect himself, supposedly based on the height of detectives in the crime novels Le Corbusier read, as well as the golden ratio.
它在地中海的灯光下泛着白光，仍然是一个奇迹，一个巨大的混凝土上层建筑，里面开有模块化公寓，住着超过337套两层公寓的1,600人，还包括商店和一家招待所。它是根据“模量”(Modulor)进行比例调整的，这是一套由建筑师本人开发的拟人化比例尝试，据说是根据勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)所读的犯罪小说中侦探的身高以及黄金比例设计的。
Inside, there was furniture by Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé, while on top, Le Corbusier expanded his earlier roof terraces into a sublime assemblage of abstract forms centering on a glistening pool. Although some locals nicknamed it ‘La Maison du Fata’ (‘House of the Crazy’), it immediately became a landscape of modernism. ‘Any architect who does not find this building beautiful,’ said Walter Gropius, who attended the opening ceremony in 1952, ‘had better lay down his pencil.’
屋内摆放着夏洛特·佩里安(Charlotte Perriand)和让·普鲁夫(Jean Prouve)设计的家具，而在顶层，勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)把他早期的屋顶露台扩展成了一个围绕着闪闪发光的水池抽象形态的崇高组合。尽管一些当地人昵称它为“疯狂之家”，但它很快就成为了现代主义的景观。参加了1952年奥运会开幕式的沃尔特·格罗皮乌斯(Walter Gropius)说:“任何一位建筑师如果觉得这座建筑不美，最好放下手中的笔。”
Unité d’habitation in Marseille. Photo by Yisris via Flickr
The Unité is perhaps the most conflicted aspect of its architect’s legacy. It has often been claimed the progenitor of brutalism, the most controversial architectural style of the 20th century. As radiant as the Cité is, it has been argued that it created a template for the thousands of low-cost mass-housing blocks created across the world in by architects who lacked both Le Corbusier’s talent and temerity.
The Unité也许是其作为建筑师遗产中最矛盾的方面。它经常被认为是20世纪最具争议的建筑风格——野兽派的鼻祖。尽管这个城市光芒四射，但有人认为，它为世界各地成千上万的低成本大众住宅街区创造了一个模板，而建筑师们既缺乏勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)的才华，也缺乏他的胆识。
Le Corbusier’s late works in Europe, including the neo-expressionist chapel, Notre Dame du Haut (1950-4), built in the otherwise unremarkable village of Ronchamp, saw him achieve a remarkable poeticism in his manipulation of concrete. Elsewhere he worked on major projects, including the United Nations headquarters in New York, where he collaborated with the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.
勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)后期在欧洲的作品，包括新表现主义的小教堂，巴黎圣母院(1950- 2004)，都是在朗香村建造的。在其他地方，他参与了一些重大项目，包括纽约的联合国总部，他在那里与巴西建筑师奥斯卡·尼迈耶(Oscar Niemeyer)合作。
In 1951, he was finally given the chance to create his own city. The recently independent Indian government commissioned him, along with the British duo Janet Drew and Maxwell Fry, to design a new capital in Chandigarh for the states of Punjab and Haryana. He produced a rigid grid centered around monumental municipal structures. Over half a decade later, it regularly ranks as the Happiest City in India, though many have questioned its relegation of the poorest residents to external shanty towns.
1951年，他终于有机会创建自己的城市。勒·柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)设计了一个以巨大的市政建筑为中心的刚性网格。5年多过去了，它仍然是印度最幸福的城市，尽管许多人质疑它把最贫穷的居民转移到外部的棚户区。
He died aged 77, after suffering a heart attack while swimming in the Côte d’Azur. Many of the architects that immediately followed him took his ideas to heart. The likes of the Plan Voisin, which seemed ludicrous in the context of 1920s Paris, looked very different when in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where planners the world over sought, for various reasons, to replace dirty old towns with rationalist modern structures. Several of the ills of late 20th century planning – the demolition of historical structures, a fixation with cars, vast housing estates that ignore the fabric of the streets, the quashing of individuality in favour of identikit units – became intractably associated with Le Corbusier’s name, though he had little opportunity himself to enact them.
他在蔚蓝海岸游泳时突发心脏病，享年77岁。许多紧随其后的建筑师都把他的想法牢记于心。Voisin计划在20世纪20年代的巴黎看来是荒唐可笑的，但在20世纪60年代末和70年代初，这类计划看起来却大不相同。当时，世界各地的规划者出于各种原因，试图用理性主义的现代建筑取代肮脏的旧城。几个20世纪末的弊病——历史建筑的拆迁计划,对汽车的迷恋及大量住宅小区忽略街上的织物,个性压制的老一套的单位——成为倔强地与勒·柯布西耶的名字联系在一起,尽管他很少有机会自己制定。
This afterlife has significantly complicated an already convoluted legacy. For the urbanist Peter Hall, Le Corbusier represents ‘the counter-tradition of authoritarian architecture, the evil consequences of which are ever with us.’ As an architect, however, he remains adored, and in 2016 a string of his buildings were accredited a UNESCO World Heritage Site, making him the first modernist architect to be so recognised. Whether as brutalist bogeyman or mastermind behind sublime spaces, Le Corbusier’s importance remains immense.
离开后的世界使本已错综复杂的遗作变得更加复杂。对于城市规划专家彼得·霍尔(Peter Hall)来说，勒·柯布西耶代表了“威权主义建筑的反传统，其邪恶后果一直伴随着我们。”然而，作为一名建筑师，他仍然受到人们的喜爱。2016年，他的一系列建筑被联合国(UNESCO)教科文组织认定为世界遗产，这使他成为第一位获得如此认可的现代主义建筑师。无论是作为野兽派的妖怪还是崇高空间背后的策划者，勒·柯布西耶的重要性仍然是巨大的。
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