INVESTIGATING Le CORBUSIER & FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT 1.0
INTRODUCTION
Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier are considerably the greatest pioneers of architectural development of the twentieth century. Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier both had a mutual understandings of the fundamental principles of architecture which I believe drove them to their successes.
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BACKGROUND: Le CORBUSIER (1887 -1965)
Le Corbusier, a Swiss – French designer and artist, was born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret on October 6th 1887 in a small town called La Chaux-Fonds. By 1900, he was already training as an engraver, painter and goldsmith at the Ecole d’Art in La Chaux-de-Fonds, where he later enrolled in architecture (Dennis 1991; RIBA 2011). Between 1907 and 1911, Le Corbusier travelled and studied extensively in Europe and worked in numerous cities including Paris, Berlin, Desden and Vienna with leading architectural firms (RIBA 2011; Dennis 1991).While in Paris, he studied under Auguste Perret and absorbed the cultural and artistic life of the city (Dennis 1991). During this period he developed a keen interest in the synthesis of the various arts. Although his early work was mainly nature inclined, he later developed a reinforced concrete skeleton system “Maison-Domino” for multi storey buildings, a basic building prototype with free-standing pillars and rigid floors (Gans 1995, 12).
Between 1916 and 1922, he moved to and settled in Paris where he founded, published and edited L’Espirit Nouveau magazine, an avant-garde magazine about the arts (RIBA 2011). He also published his “manifesto of purism” where he implied that artistic work is determined by the use of elementary geometrical forms (Dennis 1991, RIBA 2011). From 1922 his idea became more physical mainly as houses which he created as “a machine for living in” and which he incorporated his trademark Five Points of Architecture (Dennis 1991; Gans 1995). During this period, he published his urban design as a project for a city of three million inhabitants, the principle of “Radiant City” (Samuel 2007). Incorporated in this approach are the differentiation of vehicles and pedestrians and the buildings in the form of large housing units that are integrated into the supply and service facilities (Samuel 2007; Dennis 1991; GHM ?). Although there were controversies at that time, his idea was later adopted in numerous urban planning projects across the world (RIBA 2011).
In 1923, Le Corbusier published a book titled Vers une architecture [Towards a New Architecture], based on his earlier articles in L’Espirit Nouveau magazine. In this book, he defined architecture as “wise, correct and magnificent play of light in the united body” (Le Corbusier). He demonstrated in his buildings the design example of functionalism with prognostic thinking without neglecting the architecture as art (GMH ?, Gant 1995). He continued to practice until the 1940 when the fall of France brought to halt his activities (RIBA 2011). After the Second World War, Le Corbusier and group of architects designed the United Nations Headquarters in New York where he owes the design of the secretariat to himself (RIBA 2011).
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