Steve Rose on Le Corbusier, one of the most iconic architects of the 20th century (original) (raw)

Le Corbusier is difficult to get a hold on. He's still admired, even worshipped, in architectural circles, but practically forgotten everywhere else. He's arguably had more of an influence on the form of the modern world than any other architect - you could even argue there was no modern world before Le Corbusier - but stop someone on the street and ask them to name one of his buildings and you're unlikely to get a correct answer. And if people have heard of him, it's usually in the context of failed 1960s housing estates.

All that might change, though. The grandaddy of modernism is up for re-exposure and reappraisal in the coming months. A substantial exhibition, Le Corbusier: The Art of Architecture, moves from its current home in Paris to the crypt of Liverpool's Metropolitan cathedral in October. And this month an enormous new book, Le Corbusier Le Grand, is published, which collects together his diverse achievements for the first time. You couldn't make a book like this about just any architect. Leafing, or rather hefting, through the slab-like tome, it's astounding to see just how much Le Corbusier accomplished. He executed more than 300 designs on every scale, from small huts to entire cities (though only 78 of those designs were ultimately built). He also wrote 34 books, gave countless speeches, lectures and interviews, drew, painted and sculpted, designed furniture, ran businesses, travelled the world, had love affairs, co-edited a magazine, invented his own system of proportions and wrote to his mother at least once a week. Where on earth, you wonder, did he find the time?

Beyond the architecture, Le Corbusier Le Grand reveals a great deal about the man himself. There are some surprisingly pornographic sketches - clearly not designed to be seen by his clients (or, one suspects, his wife Yvonne). There is ample proof of his enthusiasm for modernity: there he is posing inside a mocked-up biplane in a 1920s photographer's studio; here's a souvenir from his transatlantic flight to Rio de Janeiro aboard the Graf Zeppelin, and a postcard of a Lockheed Constellation on which he has doodled himself sitting on the wing. There are also snaps of him with the great and good, from Albert Einstein to Josephine Baker (contrary to rumours, it's unlikely they had an affair). And there are tender sketches of his father, mother and wife on their deathbeds. It all points to a life lived enviably fully.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons Le Corbusier is not as publicly recognisable as he should be: he simply did too much. Rather than sticking to a single, easily identifiable style, his work continually evolved. And, as the man who set the stage for modern architecture, his buildings have all but been drowned out by the noise of countless diluted imitations. Compared to the work of today's celebrity architects like Frank Gehry or Norman Foster or Zaha Hadid, much of Le Corbusier's architecture is practically anonymous. He didn't build flamboyant art galleries or concert halls or triumphant skyscrapers. Many of his defining works were private residences for wealthy patrons and his grandest schemes were never built at all. But his influence is detectable in the DNA of virtually everyone who came after him.

By all accounts, as a person he was shy, hesitant, even under-confident, but - another contradiction - he was a canny self-promoter. His public image was as cultivated as that of Ziggy Stardust. He had the trademark look: dapper suit, spectacles and bowtie, which became the standard uniform for the profession. Especially the glasses. Thick, owl-eyed, horn-rimmed eyewear was adopted by many an architect who should have known better.

And what about that name? Born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, he adopted a variation of his maternal grandfather's surname, Lecorbesier, in 1920 - a play on the French for "crow-like". Le Corbusier always fancied himself an artist, even if he never felt he got the recognition he deserved as a painter. Yet he certainly knew the value of a good publicity stunt. One of his early, attention-grabbing schemes, the 1925 Plan Voisin, proposed demolishing much of the Right Bank of Paris and replacing it with a forest of skyscrapers. It was ridiculous - and never intended to be built - but it certainly got him noticed. The young man was making his mark.

Le Corbusier's architecture, like his life, seems laden with contradiction. By the time he was 60, he appeared to have rejected much of what he had boldly proclaimed 30 years earlier. In his landmark 1923 book Vers une architecture (Towards a New Architecture), he argues against architectural "style" and ornament and for a return to the geometric basics - a revolution made possible by concrete, steel and the liberating powers of industry. By the end of his life, however, he had adopted practically the opposite approach: a steady, organic, artisanal approach to building, and a healthy respect for history and tradition, as exemplified by the famous Notre Dame du Haut Chapel at Ronchamp, probably his best-known building.

For Le Corbusier a house might have been "a machine for living in", a phrase famously coined in that book, but despite his admiration for the design of ships and aeroplanes, he was too much of an artist to subscribe to that other modernist dictum, "form follows function".

Take, for instance, one of the first fully realised projects of his career, the Villa La Roche in Paris. Built in 1925, it is widely regarded as the first genuinely modernist house and, apart from a few telltale details could have been built yesterday. Clean, uncluttered and geometric, it feels light, open and free, a quantum leap from the cramped, dingy housing of the era. But on closer inspection the villa is more a rhetorical space than a functional one. In the triple-height entrance hall, for example, the staircase to the first level reception rooms has a cantilevered balcony projecting into the hall. It was a difficult thing to engineer at the time and its sole purpose was to provide the owner, Monsieur La Roche, with a place from which to greet his visitors. Its crisp symmetry turns out to be a lie: the balustrades match up visually on either side of the hall, but the floor levels behind them don't. Outside La Roche's bedroom, the balustrade is only knee-high. A higher railing had to be installed to prevent the client tumbling over the edge.

Le Corbusier could have profitably continued designing in that style for the rest of his career. Instead he changed direction and began to explore more expressive alternatives, often influenced by local and "peasant" architecture. Rather than smooth, perfect finishes, he started to incorporate rough stone walls into buildings such as the Pavillon Suisse, in Paris's Cité Universitaire, and even in his own penthouse studio in Paris, where he stripped the plaster off the party wall to expose the rough stone underneath - "the wall of my neighbour," as he described it. And as Le Corbusier moved into larger-scale designs, he began to leave his concrete rough and unfinished on the outside, so that it bore the imprint of the wooden forms involved in its construction. This béton brut (literally "raw concrete") was applied in his Unité d'Habitation in Marseilles - a hugely influential mass housing project. And, of course, it became the hallmark of British Brutalism, that oft-maligned translation of Corbusian principles that resulted in 1960s and 70s buildings such as London's South Bank, Sheffield's Park Hill, and the recently condemned Robin Hood Gardens in east London.

Yet to blame Le Corbusier for the failures of modern public housing is like blaming Sabatier for the rise in knife crime. At least his own proposed highrises were separated by vast areas of green space - a crucial element that disappeared in the dense landscapes ostensibly built in his name. The one city he did get to build, Chandigarh, capital of India's Punjab state, is not only rather beautiful but represents an authentic postcolonial civic architectural identity - especially in comparison to, say, Lutyens' neoclassical government buildings in New Delhi.

Le Corbusier's own idea of the perfect space seems curiously telling. Having spent a lifetime at the cutting edge of progress, expanding his reputation and designs to maximum scale, he found his ideal home in his cabanon - a spartan, one-roomed wooden hut on the Côte d'Azur, where he spent every summer from 1952 onwards. He designed it in 45 minutes and had it built by traditional carpenters in the manner of a fisherman's hut. It contained the bare minimum needed for survival: a bed, a desk, a basin, bookshelves. "It measures 1.9 x 4 metres, it's made of old planks put together, and it suits me just fine," he said. Photographs show him painting, eating at the local restaurant and working outside - living the Mediterranean dream. He died there, from a heart attack, while taking his morning swim.

Perhaps the most contradictory thing about Le Corbusier, however, is that he never really contradicted himself at all. Despite appearing to change his mind repeatedly, he was doggedly consistent in many respects. He continually strove to transcend the material and to improve the spirit of humanity. He carried beliefs in proportion and harmony throughout his life. You might say that his talent was broad enough to absorb and resolve opposing forces - to turn the contradictory into the complementary. And that, surely, is what makes him a great artist.

· Le Corbusier Le Grand is published by Phaidon (phaidon.com); Le Corbusier: The Art of Architecture runs October 2-January 18 in the Crypt of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral as part of the city's 2008 European Capital of Culture programme (liverpool08.com)