Charles-Edouard Jeanneret was born in La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland, 1887. Trained as an artist, he traveled extensively through Germany and the East. In Paris he studied under Auguste Perret and absorbed the cultural and artistic life of the city. Jeanneret adopted the name Le Corbusier in the early 1920s.
Le Corbusier's early work was related to nature, but as his ideas matured, he developed the Maison-Domino, a basic building prototype for mass production with freestanding pillars and rigid floors. In 1917 he settled in Paris where he issued his book Vers une architecture (Towards a New Architecture). From 1922 Le Corbusier worked with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. During this time, Le Corbusier's ideas began to take physical form, mainly as houses, which he created as "a machine for living in" and which incorporated his trademark five points of architecture.
During World War II, Le Corbusier produced little beyond some theories on his utopian ideals and on his modular building scale. In 1947, he started his Unite d'habitation. Although relieved with sculptural rooflines and highly colored walls, these massive post-war dwelling blocks received justifiable criticism.
Le Corbusier's post-war buildings rejected his earlier industrial forms and utilized vernacular materials, brute concrete and articulated structure. Near the end of his career he worked on several projects in India, which utilized brutal materials and sculptural forms. In these buildings he readopted the recessed structural column, the expressive staircase, and the flat undecorated plane of his celebrated five points of architecture.
Le Corbusier did not fare well in international competition, but he produced town-planning schemes for many parts of the world, often as an adjunct to a lecture tour. In these schemes the vehicular and pedestrian zones and the functional zones of the settlements were always emphasized.

Selected Works:
La Roche-Jeanneret house, Paris, France 1923
Villa at Garches, France 1927
Villa Savoye, Poissy, France 1929-1931
The Swiss House at the City University, Paris, France 1930-1932
L' Unite d' habitation a Marseille, France 1954-1956
Chapelle Notre-dame-du-Haut, Ronchamp, France 1950-1954
Shodan house, Ahmedabad, 1956
Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1961-1964
The New Hospital of Venice (unbuilt), Italy 1964-1965
Chandigarh (The Capital), India 1952-1965
La Tourette, Lyon, France 1957-1960
Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture, Firminy, France 1960-1965
Heidi Weber Museum (last work), Zurich, Switzerland 1960-1967

Web site: www.foundationlecorbusier.assoc.fr

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