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Le Corbusier

Original nameLe Corbusier

Standard-bearer of modernist architecture, "a house is a machine for living"

Form Follows Function · Modernism
ModernismFunctionalismConcreteUrban Planning

Who they are

A Swiss-French architect, the most influential and most controversial standard-bearer of twentieth-century modernism. He declared "a house is a machine for living," arguing for solving the housing problem of modern man rationally and efficiently by industrial means. He put forward the famous "Five Points of a New Architecture" (pilotis, roof garden, free plan, ribbon window, free facade), realizing them in reinforced concrete. His Villa Savoye is a textbook of modernism, yet his late Ronchamp chapel was unexpectedly sculptural and poetic. He also proposed radical urban plans — razing the old city to build towers and expressways. He profoundly shaped the face of twentieth-century cities, and his merits and faults are fiercely argued to this day.

Primary sourcesthe Villa Savoyethe Ronchamp chapelTowards a New Architecture

Key stories

"A House Is a Machine for Living"

Le Corbusier compared architecture to a machine: just as a car is designed for efficient running and a ship for long voyages, a house should be precisely designed for the function of "living." This startling line "a house is a machine for living" wholly freed architecture from the classical ornamental tradition, and pushed it toward industrialization and standardization. It shaped the modern city, and drew charges of "coldness, inhumanity" — one line concentrating the whole ambition and controversy of modernism.

Version differences

Le Corbusier’s radical raze-and-rebuild urban plans, and whether his "machine aesthetic" is inhuman, are judged at both extremes; this site states his influence and the dispute.

Relationships

Mentor
⚪Oscar Niemeyer　his modernism deeply shaped Niemeyer and other successors☀️Louis Kahn　a source of the concrete modernism of the mid-century

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

"A house is a machine for living"Le Corbusier is the most influential and most controversial standard-bearer of modernism; "a house is a machine for living" and the "Five Points" shaped the face of the twentieth-century city, his merits and faults still fiercely argued.

Appears in

ModernismLe Corbusier, Mies, Gropius: Modernism Arrives
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