Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier was an influential architect and city planner whose designs combined functionalism with bold sculptural expressionism. He belonged to the first generation of the so-called International school of architecture, which promoted such characteristics as clean geometric forms and open efficient spaces. Le Corbusier was also a recognized writer and artist.

Some of Le Corbusier’s most well-known projects were the buildings Villa Savoye, Colline Notre Dame du Haut, and the Unité d'Habitation at Marseille, France; the unbuilt prototype for mass housing, Maison Dom-Ino; the master plan for Chandigarh, India; and the book Toward a New Architecture (1923) wherein he famously declared “a house is a machine for living in.”

Le Corbusier was born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris to a family of watchmakers. He later married the fashion model Yvonne Gallis, but they had no children.

Le Corbusier had no formal training as an architect. At 13 he left primary school to learn enameling and engraving of watch faces at the École des Arts Décoratifs at La Chaux-de-Fonds. There his teacher, Charles L’Eplattenier, decided that Le Corbusier should become an architect and gave him his first practice on local projects.

At age 77, Le Corbusier died of a heart attack while swimming off the coast of the French Riviera.