Godfather of modern architecture

Oct 3 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

Le Corbusier exhibition at Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral _320

An exhibition about controversial architect Le Corbusier has opened in Liverpool. Laura Davis takes a look

THEY came from opposite ends of the architectural spectrum, so it was perhaps unsurprising when Edwin Lutyens denounced Le Corbusier’s housing designs in a national newspaper article.

Supported by pillars, rather than four walls, the cubic villas pioneered open plan living that is so popular today, but Lutyens declared they had been designed for “robots without eyes – for eyes that have no vision cannot be educated to see.”

What then would he make of his Crypt – the only part of his blueprint for Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral to have been completed – housing a retrospective of Le Corbusier’s work?

As the UK’s first major exhibition about the Swiss architect in 20 years, it is expected to attract architecture buffs from all over the country, but those who know little or nothing of his designs would also find plenty to entice them.

“There was a lot of criticism of Le Corbusier in the 90s, particularly of his urban planning and housing blocks, but in the last few years there has been a growing interest in his work,” says Mateo Kries, one of the exhibition’s three curators.

“We asked ourselves, what is so contemporary about his work that architects are still fascinated by it?”

The chalk white villas and radical urban plans for which Le Corbusier is best known belong to his early career, some 90 years ago, and yet they continue to surprise today.

Included in the exhibition is a model and diorama of his proposal to demolish a great swathe of Paris and replace it with a series of tower blocks.

In today’s heritage-conscious society, it is hard not to be shocked or even borderline offended at this suggestion, but this is exactly what the architect intended – to wake people up from their preconceptions about how building should be designed.

“He thought Paris was too crowded, so he designed housing blocks with enough space between them for traffic to circulate freely,” explains Kries.

“We’re lucky it didn’t happen, but there is a question over whether he ever meant it to be realised or whether it was a Utopian model and a way for Le Corbusier to establish himself as the most radical architectural thinker of his time.”

Born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, in the watch-making town of La Chaux de Fonds, the “godfather of modern architecture” was sent to a school of applied arts to learn the local industry, but instead became fascinated by the structure of buildings.

The exhibition traces the evolution of his ideas, not in chronological order but through the cities and themes that inspired him – from the first house he built in a fairly traditional style to his Villa Savoye, in Poissy, France, with its flat windows and roof and open spaces.

He is often blamed for the hundreds of ugly tower blocks that sprang up in the 60s like concrete stalagmites, quickly becoming symbols of deprivation and false hope.