Godfather of modern architecture
Oct 3 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post
Le Corbusier exhibition at Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral _320
But, as the exhibition makes clear, these were mainly poor imitations of Le Corbusier’s mass housing projects, which included his Unite d’habitation development in Marseilles, that is featured in the Crypt.
Rather than individual single-storey flats piled one on top of the other, it included 15 different styles of living space split over two floors, with plate glass windows and balconies.
“He did not see them as housing blocks but as vertical cities and the corridors he saw as streets,” explains Kries.
“This was one of his most controversial designs, because it has been copied thousands of times and many of them were grotesque versions of his idea.
“The first thing to go was the two-storey structure and then the use of colour.”
In later years, before he died of a heart attack while swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, at the age of 77, Le Corbusier’s designs became more fluid, incorporating shapes from the natural world.
A wooden model of his Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France, with its curved walls and shell-shaped roof, and plans and photographs of the Indian city of Chandigarh that he designed from scratch shows how far his ideas had evolved.
Also featured are his furniture designs, including the instantly recognisable chaise longue he created with Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, paintings, tapestries and sculptures.
There are also a selection of films featuring the man himself in his trademark circular glasses.
Kries adds: “It’s interesting to compare the dress of the people in the films and how old-fashioned they look with how contemporary his skyscrapers still seem and you realise advanced his ideas were.”
LE CORBUSIER: The Art of Architecture, in the Metropolitan Cathedral Crypt, runs until January 18.
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