Fun fact: Le Corbusier had a copy of Don Quixote bound with the pelt of his schnauzer, Pinceau. The dog died of natural causes first. But still, wrapping a book with your pet’s fur is a disturbing act, to say the least—and that was likely the architect’s intention, one of his periodic flirtations with Surrealism. Typically, however, Corb preferred to leave books the way he bought them, as honest artifacts of modern manufacturing. He himself was a major producer of books, using them to shape his public image and steer professional discourse; he generated more than 40 distinct monographs between 1912 and his death in 1965. (I recommend Catherine de Smet’s excellent 2005 study Le Corbusier, Architect of Books for an overview.)
Like many architecture folk, my first deep exposure to Corb’s buildings came via the magisterial Oeuvre complete, published largely during his lifetime, in eight neatly designed volumes with, thankfully, simple beige-colored cloth covers. While not produced by Corb, the series nonetheless reflects the architect’s distinct sensibility, using photos and drawings provided by his office.
Many people have documented and interpreted Corb’s work in the half-century since he drowned in the Mediterranean, but nothing has really supplanted the brand identity that the architect himself so carefully orchestrated. If for this reason alone—the overwhelming tenacity of Corb’s self-representation—we have cause to celebrate the fresh, clear vision of Le Corbusier: The Built Work (The Monacelli Press), a new monograph of images by British photographer Richard Pare, with an introduction and project notes by French architect and historian Jean-Louis Cohen.
Pare’s encyclopedic endeavor, to photograph every surviving structure that Corb designed and built, began as a commission for the 2013 Museum of Modern Art exhibit “Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes,” which Cohen curated. Under any circumstances, the pictures and resulting 480-page book would be a major accomplishment, a scholarly and artistic enterprise with the scope and weight to alter long-received opinion; in our hyperactive digital age, its creation seems practically miraculous.
I thought I knew Corb’s work fairly well, but the book held wonderful surprises, such as the elegant (though altered) Villa Le Lac on the edge of Lake Geneva, which the architect designed for his parents in 1923–24; an even earlier water tower and movie theater that rival Enlightenment Neoclassicists Boullée and Ledoux with their spare, Doric geometries; and the 1933 Centrosoyuz headquarters in Moscow, which was virtually inaccessible during the Cold War.
Discoveries aside, the power of Pare’s photographs derives in large part from his decision to present Corb’s work naturalistically: free of overt cropping, retouching, styling, and other forms of visual sanitization. A chain link fence bordering the Villa Savoye, cracks in the béton brut at Chandigarh, picnic tables in the courtyard of the Maisons Jaoul—Le Corbusier might have shuddered to admit such casual imperfections, but they are Pare’s gift to his subject, counterintuitive proof of the buildings’ enduring quality. Architects cannot count on perfectly controlled conditions. The oeuvre of a truly great master should flourish in common use.
This article first appeared in the January 2019 issue of ARCHITECT, under the title “A Bit Messy, and Better for It.”
