The gentle giant of Paris Apr 1, 2008
As much an artist as an architect (a great French tradition - think of Le Corbusier), Nouvel's work has been unconstrained by a specific visual style. His masterly Cultural and Congress Centre beside the lake at Lucerne, Switzerland (first opened in 2000), might borrow from the rigorous, right-angled architecture of Mies van der Rohe, but his recent Quai Branly museum in Paris is a kind of architectural rattle-bag. (Guardian Unlimited -- World)
Hayward Gallery's birthday surprise Mar 8, 2008
It's either a confusing concrete monstrosity or a fine example of Le Corbusier inspired brutalist architecture. Psycho Buildings runs from May 28 to August 25. (Guardian Unlimited -- UK)
* 'Chromophilia without the color' Mar 5, 2008
Levine has taken the colors from a line of painted wallpaper created in 1931 by Le Corbusier - the architect better known as an advocate of pristine white Ripolin paint. As Batchelor writes, "Chromophobia is perhaps only chromophilia without the color." This story has been viewed 230 times. (Taipei Times, Taiwan -- World)
Furniture designed by architects: Pricey, impractical and very desirable Mar 2, 2008
Le Corbusier's boxy Le Grand Confort club chair ... Mies, Le Corbusier and Aalto designed those chairs because they felt compelled to ... Most of Mies's and Le Corbusier's furniture, and even some of Aalto's, was originally made in tiny editions for wealthy clients. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
Brazilian modernism's time has come Feb 10, 2008
They have helped to make icons of that era from North America and Europe - such as Eames chaises, Le Corbusier tables, Saarinen chairs or George Nelson clocks - so ubiquitous in modern homes that they have become visual cliches ... On offer were contemporary designs along with midcentury designs by the centenarian architect Oscar Niemeyer, a protege of Le Corbusier ... Niemeyer, a winner of the 1988 Pritzker Architecture Prize, is best known for his architectural work with Costa on Brasilia,... (San Francisco Chronicle)
Imbuing a bachelor pad with a touch of class Feb 3, 2008
Gleaming Le Corbusier chrome and leather seating. Or maybe a flashing neon Heineken sign. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Question time Jan 17, 2008
The Le Corbusier show, because I trained as a quantity surveyor. And I'm really keen on Liverpool Electric - musicians playing live around the city to people wearing earphones. (Guardian Unlimited -- Media)
First Exhibitions of 2008 at the Addison Gallery Range from Mid-Century Architecture to New England Landscapes Jan 17, 2008
From the mid-1940s through the 1960s, Ezra Stoller (19152004) was commissioned by luminaries of architecture including Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright to photograph their buildings. Many of these architects considered their projects incomplete until the buildings were photographed by Stoller, an event that came to be known as being Stollerized. (Yahoo! Wire -- Entertainment News)
How to liberate the soul of your home Jan 14, 2008
Life itself was merely an arrangement of complex hydrocarbons and a house was, to adapt Le Corbusier's expression, a machine for sentient biomatter to exist in ... Still, Le Corbusier admired it, although the Dalsace extension was largely unknown until a young Anglo-Italian architect called Richard Rogers discovered this hidden gem at 31 rue Saint-Guillaume in 1966. (Guardian Unlimited -- Society)
Liverpool to launch EU culture capital celebrations Jan 11, 2008
Liverpool, the waterfront of which is a UNESCO world heritage site, has the biggest number of museums in Britain outside London, and visitors can take in shows featuring artists such as Gustav Klimt, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and architect Le Corbusier. Thanks to the culture capital link, a series of internationally-known events are also taking place in Liverpool in 2008 including the MTV Europe music awards, the Turner Prize for modern art and the BBC Electric Proms music festival. (Yahoo News -- Politics)
Critics' picks - visual arts Dec 24, 2007
"Untitled (Placebo - Landscape - for Roni)" is a sumptuous carpet of hard candy spilling over the concrete floor, warming the modernist chill of the Le Corbusier building. Each candy is wrapped in gold cellophane, and visitors are invited to take a piece to eat. (Boston Globe)
Harvard Film Archive preserves history, frame by frame Dec 19, 2007
Housed in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the only building in North America designed by Le Corbusier, the archive's theater originally had no seats, with films projected onto the side walls. Seats were eventually installed, along with state-of-the-art 16- and 35mm projectors, but a touch of the original aesthetic remains in the Le Corbusier print on the wall, and the architect-approved palette of blocky colors that decorate the room. (Boston Globe)
Candy-filled art installation at Harvard is sweet but not sugarcoated Dec 13, 2007
"Untitled (Placebo - Landscape - for Roni)" (1993) is a sumptuous carpet of hard candy spilling over the concrete floor, warming the modernist chill of the Le Corbusier building. Each candy is wrapped in gold cellophane, and visitors are invited to take a piece to eat. (Boston Globe)
Le Corbusier Dec 8, 2007
swissinfo - Swiss news and information platform about Switzerland, business, culture, sport, weather. December 7, 2007 - 11:10 AM. (SwissInfo.org, Switzerland)
Acropolis now Dec 3, 2007
Classicists have bowed before it, but so did Le Corbusier, the most iconoclastic of modern architects. How can any architect ever match its rhythm and harmony. (Guardian Unlimited)
Nearing 100, Brazilian architect Niemeyer still has designs on future Oct 28, 2007
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Niemeyer graduated from Brazil's National School of Fine Arts in 1934 and joined a team that worked with Swiss-born Bauhaus giant Le Corbusier on a new Ministry of Education and Health ... Niemeyer was welcomed back in the 1940s, working with Le Corbusier and Sir Howard Robinson on the United Nations headquarters. (Boston Globe)
Muriel Cooper: The unsung heroine of on-screen style Oct 1, 2007
A list of the usual suspects might start with Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer and Herbert Bayer, pause mid-century for Jean Prouv. Charles Eames and Paul Rand, before ending with Philippe Starck, Jasper Morrison and Tibor Kalman. (International Herald Tribune)
Richard Rogers: Transforming public spaces Oct 1, 2007
"But the interesting thing about the 29," he adds, "is that I think there was only one French person, which reflects on the very bad state of French architecture then. The older generation of Le Corbusier was gone and the powerful generation of very good architects like Jean Nouvel and Dominique Perrault hadn't yet come.". Nouvel, Rogers says, was especially good talking about urbanization at the recent meeting with Sarkozy. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
Liverpool trumpets cultural future (plus Macca, Ringo and Doddy) Sep 29, 2007
The new details build on those already announced, including a visit by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, a new work by Sir John Tavener to be performed in the Catholic cathedral by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and exhibitions of the work of Gustav Klimt and Le Corbusier. The aims were outlined by producers Fiona Gasper and Claire McColgan. (Guardian Unlimited)
Right royal cup goes down a treat Sep 28, 2007
The lounge, named after the American aircraft maker with the added initials of Le Corbusier - a seminal influence on Newson and many others - was first exhibited at Sydney's Roslyn Oxley Gallery in 1985, when the designer was just 23. Newson sculpted the original from foam, similarly to a surfboard, and tried to create a seamless sheath of metal over it. (Sydney Morning Herald -- Business)
Janis Gillham, 54; commercial architect had vision for interior space Sep 22, 2007
At home, Janis Mones Gillham mixed disparate elements, placing a piece of modern furniture with the kind of design Le Corbusier began creating in the late 1920s next to a Jacobean gateleg table that evoked the early 1600s. Corporate clients, however, often asked her to take imaginative leaps of a more practical nature, as was the case when she designed a new home for a Boston law firm five years ago. (Boston Globe)
So, like, this is Harvard Sep 8, 2007
He chose not to point out the sloped transparent roof of Gund Hall, the graduate school of design, which floods its four floors with natural light; or the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, bisected by a curving ramp, the only building in North America designed by Le Corbusier. Nor did he point out the Houghton Library, which contains furniture from Emily Dickinson's home. (Globe and Mail)
After 15 years, Paris dealer decides to sell his "liveable sculpture" Sep 4, 2007
es," or "Risen Rocks," the house was designed in 1987 by Jacques Cou?lle, then 85. Cou?lle was renowned for his landscape architecture style, which he also demonstrated at the Aga Khan's Cala di Volpe hotel on the Costa Smeralda of Sardinia. Today in Properties "The house is a sort of livable sculpture," Trigano said. "Le Corbusier invented a beautiful expression for his houses that I think we can use here: 'inhabitable poems. You feel you are in a refuge completely isolated from the world. (International Herald Tribune)
Revisiting a fabled couple's passions and paintings Aug 31, 2007
Organized by the museum's curator of modern and contemporary art, Deborah Rothschild, the exhibition is a kind of sprawling, walk-in scrapbook, including innumerable documentary photographs; paintings by artists who influenced Murphy such as Juan Gris, Le Corbusier, and Picasso; original letters from friends such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald; and all seven of the existing oil paintings that Murphy made during his short but brilliant career as an artist. For a dozen or so years in... (Boston Globe -- Living)
Here today, gone tomorrow Aug 16, 2007
Ever since Le Corbusier and the Italian futurists salivated over biplanes, steam trains, ocean liners and automobiles in the early 20th century, architecture has been in awe of moving machines. But, as much as the modernist pioneers eulogised these dynamic inventions, they never dared disobey the sacred rule that says buildings stay where they're built. (Guardian Unlimited)
Chairs sitting pretty as a design icon, but for how long? Aug 12, 2007
To visualize the condensed history of chair design, just think of how aptly Marcel Breuer and Le Corbusier's tubular metal chairs captured the machine age aesthetic of the 1920s ... During the first half of the 20th century, the most influential writing on design was invariably by architects, notably William Lethaby, Hermann Muthesius, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius ... Some belong to modern art institutions, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, or the Pompidou Center in Paris, which are... (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
* Brazil's colossus of concrete Aug 5, 2007
Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Alvar Aalto were all in awe of this young Brazilian who single-handedly transformed architecture into a wonderful thing of sensuous curves, lightness and unforgettable forms ... " Sometimes Niemeyer's instant buildings can veer towards the glib, or the vacuous, as with the brand new National Museum at Brasilia, a white 80m concrete dome wrapped around, inside and out, with a twisting, elevated walkway. It's a fine conceit, but with nothing... (Taipei Times, Taiwan -- Business)
Architecture Aug 1, 2007
Costa and Capanema decided to seek the advice of Le Corbusier, the greatest of all Modern architects ... Le Corbusier descended from the air, "a mighty god visiting his pygmy worshippers," says Niemeyer ... Le Corbusier had been deeply impressed by Niemeyer's burgeoning talent. (Guardian Unlimited)
Local art deco Jul 1, 2007
The show made an impression on many artists and architects, ranging from the stage designer Erte to the architect Le Corbusier. The style thrived in the 1920s and '30s. (The Palm Beach Post)
A novelist's dark stories amid treasures of a well-traveled life Jun 27, 2007
Her sunny, one-bedroom apartment in a landmarked house in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn is filled with treasures from a traveler's life, not all the travels global: the combs collected in New Guinea on a bookcase that she thinks might be Le Corbusier; an old bowl used to carry away the spit of a Hawaiian king (oh, yes, everything that came from his body - hair, excrement, urine, scabs - was considered sacred and taken away in a bowl); an abstract painting, voluptuous and round, by Moore's... (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
The building that God forgot Jun 25, 2007
Here lurk the great concrete walls, and what survives of the interiors, of a religious building clearly based on the last great works of Le Corbusier: the pilgrimage chapel of Ronchamp near Mulhouse, and the monastery of La Tourette near Lyon. These walls, though, are plastered not with devotional frescoes, but with graffiti, most of it disrespectful, some of it obscene. (Guardian Unlimited)
Candlelit Barges to Float Down Thames as Festival Hall Reopens Jun 10, 2007
The architect Leslie Martin and his team, influenced by Le Corbusier and Scandinavian modernism, created a stark concrete box slightly softened by a curved roof. Amid the current wave of architectural playfulness, that style of modernism has gone out of fashion and the hall now has plenty of detractors. (Bloomberg)
Friends of Scott Fitzgerald and Picasso, Gerald and Sara Murphy were muses of Modernism Jun 9, 2007
Admired by the architect Le Corbusier, the Riviera home was outfitted with newfangled American products like screen doors, electric fans and stainless steel bathroom fixtures ... ger and Le Corbusier that influenced him. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
Architecture at MoMA: Another look May 16, 2007
Essentially, they defined what came to be known as the International Style by featuring the work of European modernists like Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and J.J.P. Oud. In most cases, they selected buildings with radically simplified forms and an utter rejection of ornament. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
Living the modernist dream Apr 29, 2007
Niemeyer, who is still creating brilliant buildings in his 100th year, is the father of Brazilian Modernism, the chief architect of Brasilia and, in collaboration with Le Corbusier, of the United Nations headquarters in New York ... Frank Lloyd Wright in America, Le Corbusier in France and Alvar Aalto in Finland, among others, designed furniture and every detail of their interiors down to the door knobs. (Los Angeles Times)
Sydney has cause to reflect on LeWitt Apr 25, 2007
LeWitt's man in Sydney was Harry Seidler who, being a respectable muralist, made a point of commissioning A-list artists: Le Corbusier, Victor Vasarely and Alexander Calder at Australia Square; Josef Albers and Charles Perry at the MLC Centre; Frank Stella at Grosvenor Place; Lin Utzon at the Capita Centre. LeWitt's contribution came with the 2003 Australia Square refurbishment: the panelled mural that replaced Corbusier's fading but still joyous tapestry with the high-chroma potato sticks now... (Sydney Morning Herald -- Opinion)
Milan Furniture Fair Apr 16, 2007
Architects are furnishing museums, sports stadiums and corporate headquarters with new designs, rather than the early 20th century classics by Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe that have filled them for decades. The industry is also benefiting from demand for new types of furniture reflecting changes in living and working patterns. (International Herald Tribune)
Design calender: Key design events of 2007-8 Apr 16, 2007
"Le Corbusier The Art of Architecture" Retrospective of the design and architecture of the modernist master Le Corbusier. www. (International Herald Tribune)
A legacy of Modernism's breakaway style Apr 8, 2007
(Ves / Victoria and Albert Museum, London) (Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society / Corcoran Gallery of Art) (Fondation Le Corbusier) (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) ... Other artists such as the painter Pablo Picasso, architect Le Corbusier, designer Marcel Breuer and filmmaker Fritz Lang wanted to do the same: break completely with the past and re-create their form of art, taking it to new and different heights ... The architect Le Corbusier insisted that, in its own way, an... (Los Angeles Times)
We came. We saw. We parked. Apr 7, 2007
What you get: This modernist concrete structure carries a whiff of Le Corbusier to it. Or maybe that's just kitchen vapors from the nearby Cafe Julien wafting upward through the structure's airy, windows-on-the-financial-district design. (Boston Globe)
The power of 10 Apr 6, 2007
-- DA Pennebaker chose "La Vie Commence Demain," directed by Nicole Vedres, in which Jean-Pierre Aumont plays a young man, who meets Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gide, Picasso, Le Corbusier, Jean Rostand and Daniel Lagache; 12:45 p.m. April 13, Civic Center 2. -- Julia Reichert presents "Roger and Me," directed by Michael Moore, in which Moore represents the working class as he tries to talk to the General Motors CEO; noon April 14, Fletcher Hall, Carolina Theatre. (Herald Sun)
Alvar Aalto: A fresh look at a 'friendly' Modernist Apr 5, 2007
LONDON: To promote Britain's first major retrospective of Alvar Aalto's work, the Barbican Art Gallery felt the need to link him to Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe as Modernism's third tenor. And to add topicality it turned over design of the show to a leading Japanese architect, Shigeru Ban, who regards Aalto as his principal influence. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY Mar 19, 2007
The nadir -- and architects are really sick of this story by now -- was the attempt by American cities to remake slums according to the principles of such leading modernists as Le Corbusier: Crisp high-rise housing projects sprouting out of green yards announced a new era in America's treatment of its poor ... Still, give architects like Le Corbusier and Yamasaki points for trying, suggests the eminent sociologist Nathan Glazer in his new book, "From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's... (Boston Globe)
Mod, mod world (Deborah K. Dietsch) Mar 17, 2007
All the familiar classics are here: Alvar Aalto's squiggly glass vases, Marcel Breuer's tubular steel chairs, Le Corbusier's white villas ... "A house is a machine for living in," Le Corbusier famously said, forgoing coziness for ramps and strip windows ... Charlotte Perriand, whose furniture designs were co-opted by Le Corbusier, is well represented, as are textile artist Anni Albers and metalworker and lighting designer Marianne Brandt, both of whom taught at the Bauhaus. (Washington Times)
Thoroughly modern Mondrian for Corcoran (Ann Geracimos and Kevin Chaffee) Mar 16, 2007
Upstairs in rooms reconfigured for the show, guests meandered through gallery after gallery admiring works by Fernand Leger, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Georges Braque, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, among many others. One of the most unusual was the "Frankfurt Kitchen," the first built-in modern kitchen manufactured in mass quantity. (Washington Times, DC)
Jonathan Glancey on surrealist buildings Mar 5, 2007
One of the high points of "surrealist architecture" was a Paris flat designed in 1930 for the wealthy art collector Charles de Beistegui; it was designed by none other than Le Corbusier, he of the famous dictum "the house is a machine for living in". Although the apartment is mostly what you would expect of Le Corbusier, it featured a surrealist roof garden complete with a false fireplace, incongruous living-room furniture and a mirror. (Guardian Unlimited)
Thinking inside the box Feb 21, 2007
" Bob Peterson, 74, knew he wanted to become an architect since finishing high school in Arizona, where he'd been exposed to Frank Lloyd Wright's ideas. He was one of the first graduates of Stanford University's Art and Architecture Department, where he earned a master's degree and taught for 10 years. His hero today is still the early Modernist Le Corbusier, and he admires much of local architect Birge Clark's work -- although he does not design in the same vernacular. "I wouldn't do it... (Palo Alto Online, CA)
The Palace of Soviets Feb 17, 2007
Paperny cites Le Corbusier who wrote Vesnin from abroad: It is hard to accept the fact that they will actually erect that odd thing which recently has flooded all of the journals. Frank Lloyd Wright is also cited in his address to the First Congress of Soviet Architects in 1937. (Suite101.com)
Creativity: It's never too late to bloom Feb 4, 2007
This is Eastwood's and Bourgeois' path and it was the path for a host of other artists: Titian and Rembrandt, Monet and Rodin, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, Mark Twain and Henry James, Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop, to name a few. Twain wrote "Tom Sawyer" at 41 and bettered it with "Huckleberry Finn" at 50; Wright completed Fallingwater at 72 and worked on the Guggenheim Museum until his death at 91. (Fresno Bee -- Opinion)
Barbican Art Gallery Exhibition Jan 31, 2007
Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) was a landmark figure of 20th century architecture and design; ranking alongside other Modernist masters such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. Filling the whole of Barbican Art Gallery, this is the first major retrospective of his work to be held in the UK. The exhibition, sponsored by the and Finlandia Vodka is designed and curated by leading Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. (Suite101.com)
Be happy: Love what you have Jan 13, 2007
An Ikea chair may end up in a landfill, but the one by Le Corbusier will be snapped up if you put it out on the curb. Forget the idea that your house should be ready for guests at any time. (AZCentral -- Home)
While others buy used goods willy-nilly, Ken Erwin of the Venice neighborhood in Los Angeles has an informed, discriminating taste that makes him a quintessentialFlea-market 'picker' Jan 4, 2007
Longtime Santa Monica client Michael Boyd, whose collection includes 150 pieces that were displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1998 to 1999, says his best items for the "Sitting on the Edge" show came from Erwin: a 1950s Charles and Ray Eames storage unit, a 1954 Carlo Mollino chair, a 1946 R.M. Schindler seat from the architect's Lechner House in Los Angeles, and a 1928 Le Corbusier chaise longue with its flawless, original canvas. So many people think they know Modern... (Mail Tribune, OR)
