Book Cover
Book
Author Maak, Niklas.

Title Le Corbusier : the architect on the beach / Niklas Maak
Published Munich : Hirmer, 2011

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Description 207 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
Contents Contents note continued: Architecture and Surrealism -- 3.Shell Passages -- The invention of modern architecture out of the spirit of flotsam and jetsam: the ̀Exposition des arts decoratifs' -- Le Corbusier's exhibition ̀Les Arts dits primitifs': the blueprint for a theory of assemblage -- Algiers: people, history and nature return to architecture -- Concrete snails: esoterics and theosophy, the Mundaneum and the Musee a croissance illimitee -- The Mundaneum -- The mathematics of nature: measure and Modulor -- Affective formulas: mathematics and poetry -- 4.Architecture and Literature: The Architect as ̀Poet' -- Modern architecture as poetry: Le Corbusier's promotional verse and Le Poeme de l'angle droit -- A man by the sea: discovery and invention -- 5.Le Corbusier and Paul Valery -- The anti-Platonic irony of the ambiguous object -- Eupalinos as a secret model: the fictional idol of a real-life architect -- Architecture and music: from Valery to Ronchamp --
Contents note continued: Correspondence between Valery and Le Corbusier -- Annotations: the architect inscribes himself in his reading -- Building in the spirit of Valery -- Texts as beaches -- Annotation, association, transformation: the thought processes of an architect -- How do forms arise? Valery's ̀L'Homme et la coquille' -- Disagreement: Valery contra Le Corbusier -- 6.From Palissy to Ronchamp: The Prchistory of the Architect on the Beach and the Invention of a New Notion of Space -- The renegade's seashell: Bernard Palissy's spiral town -- The enlargement theory: shelter in a monstrosity -- The threshhold as labyrinth -- A rotatable Virgin Mary -- The shell as philosophical concept and epistemological model: Filippo Buonanni and his treatise Ricreatione dell'occhio e della mente nell'Osservation delle Chioccole of 1681 -- 7.Ronchamp as a Philosophical Construct -- The alchemy of form: the avant-garde's esoteric chamber of curiosities --
Contents note continued: Productive misunderstandings: how csotericism could prompt good design -- The modernist sponge: the principle of porosity -- 8.The Architect on the Beach and the Consequences: A Short Postscript -- Mobius bands -- Zoom, foam, cell: the deconstruction of domestic space
Machine generated contents note: The controversy over Ronchamp -- From beach find to blurb and biomorphism: a misunderstanding -- 1.The Beaches of Modernism -- The architect and the sea: self-depiction in the sign of the shell -- Living in a snail's shell: Le Corbusier's Cabanon at Cap Martin -- The architect in his beach hut: Le Corbusier's new self-image -- What the architect on the beach was looking for: ̀objets a reaction poetique' -- 2.The Other Oeuvre -- Le Corbusier as a draughtsman and painter -- Drawn stones: aleatoric images and architecture -- A microcosmic world: formal discoveries through the zoom -- Matter and maths: modernism's tactile revolution -- Ur-impulses in place of rationalisation: How to ground ideology in nature -- Painting as an arena for architectural experiments: the paintings Harmonie perilleuse, Lea and Femme, homme et os -- Ambiguous form: confusion of the sexes -- Spatial hermaphrodites: Le Corbusier, Rothko and formal ambivalence --
Summary The mastermind behind what he termed beautiful and functional "machines for living," Le Corbusier has long been recognized as one of the foremost figures in the international style of architecture. Yet, beginning in the 1940s, the famed architect and urbanist increasingly took modernism in a new direction that has until now been insufficiently considered and little understood. Dispensing with his trademark suit and bowtie, Le Corbusier was spending increasing amounts of time at the shore in the 1940s, collecting stones, shells, and other jetsam, and enjoying the works of the philosopher and ardent shell collector Paul Valéry. And it was here that the seemingly hyper-rational architect developed a revolutionary new theory of design, built around these polished and splintered shapes. Stating that nature was the source of his inspiration, Le Corbusier embarked on a meandering odyssey through the literature and esoteric writings of his day, going on to produce such unorthodox projects as Chandigarh's Palace of Assembly and the strange and beautiful Ronchamp Chapel in Paris, whose roof is said to have been modeled after an inverted crab's shell
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-207)
Notes Originally published in German Munich : Hanser, 2010 under title Der Architekt am Strand : Le Corbusier und das Geheimnis der Seeschnecke. 9783446234994
In English; translated from the German
Subject Le Corbusier, 1887-1965 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Le Corbusier, 1887-1965.
Architects -- France -- Biography.
Architecture -- Philosophy -- 20th century.
Genre/Form Biographies.
LC no. 2011518463
ISBN 3777439916
9783777439914
Other Titles Architekt am Strand. English
Architect on the beach