Roof terrace of La Cité Radieuse, Marseille (Photo: Fred Romero / CC BY-SA 2.0)
Few figures shaped 20th-century architecture and urban planning as profoundly as Le Corbusier. A Swiss-French architect, theorist, and urban planner, he redefined design through radical new approaches to housing, city planning, and the relationship between form and function. His ideas continue to influence debates about how people live in cities and inhabit space, making him one of the most consequential architects of the era.
Born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in 1887, Le Corbusier developed a distinctive architectural language that emerged across residential, religious, and institutional projects around the world. His work helped define the visual and ideological vocabulary of modernism, from early villas in France to large-scale housing and civic structures that sought to reshape everyday life on a global scale.
Art historian Jennie Hirsh explores his prolific career, considering both his groundbreaking architectural innovations and the broader intellectual and political contexts in which he worked. She examines key works across his career, including the Villa Jeanneret-Perret, Villa La Roche, Villa Savoye, Unité d’habitation in Marseille, the Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut in Ronchamp, and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo—many of which are now recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Through these examples, Hirsh traces how Le Corbusier’s vision transformed ideas of space and how people live in cities.
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