Word: corbu
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...that was mostly of glass, and blank end walls. One Swiss newspaper predicted that it would corrupt the youth who lived in it, but to architects it was a milestone; it became the model for countless other slabs before and since the U N Building. In all his work, Corbu had lifted his prisms on high to reclaim the land underneath. His columned structures had freed the façade for inventive sculpturing, opened up interiors, surrendered the long dark walls to light. And as a grace note, he had added the roof garden. These devices, which he imperiously declared...
...sculptures along the walls. He was such a Calvinist in those days." He managed to put up a model Workers' City near Bordeaux, but the buildings so offended the local authorities that they refused to furnish them with water for six years. In 1927 Corbu, with his cousin and partner Pierre Jeanneret, submitted a plan for the League of Nations. As he bitterly wrote of the incident later: "After 65 meetings of the jury in Geneva, the project of L-C and Pierre Jeanneret was the only one of 360 schemes (seven miles of plans) that received four votes...
...Corbu became a French citizen and married Yvonne Gallis an earthy, black-haired young woman from Monaco. Yvonne had little use use for the walls of glass he built into their Paris apartment. ("I'm tearing my hair out of my roots. All this light is driving me crazy!"), but she knew hot to soothe her volatile husband better than anyone. Things began to go a bit better for Corbu from then on. The next year, on a broad green site in Poissy, he built a residence called Villa Savoye. Like his other buildings, it was basically a "pure...
...Corbusier made another plan for Paris, but since it presupposed demolishing a good part of the existing city the Parisians did not take to it at all. "Megalomania!" screamed the weekly Arts-Vandalism! Vanity! Monotony!" "In Paris," sighs Corbu, "prophets are kicked in the rear...
Captivated Audience. As Corbu built, he also wrote. In the U.S., Frank Lloyd Wright thundered his contempt for the French "painter and pamphleteer," but one by one, young architects were captivated by him. "There were no teachers to teach us the new architecture," says the Chinese-American architect. I. M. Pei, "so we turned to Corbu's books and these were responsible for half our education." In Greece, a young student named Constantinas Doxiadis, who was to become famous in his own land, got a Corbu book as a gift on Christmas Eve in 1932. "I glanced through...