Word: le
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
EDWARD H. LE ZOTTE Frankfurt, West Germany...
...sitting on a fluttering leaf"), eventually made it from Arc to Arch in 12 hr. 17 min. 22 sec. Clutching a pet tortoise named Fangio, Health Faddist Dr. Barbara Moore Pataleewa, 55, set out from Marble Arch on foot, switched to a motorcycle, hopped a plane from Croydon to Le Touquet, on the English Channel, then ran most of the 135 miles to Paris, sipping fruit juice and munching grass along the way. One competitor used souped-up power lawnmowers to and from his plane; another, wise to the ways of city traffic, tried roller skates...
That fact alone makes Tokyo's spanking new National Museum of Western Art architectural news of the first magnitude, since it reaches so hard for perfection. Based on sketches by France's owl-wise, owl-grouchy Le Corbusier, the museum was completed by three Japanese architects who had studied with the master in the 1930s. It uses concrete, tile, French glass and Philippine teakwood to create a more finished and refined atmosphere than Le Corbusier himself enjoys. Otherwise, it faithfully represents his solutions to the two great problems of museum architecture: display" and lighting...
...interior spaces that are just as exciting in themselves as the façades. To enter a magnificent building is like entering a work of sculpture and seeing it anew from within. Yet such excitement is distracting in a museum, where the works, not the walls, are the thing. Le Corbusier, the most sculptural of all living architects, apparently kept this point well in mind at Tokyo. He braked himself to produce a squared-off, surprisingly unelaborate structure. The entrance leads straight through to a large central gallery, from which smaller galleries radiate up and out. Everywhere...
...lighting of museums is too changeable, except in dime-bright climates, and artificial lighting is too colorless and rigid. Le Corbusier's solution at Tokyo is a radical blend of both. Over the central gallery he raised a huge, tentlike, triangular skylight, glassed on its north side. The smaller galleries have long, rectangular skylights. And to illuminate the dark corners, spotlights are set into the ceilings. Some Japanese critics complain that walking through the building ''gives one a very mixed feeling, like a repetitive alternation of night and day." More spotlights should level out the effect...