Toward an Architecture

by A01 Le Corbusier, Jean-Louis Cohen, John Goodman

Overview

Published in 1923, Toward an Architecture had an immediate impact on architects throughout Europe and remains a foundational text for students and professionals. Le Corbusier urges readers to cease thinking of architecture as a matter of historical styles and instead open their eyes to the modern world. Simultaneously a historian, critic, and prophet, he provocatively juxtaposes views of classical Greece and Renaissance Rome with images of airplanes, cars, and ocean liners. Le Corbusier’s slogans—such as “the house is a machine for living in”—and philosophy changed how his contemporaries saw the relationship between architecture, technology, and history. This edition includes a new translation of the original text, a scholarly introduction, and background notes that illuminate the text and illustrations. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780892368990
Publisher:	Getty Publications
Publication date:	10/15/2007
Series:	Texts and Documents Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	358
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.50(d)
Lexile:	1110L (what's this?)

About the Author

Jean-Louis Cohen (1949-2023) authored over 30 books on architectural history and was a preeminent authority on Le Corbusier. John Goodman is a translator and art historian. He has rendered some thirty books from French into English.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     ix
From the Translator     xi
Introduction   Jean-Louis Cohen     1
Toward an Architecture
Introduction to the Second Edition     83
Argument     85
Aesthetic of the Engineer, Architecture     91
Three Reminders to Architects     99
Volume     99
Surface     107
Plan     115
Regulating Lines     131
Eyes That Do Not See...     145
Liners     145
Airplanes     159
Automobiles     177
Architecture     193
The Lesson of Rome     193
The Illusion of the Plan     213
Pure Creation of the Mind     231
Mass-Production Housing     253
Architecture or Revolution     291
Editor's and Translator's Notes     308
Selected Bibliography     331
Illustration Credits     335
Index     336

Editorial Reviews

A new translation by John Goodman with an introduction by the architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen will allow architecture buffs to experience Le Corbusier’s manifesto in its full glory.”—The New York Times

Chosen as a Favorite Book of 2007 by the Art and Architecture Critics of The New York Times

“If modern architecture has a bible, it is Vers une Architecture.”—Dwell 

“Bursting with passion, wit and aphorisms . . . this seminal polemic is well worth reading (or rereading) for Le Corbusier’s incisive analysis of early 20th Century architecture . . . Jean-Louis Cohen’s scholarly introduction sheds fresh light on what exactly Le Corbusier was up to when he justaposed pictures of the Parthenon and modern roadsters on the book’s lively pages.”—Chicago Tribune

"The restoration of missing passages, of Le Corbusier’s idiosyncratic use of language, of key terms, of typography, and even of the original title is refreshing and timely."—Artforum

From the Publisher