Le Corbusier

Various different types of drawings are to be found in Le Corbusier’s oeuvre: sketches which served as a memory of things seen and as an inspiration; studies in which projects were prepared; and design drawings created and published for the benefit of clients. Finally, there are the drawings he made in the course of his lectures. Le Corbusier was a skilful speaker and communicator of his projects and ideas. During his lectures, he often drew in real time to illustrate what he was saying.

Le Corbusier went to South America for the first time in 1929, visiting Argentina and Brazil. At the invitation of the Association of the Friends of Art, he held a series of ten lectures on architecture, society and urbanism in Buenos Aires. Le Corbusier also addressed the major traffic problems of cities like Buenos Aires in his lectures.

Le Corbusier drew this sheet with charcoal on paper during a lecture. A ship, the Palais de la Concorde in Paris, a passenger steamer, a view of the Palais de la Société des Nations and a skyscraper on an artificial hill – they can all be found together here. Le Corbusier once mentioned:

“A house is like a car, and it is designed and constructed like an omnibus or a ship’s cabin.”

His wide knowledge, his study of the past, his travels and his constant patient research allowed Le Corbusier to interlink a wide range of different things. The passenger steamer has been designed to be highly functional, and the cabins are reduced in size and as simple as cells in a monastery – they are arranged as in a monastery too. A passenger steamer is also a masterpiece of engineering that provides a new solution to an old problem, which is to transport as many people as possible in a confined space. Architecture should function in precisely this way too, by developing a completely new solution to a problem with no regard for the style.