The Restless Hungarian

The Restless Hungarian
Author: Tom Weidlinger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2019-04-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1943006970

The Restless Hungarian is the saga of an extraordinary life set against the history of the rise of modernism, the Jewish Diaspora, and the Cold War. A Hungarian Jew whose inquiring spirit helped him to escape the Holocaust, Paul Weidlinger became one of the most creative structural engineers of the twentieth century. As a young architect, he broke ranks with the great modernists with his radical idea of the “Joy of Space.” As an engineer, he created the strength behind the beauty in mid-century modern skyscrapers, churches, museums, and he gave concrete form to the eccentric monumental sculptures of Pablo Picasso, Isamu Noguchi, and Jean Dubuffet. In his private life, he was a divided man, living behind a wall of denial as he lost his family to war, mental illness, and suicide. In telling his father’s story, the author sifts meaning from the inspiring and contradictory narratives of a life: a motherless child and a captain of industry, a clandestine communist who designed silos for the world’s deadliest weapons during the Cold War, a Jewish refugee who denied he was a Jew, a husband who was terrified of his wife’s madness, and a man whose personal saints were artists.

L'Unité D'habitation

L'Unité D'habitation
Author: David Jenkins
Publisher: Phaidon Incorporated Limited
Total Pages: 57
Release: 1993-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780714827704

The Unite d'Habitation at Marseilles is a key building of the twentieth century, and a seminal work in Le Corbusier's oeuvre. A precursor of buildings in Nantes, Berlin, Briey-en-Foret and Firminy, it established, in built form, Le Corbusier's ideas of public housing that had existed only on paper for more than twenty-five years. David Jenkins argues that the Marseilles Unite stands out as a powerful and convincing testament of Le Corbusier's fundamental humanism and his faith in the principles of the Ville Radieuse and the Brutalist medium of rough cast concrete which in other, less able hands, have since been called into question.

The Radiant City

The Radiant City
Author: Le Corbusier
Publisher:
Total Pages: 362
Release: 1967
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

The famous architect presents a wide range of ideas, including details on "an organism (the Radiant City) capable of housing the works of man in what is from now on a machine-age society."--Page [3].

Le Corbusier and the radiant city concept

Le Corbusier and the radiant city concept
Author: Lisa Nelles
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 20
Release: 2013-11-22
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 3656546797

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Art - Architecture / History of Construction, grade: -, Technical University of Darmstadt, language: English, abstract: Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, born October, 6th 1887, is known as one of the most important architects of the last century. Otherwise, he is also seen extremely controversial in-between his artistic municipality. According to his point of view of architecture as a complex art of construction, he also dealt with architectural theory, city planning, sculpture and designing of furniture. Additionally, he was creative in drawing and painting. In “L’Esprit Nouveau” – an artistic magazine published since 1920 – he began to use the pseudonym Le Corbusier. Due to architecture, Le Corbusier’s so-called “Five Points of a new Architecture” are very important. These principles point out a radical architectural change in order to react to the accelerating progress of mechanization and its influence on social change. As a result, Le Corbusier especially dealt with the construction of accommodations to implement his complex theory consistently. So-called “Doppelhaus in der Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart” – designed by Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier – seems to be an example. To give his theories and visions a suited area, Le Corbusier academically worked in architectural societies like “Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne” (CIAM). However, the architect was one of CIAM’s co-founders. Until the mid 1920s, Le Corbusier was both, a social and an artistic supporter of capitalism. “Ville Contemporaire” (1922) with its forced authority, clear structure and geometry is an important evidence for his ideal. Since the beginning of the crisis of global economy in 1929, Le Corbusier has changed his point of view in a more radical one. The architect became an infernal supporter of so-called French syndicalism. Le Corbusier died on August, 27th 1965.

Toward an Architecture

Toward an Architecture
Author: Le Corbusier
Publisher:
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2007
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780892368990

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.

Le Corbusier: The Built Work

Le Corbusier: The Built Work
Author: Richard Pare
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2018-11-27
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1580934714

The most thoroughgoing survey of nearly all of Le Corbusier's extant projects, beautifully photographed and authoritatively detailed. Le Corbusier is widely acknowledged as the most influential architect of the twentieth century. As extensively researched and documented as his works are, however, they have never been exhaustively surveyed in photographs until now. Photographer Richard Pare has crossed the globe for years to document the extant works of Le Corbusier--from his first villas in Switzerland to his mid-career works in his role as the first global architect in locations as far-flung as Argentina and Russia, and his late works, including his sole North American project, at Harvard University, and an extensive civic plan for Chandigarh, India. Le Corbusier: The Built Work provides numerous views of each project to bring a fuller understanding of the architect's command of space, sometimes surprising use of materials and color, and the almost ineffable qualities that only result from a commanding synthesis of all aspects of design. With an authoritative text by scholar and curator Jean-Louis Cohen, Le Corbusier: The Built Work is a groundbreaking opportunity to appreciate the master's work anew.

Le Corbusier's Hands

Le Corbusier's Hands
Author: Andre Wogenscky
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 101
Release: 2006-02-10
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0262232448

Le Corbusier's assistant and fellow architect remembers his mentor in a series of concise and poetic reflections. Le Corbusier's Hands offers a poetic and personal portrait of Le Corbusier—a nuanced portrayal that is in contrast to the popular image of Le Corbusier the aloof modernist. The author knew Le Corbusier intimately for thirty years, first as his draftsman and main assistant, later as his colleague and personal friend. In this book, written in the mid-1980s, Wogenscky remembers his mentor in a series of revealing personal statements and evocative reflections unlike anything that exists in the vast literature on Le Corbusier. Wogenscky draws a portrait in swift, deft strokes—50 short chapters, one leading to the next, one memory of Le Corbusier opening into another. Appearing and reappearing like a leitmotif are Le Corbusier's hands—touching, taking, drawing, offering, closing, opening, grasping, releasing: "It was his hands that revealed him.... They spoke all his feelings, all the vibrations of his inner life that his face tried to conceal." Wogenscky writes about Le Corbusier's work, including the famous design of the chapel at Ronchamp, his ideas for high-density Unités d'Habitation linked to the center of a "Radiant City," and his "Modulor" system for defining proportions—which Wogenscky compares to a piano tuner's finding the exact relation between sounds. He remembers the day Picasso spent with Le Corbusier at the Marseilles building site—"All day long they outdid one another in a show of modesty," he observes in amazement. He adds, speaking for himself and the others present, "We were inside a double energy field." And Wogenscky writes about Le Corbusier more personally. "I have spent years trying to understand what went on in his mind and in his hand," he tells us. With Le Corbusier's Hands, Wogenscky gives us a unique record of an enigmatic genius.

The Smart Enough City

The Smart Enough City
Author: Ben Green
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2019-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262352257

Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.

The Open Hand

The Open Hand
Author: Russell Walden
Publisher: Cambridge : MIT Press
Total Pages: 522
Release: 1977
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

The fourteen essays are by Russell Walden, Paul Turner, Patricia Sekler, Maurice Favre, Brian Taylor, Charles Jencks, Anthony Sutcliffe, Robert Fishman, Martin Purdy, John Winter, Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew, Madhu Sarin, and Stanislaus von Moos.