Le Corbusier

1926 marked a major break in Le Corbusier’s life and work. His father died at the beginning of the year, and his friendship and collaboration with Amédée Ozenfant came to an end. The Esprit Nouveau adventure is definitively closed: the pavilion is dismantled, the magazine is discontinued. New international battles took over.

The first and most emblematic of these is the eventful competition for the Palais de la Société des Nations in Geneva. But the first major commissions were to come, including the Quartiers Modernes Frugès in Pessac, the first experiment in his social theories of architecture. Acknowledged by town councilors and political elites, Le Corbusier gained a foothold on the international scene by deploying a posture of theorist and polemicist.

In 1928, he attended the first International Congress of Modern Architecture in La Sarraz, in an attempt to impose his vision of the function and mission of modern architecture. That same year, he was already in Moscow to take up the challenge of architectural modernity in the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). He could now conceive of his architectural mission as international, even beyond the borders of France.

• On January 11, Le Corbusier’s father, Georges-Édouard Jeanneret, died
• Publication of L’Almanach d’architecture moderne
• Le Corbusier creates the series 50 Aquarelles de Music-hall ou le “Quand-même des illusions” for Marcel Levaillant

• Le Corbusier takes part in the competition to design a Palace for the League of Nations in Geneva. His project was never built
• He built the Villa Stein in Garches, two villas for the Weissenhof-Siedlung complex in Stuttgart, as well as the Nestlé Pavilion
• In April, he theorizes and develops “new ways of sitting”
• In October, he met and hired Charlotte Perriand to draw up his furniture program

• In Moscow, Le Corbusier built the Centrosoyus
• The Savoye family commissions a villa in Poissy, Yvelines
• Le Corbusier publishes Une maison – Un In search of architectural unity
• Fascinated by mechanization and industrialization, Le Corbusier sketched a first version of the minimum car
• On June 26, 27 and 28, 1928, the first International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) was held, organized by Le Corbusier, Siegfried Giedion and Hélène de Mandrot, who welcomed participants to her Château de la Sarraz
  • The congress, chaired by Karl Moser, brought together internationally renowned architects such as Pierre Chareau, André Lurçat, Tony Garnier, Auguste Perret, Victor Bourgeois, Mart Stam, Gerrit Rietveld, Alberto Sartoris and Pierre Jeanneret
  • “The aims of the CIAM are: to formulate the contemporary architectural problem; to present the modern architectural idea; to make this idea penetrate technical, economic and social circles; to see to the realization of the architectural problem”(Le Corbusier, La Charte d’Athènes, 1943)