Le Corbusier, one of the first starchitects.

     H. Ginsberger. Le Corbusier. (1959) Catalogue of an exhibition of Le Corbusier’s work. The show, whose North American tour comprised Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, and San Francisco,  consisted of photographs, drawings, and models of the buildings, and projects; paintings, tapestries, and sculpture; and quotes by Le Corbusier. The catalogue includes a brief biography and discussion of Le Corbusier’s philosophy of architecture. Well organised and printed, it’s a nice little souvenir and document.
     I bought this booklet many years ago, when I had notions of becoming an architect. I’m still interested in architecture, but think that the emergence of starchitects has been a disaster. Le Corbusier was one of the first. He took it for granted that he could plan cities, living spaces, without consulting the people who would inhabit them. He knew best, but he was I think remarkably obtuse about the psychological and social effects of buildings. It did not, apparently, occur to him to ask whether people would like to live in huge apartment towers surrounded by vast parkland traversed by multi-lane traffic arteries. Where this kind of urban planning has been tried, it has been a dismal failure. Low-rise buildings interspersed with small to medium green spaces, seem to work much better, perhaps because then the parks and gardens feel more closely connected to the buildings that border them.
     Le Corbusier’s signature style of elevating the house on stilts separated the home from the land on which it stood, visually, functionally, and psychologically. His use of unadorned concrete had the same effect. His theories spoke of buildings scaled and proportioned to fit the human body, but his practice was singularly devoid of human content. In this, he prefigured the practices of the starchitects that followed him. For much of the 20th century, buildings were erected not to serve their clients but to display the architect’s style. Le Corbusier has much to answer for.
     As a survey of Le Corbusier's work, well done, hence ***