ARTH 283 The Life and Work of… Le Corbusier

• Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:45 am - 2:30 pm
• Instructor: Dr. Nicola Pezolet

This survey course is focused on the life and work of Swiss architect and artist Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (1887-1965), better known by his moniker Le Corbusier. Not strictly chronological, the course will consider a number of topics and themes that go beyond the customary hagiographic treatment of the so-called “master architect”. Indeed, the course hopes to show the multiplicity of images, both self-fashioned and created posthumously, of Le Corbusier, a very controversial figure, often idolized by historians and critics as a “pioneer” of modern architecture and sometimes reviled for his authoritrian politics. We will focus on reading primary sources, as well as various historical studies, in order to contextualize the key events in his life and to bring the very notion of an “architect’s biography” into critical perspective. Assignments will pose questions related to modernist historiography and, to take advantage of the huge body of scholarship on Le Corbusier, will ask students to compare and contrast how different methodological approaches (such as formalism, post-colonial theory, feminism, social history, etc.) have been used in the past to study Le Corbusier's life and work.