Le Corbusier
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The most famous Swiss architect got a state funeral in France.
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You know, it is life that is right and the architect who is wrong.
Portrait with lifted glasses
Source: theblogdeco.com
Short biography
Charles-Edouard Jeanneret grew up in the center of the Swiss watch industry, where he started his professional career with a handcraft job before switching to painting and architecture. His educational journey took him all across Europe into the engineering office of reinforced concrete's master Auguste Perret. At Peter Behrens' in Berlin he may have learned about Frank Lloyd Wright's latest works.
From 1912 on he tought at the Ecole d'Art in La-Chaux-de-Fonds which deacon he became after two years. Only three years later he moved away from the narrow (or narrow-minded?) Switzerland to Paris. with his Pavillon de l'ésprit nouveau he definitely cut his Art Deco roots, and published his works in the same titled journal under the pseudonym Le Corbusier after 1920. His 5 points marked his manifesto for a modern architecture which he exemplified with the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, the Swiss Pavillion in Paris and the Villa Savoie.
He took the French citicenship in 1930. As for urban development Corbu moved on with his Plan Voisin to the Ville Radieuse, which inspired an Asterix album later, but more importantly it had a lot of influence on the design and layout of the city of Brasilia.
During WW2 building contracts were sparse; Corbu approached the Vichy regime - now it is a known fact that he sympathized with the fascists and admired Hitler. So he became the responsible for urban development in Vichy-France and seamlessly continued to hold a similar position in the French architects association from 1944 on. His early Plan Voisin wanted to tear down and rebuild most of Paris - euthanasia for urban development? Could this plan come to reality then? Could Paris have burned even though the German Wehrmacht just retreated?
He seemed to like capitals: in den 50ies he was responsible for the urban development and the design of many public buildings in Chandigarh, the capital of Indian Punjab. The same applied to Ahmedabad. During these years he also built his machine for living the unité d'habitation in Marseille and the chapel in Ronchamp. The later stands as an antithesis to his earlier 5 points of modern architecture, and yet this chapel has a modernity of its own.
It was not before the ceremony of Le Corbusiers funeral in the Louvre court, a French tricolor being laid over his coffin, that the Swiss officials eventually remembered their lost son... and they expressed their disapproval of the wrong flag on the coffin of the the most influential architect of the 20. century.
Trivia
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In Asterix volume 17 (le domaine des dieux; the mansions of the gods) Cesar points his hand into an architectural model - just like Le Corbusier's hand points into the Plan Voisin's model: his hand is that of an imperator, expecting his wishes be granted without objection.