About Buildings + Cities

29 – Le Corbusier – 4 – At Home He Feels Like A Purist

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For our Christmas episode, we're discussing the early Purist villas!

Knowing the right people, and a relentless programme of self-publicity yielded a steady stream of clients for Le Corbusier in the early 1920s, and allowed him to explore an architectural complement to Purism, most notably in a pair of houses for art-loving ‘batchelors’ — the Ozenfant Studio and Villa La Roche. We found time to discuss (probably with unwarranted levity, sorry) the death of Le Corbusier’s father George, and his troubled marriage to Yvonne Gallis.

Topics include — 

- Maison Citrohan
- Villa Ker-ka-re
- Studio Ozenfant

  • Villa La Roche

    - Allusions to the English House and Pliny episodes 01 & 05, and 02 Strawberry Hill (Horace Walpole)

  • The Architectural promenade

    - The Hôtel Particulier
    - CN Ledoux
    - Ryue Nishizawa & SANAA
    - Domesticity, Layered Space and the ‘Buffer Zone’

  • Villa Le Lac in Corseaux

    - The 'involuntary euthanasia' of his father George
    - Luigi Snozzi

  • Yvonne Gallis

    Music —

    • Emile Petti and his cosmopolitans — Cocktail Hour at the Savoy Plaza
    • Joseph C Smith’s Orchestra ‘Oh, Frenchy!’
    • Charles Trenet ‘En ecoutant mon cour chanter’
    • Jean Sablon ‘J’attendrai’ all from archive.org

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      About Buildings + CitiesBy Architecture, History + Culture, with Luke Jones & George Gingell