Le Corbusier: An Archipelago of Ideas | Design Matters 2023 - 2024

It is well-known that Le Corbusier (1887-1965) was enamoured by the sea and by ocean liners, seashells, beaches, and the like, he also enjoyed voyaging and looking at the world, particularly from an airplane. Le Corbusier was a widely influential architect who remains complex and controversial.
This exhibition charts his work beginning with his early houses in Switzerland to late work in India. In between he produced projects in Paris and France, various countries in Europe, the USSR, North Africa, the Americas, Iraq, and Japan. The models on display are organized geographically as a group of “islands” that establish a kind of global archipelago of projects that allows the viewer to understand the evolution of Le Corbusier’s work, along with the geographical range of his designs.
Modern architecture, as a project initiated in Europe and America, was effectively imposed on many nations, especially those operating under colonial regimes. As countries around the world became independent of colonialism they typically attempted to balance modernity with an emerging sense of their own histories, traditions, and identities. Le Corbusier was effectively the leader of the international movement to establish modern architecture, even as his own work had largely abandoned the idea of a universal modernism in the 1930s. The legacy of his projects around the world continues to be studied and interpreted, suffice it to say his ideas have permeated modern and contemporary architecture globally.