Le Corbusier: A Life Hardcover – Deckle Edge, November 11, 2008

Le Corbusier, A Life, is a most comprehensive biography of the renowned architect. From his birth in 1887 to his demise in 1965, Mr. Weber covers his life in a personal way, from correspondence with his mother, brother, paramours, and clients. The reader may need to skim the chapters of the architect's earlier life, should he or she get bogged down in Le Corbusier's self-obsessed navel-starring days of his youth, and the book is over 700 pages long.As an architect, I found the author's coverage of his built projects especially interesting, and at this point the book, for me, had new energy. Mr. Weber gives the background and history behind the structure, the travails of dealing with clients, and a mentally illustrative description of their physical form. More illustrations, and their placement closer to the text to which they relate, would have clarified the work more visually. Also noteworthy is the author's description of Le Corbusier's life in France during World War II. Obsessed with the need to build structures and organize cities, he worked with the provisional German government in Vichy, a fact he veiled in later in his life.Le Corbusier's person comes alive, good and bad, through the author's discovery of his private life and actions. From needing his mother's approval, though she favored his older brother, to worshipping his wife Yvonne while pursuing other women, Mr. Weber paints a picture of the complex man and genius who was Le Corbusier.

This book is just awful. I have to premise that I made it through the entire book (over 800 pages) since I am an architect and I like Le Corbusier work. But the reading was truly a torture. Weber in his pseudo psycho analytical method is using mainly Le Corbusier's letters to his mother to take us through not only his life but also his architecture. There are very few other references and commentaries from other architects, friends, press, lovers, wife,...Almost no photographs or drawings of buildings Weber is describing in the text. Weber's writing style is downright boring. He was not able to capture any of the excitement and upheaval of Le Corbusier's life, his ideas and the time.I would prefer a book-compilation of Le Corbusier's letters to his parents rather than this lifeless biography.

This notable work by Fox Weber gives us, maybe for the first time, a complete insight of the life and creative impulse and motivation of one of the most outstanding architects of the XX century. Very well documented and written. A very enjoyable book.

I am slogging through it. Nick needs a stronger editor. He frequently writes as if he is the cult leader of all things Le Corbusier.

Le Corbusier is my most favorite Architect. Although I have several books on Le Corbusier, I did not have this one. But Amazon made it possible at a very reasonable price and promptly.

Nicholas Fox Weber's new biography, Le Corbusier: A Life, is a giant work about a giant of a man. Weber's book begins at the end of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret's (a.k.a. Le Corbusier) long life when, lonely and riddled with uncertainty, he swims out into the Mediterranean and (Weber infers) commits suicide. It is an oddly fitting end for someone whose "lifelong task had been to exercise control, corral his emotions, determine the appearance of buildings, and promulgate his gospel." (p. 8)But as we see very quickly in this epic account, Le Corbusier tremendous need to control stemmed from the very lack of control he had in relation to his mother, Marie, who lived almost as long as he did and throughout her life apparently favoured Le Corbusier's elder brother more. Weber suggests that Le Corbusier's hunger for Marie's affection drove him to extraordinary limits of endurance, intellect and artistry, yet also made him a tetchy, temperamental figure, someone who was never satisfied with himself (or with others) even after he'd left the small Swiss town where he was born and went to Paris, where he achieved fame as one of the 20th century's leading architects.Weber's account of Le Corbusier's ascent to stardom is a dazzling one, richly stocked with detail about the path-breaking way he used prefabricated concrete in the construction of so many signature buildings - villas, churches, factories, apartment blocs - and the quicksilver crowd he moved among in Jazz Age Paris. The man was an artist at heart, someone whose ferocious sense of self-discipline allowed him to lead a double life, painting in the morning, designing buildings in the afternoon.At the same time, Weber does a superb job of chronicling the growing disappointment and sense of failure Le Corbusier faced as his star rose but major urban planning projects like La Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City) remained unbuilt. It was Le Corbusier's life-long conviction that architecture could influence human nature. To achieve this properly, however, required work on a grand scale, something planning authorities the world over were reluctant to give him. This led to monumental, and often futile, skirmishes with administrators and to what is perhaps the most disturbing part of the book, Le Corbusier's collaboration with the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.At war's end Le Corbusier swiftly rehabilitated himself with France's new Gaullist elite. His wartime past was forgotten and he went on to design some of the greatest work he is now remembered for: the l'Unité d'Habitation in Marseille, the master plan and major administrative buildings at Chandigarh, the church of Notre-Dame-de-Ronchamp. His office was flooded with commissions. He received dozens of honours. Thousands came to hear him speak at the Sorbonne.Even so, Weber's book reminds us that little in Le Corbusier's life was easy. He continued to struggle with the underlying sense of failure and with the great projects, like his plan for the U.N. headquarters in New York, that were rejected. The famously tough outer shell he displayed in these years can be understood as a reaction. On the personal front he also had to deal with the increasingly erratic behaviour of his long-neglected wife, Yvonne, as she descended into alcoholism.Weber is good at relating all of this. We see his subject at close range: singular, bold, visionary, a compulsive letter writer, a lover, an aesthete.What Weber is less good at is depicting the milieu that Le Corbusier lived and worked within. The architect is portrayed as such a solitary individual that it is hard to sympathize with him, or indeed, with anyone else.Added to this was the fact that many of his projects, both built and unbuilt, were plagued with practical problems, yet Le Corbusier dogmatically refused to alter them. In one early commission of a hostel for the poor, for instance, an innovative glass curtain wall caused severe problems with ventilation, yet Le Corbusier refused to perforate it with windows, a situation which eventually led to remedial action by municipal authorities.Le Corbusier never accepted blame for any of these problems. Instead, he continued to work, to plan, to create, often reminding his family that true happiness is simply a state of mind. In this he was the quintessential modern icon: his faith in his vision was complete.

The kind of book you take with you wherever you go, until you have finished reading it. I read my copy years ago with Corbubu’s oeuvre complete at hand, to follow what is described in the book. To think that one can judge someone’s work apart from someone’s life is a mistake.Nicholas Fox Weber’s book makes the visit to the recently restored apartment on the 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli even more enjoyable. The description of the life in the apartment in the book is so lively that when you think back you have the impression that you have met Corbu and his wife there. For everyone with an interest in Corbusier’s work a must-read.