LE CORBUSIER OEUVRE COMPLETE 1938-1946
Le Corbusier, Willy Boesigner
Willy Boesigner, Le Corbusier: LE CORBUSIER OEUVRE COMPLETE 1938-1946. Zurich: Les Editions d¹ Architecture, 1946. First edition. Text in French, with articles only in German and English. Oblong quarto. Tan cloth embossed and stamped in brown. 208 pp. 550 black and white photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans. Cloth spine slightly darkened and lightly worn; textblock lightly shaken (as usual for these oblong volumes): a very good or better copy. 11 x 9 hardcover book with 198 pages and 500 black and white photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans.The fourth volume in the Le Corbusier "Oeuvre Complète" series, recording his designs for works in paris, new York, Rio de Janeiro, Lithographs, Paintings, Sculpture, Sketches and much more. A nice first edition from one of the great architectural publishing ventures of the 20th century.
No disrespect to Birkhauser, but the contemporary reprints of this series cannot hold a candle to the sharp image engraving or the crisp feel of the type on the glossy pages. The stamped cloth covers also help make examining these volumes a very tactile experience.
Born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, Le Corbusier (1887-1965) adopted his famous pseudonym after publishing his ideas in the review L¹Esprit Nouveau in 1920. The few buildings he was able to design during the 1920s, when he also spent much of his time painting and writing, brought him to the forefront of modern architecture, though it wasn¹t until after World War II that his epoch-making buildings were constructed, such as the Unité d¹Habitation in Marseilles and the Church of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp.
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