Le Corbusier: Beton Brut and Ineffable Space (1940-1965): Surface Materials and [Hardcover]

This groundbreaking essay on Le Corbusier provides a new perspective that is based on exhaustive archival research and the study of neglected or completely unknown documents stored at the Fondation Le Corbusier. This source of documents has proven to be extremely valuable, with information on the aesthetic principles of Le Corbusier during the post World-War-II period, explaining his manner of defining the final artistic quality of the work directly at the construction site, as if he were dealing with a sculpture or tableau.B?ton brut, a term invented by Le Corbusier himself at the beginning of the 1950s to designate his own particular use of exposed concrete, is analyzed from all angles for the first time: its fabrication with a rigorous selection of its constituent materials; its final form and positioning of the formwork in order to obtain the desired textural imprint; and the treatment of the surface with special types of paint. The essay also delves into the project management and the construction of several buildings in the period 1940-1965. Each worksite, from the Unit? d'Habitation (Housing Unit) at Marseille to the city of Chandigarh, and also including the Tokyo museum, the Carpenter Center in Cambridge and the Unit? d'Habitation at Berlin, are analyzed in detail. In this volume, the associates, the enterprises, and even the masons become the actors of a complex creative process that Le Corbusier directs with mastery. All the forms of artistic expression that converge into what Le Corbusier defines as the espace indicible (ineffable space) are commented and documented, from the insertion of the basic materials such as the tapestries and paint in the qualification of these spaces, to the way in which photography is used to study the unexpressed potentialities of his own architecture and paintings. Indeed, Le Corbusier was able to integrate, in the genesis of the space and in the quality of the construction materials, the principle contemporary artisticló/