- Publisher
- Frances Lincoln
- Published
- 2008 (first published 1923)
- Shelf
- architecture: Manifesto
- ISBN
- 9780711228092
Manifesto
Toward an Architecture
Le Corbusier
The 1923 manifesto that called a house a machine for living in, and meant it, in the translation that finally got the title right.
Why read it
The method is the interesting part: Corbusier sets photographs of grain silos, liners and biplanes against Greek temples and dares you to say which is the serious one. Whether or not you accept the conclusion, it is the clearest demonstration of an argument made entirely in pictures.
Why own it
It is a book of juxtapositions, and a juxtaposition needs a spread. This is the translation to own: the older English edition, published for eighty years as Towards a New Architecture, quietly mistranslated the title and softened the prose. Here the argument arrives at the pitch Corbusier wrote it at.
Who it is for
Anyone interested in how modernism won, and in how to build a visual case.
Reading order
Book 2 of 5 in the architecture reading order. See all 5
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Opens a search on AbeBooks, a network of independent and antiquarian sellers, which is where a good part of this shelf has to be found, because it is out of print.
Read next
Chosen because they argue with this one, not because a machine noticed they share a category.
