Other Le Corbusier
destinations

In Le Corbusier’s hometown, discover the house the architect built for his parents in 1912. Le Corbusier’s first independent project, the Villa Jeanneret-Perret is a radical departure from local architecture. Resolutely outward-looking, its only load-bearing elements are its exterior walls: its plan is already free.
Today, the Villa Jeanneret-Perret is owned by the Association Maison Blanche, and is open to visitors.

Discover the replica of the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, built in Bologna, Italy, in 1977. The reconstruction was carried out by architects Giuliano and Glauco Gresleri, José Oubrerie and authorized by the Fondation Le Corbusier. The replica of the Pavillon has recently been restored and is open to visitors. The Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau was built for the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, and was demolished between April and May 1926.

The town of Poissy, France, is home to the Villa Savoye and the gardener’s lodge. Designed between 1928 and 1931, the Villa Savoye is an icon of modern architecture built according to the principles of the “Five Points of New Architecture”. This holiday home is set in a vast park planted with trees. At the entrance to the estate is the gardener’s lodge. This is the archetypal minimum accommodation: 30 m2 of living space with an exterior reminiscent of a villa. The Villa Savoye and the gardener’s lodge are part of the series inscribed on the World Heritage List.
The Centre des Monuments Nationaux opens the Villa Savoye to visitors, organizing exhibitions, events and guided tours.

Built between 1931 and 1933 by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, the Pavillon Suisse was designed for the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. Its architecture is influenced by the monastic model, with the intention of providing students with spaces dedicated to solitude and reflection, as well as those where they can enjoy a taste of fraternity.
During your visit, you’ll discover the entrance hall, the curved lounge and a sample room.

Since 1945, the Mediterranean city has been home to Le Corbusier’s first housing project. Known as the Cité Radieuse, this apartment building aims to redefine the uses of housing: while it is composed of 330 private apartments, it also features common areas with defined uses.
These include a shopping street, a hotel-restaurant, a nursery school and sports facilities. Each apartment has a loggia and full modern amenities: comfort is the master word in this World Heritage building.
Visits to the Cité Radieuse can be reserved through the Marseille Tourist Office.

Built between 1950 and 1955, the Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp, France, is a veritable icon of 20th-century sacred architecture. It was built in response to the need to rebuild a pilgrimage chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, destroyed during the Second World War. Built in concrete, the chapel is pierced by openings in the façade and side chapels: light floods the space, sometimes colored by painted glass, sometimes pure. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Ronchamp chapel is complemented by other Le Corbusier structures: a house dedicated to the chapel’s guardian, a house for pilgrims and a pyramid dedicated to the victims of the 1944 battles. Owned by the Association Œuvre Notre-Dame-du-Haut, it is open to visitors.

Between 1951 and 1952, Le Corbusier built himself a cabanon in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. The idea for the project came to him during a summer when he was staying on the coast in Eileen Gray’s famous E-1027 house. But the Cabanon was in fact part of a long process of research into vacation housing, which began as early as 1948 and finally culminated in the Camping Units of 1956. The exceptional character of the Cabanon, both a complete work of art and an archetype of the minimum cell, has earned a place among the 17 buildings inscribed on the World Heritage List. The Camping Units are a series of Le Corbusier’s minimal housing units.
The Cabanon and Camping Units are open to visitors on guided tours.

Following India’s independence in 1947 and the ensuing regional divisions, Le Corbusier was asked to draw up a plan for a new city, a symbol of Indian emancipation. The crowning touch to this plan was the Capitol Complex, built in 1952. This remarkable architectural complex is the largest built by the architect. With its geometric forms directly inspired by Corbusian purism, it imposes a strong identity on the city, reflecting the three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial. The complex includes the Palace of the Assembly, the Secretariat and the High Court of Justice, and combines Brutalist and modern architecture with Le Corbusier’s polychromatic theories. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Chandigarh Capitol Complex cohabits on the esplanade with the Open Hand Monument, the Pit of Contemplation, the Martyrs’ Memorial, the Tower of Shadows, the Geometric Hill and the reflecting ponds of the High Court and Assembly.
The Capitol Complex can only be seen from the outside. Only the School of Art and Architecture and the Government Museum can be visited.

In 1953, Le Corbusier was invited by Brother Belaud to design the new Dominican convent for the diocese of Lyon. The three major moments in the lives of the Dominican friars are reflected in the building’s interior volumes. Le Corbusier proposed a coherent spatial layout, separating individual life, collective life and the spiritual life of the convent by superimposing five floors. The building adapts perfectly to the topography of the site. The structure rests on pilotis to counterbalance the slope of the valley. The convent combines modern architecture with Cistercian inspiration. The spirituality of the site is underlined by the use of light, modulated by innovative devices. The complexity of this building, combining modern architecture, purist forms and brutalist textures, sums up Le Corbusier’s work, justifying its inclusion on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
The exteriors are freely accessible, while the interiors can only be visited on a guided tour.

The National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo presents the Matsukata collection. Built in 1955 in Ueno’s Onshi Koen Park, it is designed to provide the Japanese people with a scientific understanding of the past, present and future development of Western art from Impressionism onwards. The Japanese government wanted Le Corbusier to take over the studies carried out in 1950 for the Porte-Maillot site in Paris. The site now houses a version of the “square spiral museum”, a pavilion for temporary exhibitions and a “Boîte à miracles” dedicated to theater and new theatrical research. The complex is a cultural center for the Japanese government and illustrates the architect’s concept of a “museum of unlimited growth”. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its permanent collection is open to visitors, and the museum also hosts temporary exhibitions.

For the 1957 International Architecture Exhibition in West Berlin, Le Corbusier proposed a housing project based on the model of his Cité Radieuse in Marseille. The Berlin housing project, although not quite in keeping with the architect’s original plans, houses 530 modern housing units. In contrast to other housing units of Le Corbusier, the Berlin project favors one- and two-room living spaces. Collective parts of the building, such as the shopping street and the roof terraces, have been abandoned.
It can be discovered on guided tours.

Completed in 1963, the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts is Le Corbusier’s only building in the United States. The project dates back to the 1950s, when Harvard University decided to construct a building to house its visual arts department. The project was entrusted to Le Corbusier in 1959. Bearing in mind that this building would probably be the only testimony to his architecture in the United States, Le Corbusier proposed a synthesis of his architectural concepts. The interior is divided into five floors, each freely arranged between exhibition and work spaces. These floors are linked by an imposing ramp, giving the whole a vertical momentum, as if to guide the visitor. The volumes are also built, as is often the case with Le Corbusier, by a meticulous study of light.
The Carpenter Center is open to the public.