Description: LE MODULOR by Le Corbusier Essai sur une mesure harmonique a l'echelle humaine applicable universellement a l'architecture et a la mecanique Pristine 1951 Editions de l'Architecture d'Aujourd'Hui Second Printing [3,000 copies] Le Corbusier [Charles-Edouard Jeanneret]:: LE MODULOR [Essai sur une mesure harmonique a l'echelle humaine applicable universellement a l'architecture et a la mecanique]. Boulogne: Editions de l'Architecture d'Aujourd'Hui, 1950 / November 1951. Second printing [3,000 copies] published as volume 4 in the "Collection ASCORAL." Text in French. Oblong 12mo. Printed dust jacket over stiff card wrappers. 239 pp. Illustrations and photographs. Elaborate graphic design throughout by Le Corbusier. An unread copy, pristine with typical trivial tanning. Rare thus. 5.75 x 5.75 softcover book with 239 pages designed and illustrated by the author. The Modulor, Le Corbusier's system of measure was based on the Golden Section and Fibonacci numbers, tailored to the average human body, and was employed in his architectural designs. LE MODULOR is a fine example of Le Corbusier's largely unnoticed skills as a graphic artist and book designer. His use of type and images in his books were truly revolutionary for twentieth-century design. Corbu described his approach as, "This new conception of a book, using the explicit, revelatory argument of the illustrations, [which] enables the author to avoid feeble descriptions: facts leap to the reader's eye through the power of imagery." Le Corbusier distanced himself from Modernist typography, while truly embracing the spirit of Bauhaus functionalism. In common with the German avant-garde, he took not only images but also graphic methods from the popular press, breaking continuous text with small illustrations of damn near everything: pell-mell, photographs of animals, buildings, everyday objects, clippings from newspapers and sales catalogues, cartoons, old-master paintings, scientific diagrams and more. Born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, Le Corbusier (1887-1965) adopted his famous pseudonym after publishing his ideas in the review L'Esprit 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 wasn't until after World War II that his epoch-making buildings were constructed, such as the Unité d'Habitation in Marseilles and the Church of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp. One of the most imaginative and influential architects of the twentieth century, Le Corbusier devoted a lifetime to building and planning, from private houses and churches to apartment blocks and entire cities. Although they aroused a storm of opposition ats the time, his most famous buildings have largely determined the course of modern architecture in the past few decades. Two of them, the now legendary Villa Savoye and the pilgramage church of Ronchamp, have been declared historic monuments by the French government. They and many other works, in many countries, are shaping the architectural future. Le Corbusier's ideas, his books, his vision of the Radiant City, continues to be as much discussed today as when he first put them into circulation. From Michael J. Ostwald’s "Review of Modulor and Modulor 2 by Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret)": Le Corbusier developed the Modulor between 1943 and 1955 in an era which was already displaying widespread fascination with mathematics as a potential source of universal truths. In the late 1940s Rudolf Wittkower's research into proportional systems in Renaissance architecture began to be widely published and reviewed. In 1951 the Milan Triennale organised the first international meeting on Divine Proportions and appointed Le Corbusier to chair the group. On a more prosaic level, the metric system in Europe was creating a range of communication problems between architects, engineers and craftspeople. At the same time, governments around the industrialised world had identified the lack of dimensional standardisation as a serious impediment to efficiency in the building industry. In this environment, where an almost Platonic veneration of systems of mathematical proportion combined with the practical need for systems of co-ordinated dimensioning, the Modulor was born. For Le Corbusier, what industry needed was a system of proportional measurement which would reconcile the needs of the human body with the beauty inherent in the Golden Section. If such a system could be devised, which could simultaneously render the Golden Section proportional to the height of a human, then this would form an ideal basis for universal standardisation. Using such a system of commensurate measurements Le Corbusier proposed that architects, engineers and designers would find it relatively simple to produce forms that were both commodious and delightful and would find it more difficult to produce displeasing or impractical forms. After listening to Le Corbusier's arguments Albert Einstein summarised his intent as being to create a "scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult and the good easy." A more mundane motive might also partially explain this endeavour. Le Corbusier saw that such a system could be patented and that when it became universally recognised and applied he "would have the right to claim royalties on everything that will be constructed on the basis of [his] measuring system." According to Le Corbusier, the initial inspiration for the Modulor came from a vision of a hypothetical man inscribed with three overlapping but contiguous squares. Le Corbusier advised his assistant Hanning to take this hypothetical "man-with-arm-upraised, 2.20m. in height; put him inside two squares 1.10 by 1.10 metres each, superimposed on each other; put a third square astride these first two squares. This third square should give you a solution. The place of the right angle should help you to decide where to put this third square." In this way Le Corbusier proposed to reconcile human stature with mathematics. Le Corbusier's Modulor represents a curious turning point in architectural history. In one sense it represents a final brave attempt to provide a unifying rule for all architecture - in another it records the failure and limits of such an approach. Le Corbusier is quite open when he notes that the Modulor has the capacity to produce designs that are "displeasing, badly put together" or "horrors." Ultimately he advises that "[y]our eyes are your judges" and that the "Modulor does not confer talent, still less genius." He also completely abandons the Modulor when it does not suit and persistently reminds people that since it is based on perception then its application must be limited by practical perception. Large dimensions are impossible to sense with any accuracy and so Le Corbusier does not advocate the use of the Modulor for these scales. Similarly construction techniques render the use of the modular for very small dimensions impractical. This proviso is important to remember and it is in part responsible for the way in which Le Corbusier eventually applied the rule. Having developed the Modulor and used it selectively in a few designs it then became largely invisible (and also immeasurable) in Le Corbusier's later works where it instinctively informed his eye as a designer but did not control it. Please visit my Ebay store for an excellent and ever-changing selection of rare and out-of-print design books and periodicals covering all aspects of 20th-century visual culture. I offer shipping discounts for multiple purchases. Please contact me for details. Payment due within 3 days of purchase.
Price: 499.99 USD
Location: Shreveport, Louisiana
End Time: 2023-12-22T21:47:48.000Z
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