Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier

The text first saw the light of day as a series of articles that appeared in the magazine L'Esprit Nouveau, which was edited, at least initially, by Le Corbusier (born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in 1887, he debuted his pseudonym in the magazine's pages), the purist painter Amédée Ozenfant, and the Dadaist poet Paul Dermée. Vers une architecture was a by-product of the mondaine Parisian avant-garde during the first quarter of the 20th century, even if it also had antecedents that dated back to the utopian socialism of the first quarter of the 19th century. Before entering into the refinements of Goodman's all-too-meticulous translation, we should turn to the circumstances attending the genesis of Le Corbusier's original work, as they are revealed to the reader by Cohen. In other volumes in this series, the scholarly introduction is virtually of equal import as the text itself, and Toward an Architecture is no exception in this regard, with an illuminating introduction by the architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen.

Originally published in Paris in 1923, Vers une architecture is now precisely rendered into English for the first time by John Goodman under the title Toward an Architecture. Given the degree to which Le Corbusier's Vers une architecture has inspired and, one might say, haunted the theory and practice of architecture worldwide over the past 85 years, it is fitting for this to be ostensibly the last of the 18 canonical architectural texts translated into English for the Getty Research Institute's Text and Document series. He is the author of numerous books, including Le Corbusier (2001) and Modern Architecture: A Critical History, which was just released in its fourth edition. Our critic, Kenneth Frampton (right), is the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University.

Getty Images Le Corbusier (left) in an undated photo.

Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier