Introduction to the work and building: Villa Savoye

Villa Savoye is located in Poissy, northwest of Paris. Designed by Le Corbusier in 1928, it was originally intended as a country retreat for the Savoye family. Salts Mill Shop calls it Le Corbusier's first masterpiece, while the official World Heritage website describes it as an absolute symbol of the Modern Movement.

The building is significant because it demonstrates nearly all of Le Corbusier's Five Points of a New Architecture: pilotis, a roof garden, a free plan, a free facade and horizontal ribbon windows. The official Villa Savoye website states that all five principles were applied here, and UNESCO identifies the villa as an exemplary expression of these ideas.

Poster / Glossy Paper

Artist and architect introduction: Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier was born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, in 1887, and began using the name Le Corbusier after 1920. Alongside architecture, he produced paintings, sculptures, tapestries and furniture, and wrote extensively on architecture and urban theory. The official World Heritage website notes that he became internationally known as an architect and urban planner despite having no formal degree in either discipline.

He was one of the most important figures in twentieth-century modern architecture. His early work is often associated with rationality, geometry, white houses and functionalism, as exemplified by Villa Savoye. At Ronchamp, however, his architectural language became freer, more massive and more sculptural. This is what makes the chapel distinctive: it brings spirituality, emotion and spatial poetry to modern architecture.