Book Description

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of his death (August 27, 2015), one of Le Corbusier's most significant books becomes available again in English. We are doing a reprint of MIT Press's first edition of 1991, which again is based on the original French version of 1930, with an introduction added by the author in 1960. While the MIT Press version had black-and-white illustrations throughout, Park Books' new edition features some of Le Corbusier's drawings in color as they were in the earlier French editions. A new essay by British scholar Tim Benton, written for this new edition, contextualizes the book within Le Corbusier's oeuvre and comments on its lasting significance. An also new appendix explains specialist terms and provides background information on persons and historic events no longer necessarily known to a younger generation of architects. The Precisions, as the book is known commonly, emerged from a spontaneous and exuberant series of 10 lectures Le Corbusier gave in Buenos Aires during the fall of 1929. As he spoke, Le Corbusier improvised drawings on large sheets of paper with crayons. While similar drawings appear in other works, here all the lectures and images appear in their original context as Le Corbusier assembled them more than 80 years ago. The texts reflect a new maturity in Le Corbusier's thinking and an extreme confidence in the development of his ideas. The drawings and lectures are unique in their eloquent and concise summary of his philosophy of architecture and urban design, stating the principles that informed his work from the 1920s on. They contain some of his most compelling aphorisms, both verbal and visual, covering technique as the basis of architecture, the human scale in design, furniture, the private house, apartments and office buildings, the city, the League of Nations competition, teaching architecture, and a splendid analysis of the transformation of his own work in houses from La Roche-Jeanneret to the Villa Savoye. [Based on MIT Press's copy for their 1991 edition]