Jonathan Glancey celebrates the spiritual side of Le Corbusie

Le Corbusier was the most dangerously radical of all 20th-century architects. In his astonishing polemic Towards an Architecture, published in 1923, he argued that his clean, white, stripped-to-essentials and apparently wholly new architecture reflected the industrial spirit of the times; he also argued that his work inherited the spirit, and even the proportions, of ancient Greek temples and the great cathedrals of the middle ages. Forget the traditionalists and revivalists: his was the true architectural faith. More than 40 years after his death, the Swiss-born Le Corbusier remains a huge influence around the world. He had the power to make each of his buildings epic and mythic, whether they were big or small. He worked prodigiously hard as a writer, editor, sculptor, painter and city planner, as well as an architect. His... [read full story]