Cosmos of Light: The Sacred Architecture of Le Corbusier
From the Publisher. One of the great visionaries and pioneers of modern architecture, Le Corbusier was a master of light, declaring it both a fundamental basis of architecture and the key to personal well-being. In this portfolio of 160 photographs taken over 40 years, Henry Plummer captures Le Corbusier’s inspired use of natural light in three of his greatest achievements: the small pilgrimage chapel at Ronchamp, the Dominican monastery of Sainte Marie de La Tourette, and the parish church of Saint-Pierre in Firminy-Vert, all in France. In these modest religious works Le Corbusier deploys light to create enchanted, emotionally charged spaces wedded to the cosmic rhythm of sunlight and season. Cosmos of Light reveals how the artist reimagined sacred space and charted new ways that buildings can both reveal and inhabit the universe around them.
In 2013, The Museum of Modern Art examined the career of Le Corbusier in a comprehensive exhibition and a hefty companion book featuring numerous scholarly and critical essays charting the Swiss-French architect’s six-decade career. Yet like other great modern architects (Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Louis Kahn), even the most exhaustive account of Le Corbusier’s output cannot derail new explorations of his buildings and new books being released on the visionary architect every season.
An antithesis of MoMA’s unwieldy show and book can be found in Henry Plummer’s photographic and personal account of three religious structures in France designed by Le Corbusier: the chapel at Ronchamp, the monastery of Sainte Marie de La Tourette, and the parish church of Saint-Pierre in Firminy-Vert. Light, as the title makes clear, is the subject of the book. Le Corbusier famously declared that “Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of volumes assembled in space,” and nowhere is that more moving than in these three concrete buildings designed after 1950, one of them (Firminy-Vert) completed posthumously.
While this statement is interpreted usually as an argument for the bright white surfaces of Le Corbusier’s “heroic” period in the 1920s and early ’30s, the idea resonates in these three buildings primarily because they are so dark—shadow is just as important as light. That these are places of prayer and introspection, and not houses or schools, is hardly accidental, even though Le Corbusier was, as Plummer puts it in this introductory essay, “an outspoken agnostic.”
Buildings like Villa Savoye whitewash their brick and concrete construction to create platonic abstractions, but the three béton brut structures that are the subject of this book are stripped of superficialities and bear the process of making. Further, light takes on an almost tangible quality to heighten one’s perception in the otherwise empty spaces. Plummer’s photos—taken over a period of 20 years—capture the way light turns these plastic creations (unprecedented in form and detached from religious precedents) into meaningful sacred spaces. Plummer manages to convey the way Le Corbusier puts us in touch with the light that comes from beyond—out of reach but all too real.
Announcements
Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
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