The Many Lives of Apartment-Studio Le Corbusier: 1931-2014

The first book on Le Corbusiers's iconic apartment-studio. Le Corbusier's apartment-studio is an iconic object of the twentieth century, combining the indisputable material values of the building with the intangible "sense of place" of an architect's home. Le Corbusier, who lived there from 1934 until his death in 1965, treated it as a permanent construction site--a unique place of spatial, plastic, and constructional experimentation. The phases of change at the apartment-studio are layered over each other, and thus the apartment's "many lives" create major philosophical problems for conservation. The "stratigraphy" itself, hard to unscramble yet full of meaning, is key to the apartment's importance. This first book on the apartment-studio, richly illustrated with largely unpublished visual material, presents research undertaken by the Laboratory of Techniques and Preservation of Modern Architecture (TSAM) for the Fondation Le Corbusier during preparatory investigations for the program of restoration. Lavish and thorough, Many Lives of Apartment-Studio Le Corbusier is an exploration of an iconic space.