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    Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow
    Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow
    Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow
    Audiobook8 hours

    Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow

    Written by Anthony Flint

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the award-winning author of Wrestling with Moses comes a fascinating, accessible biography of the most important architect of the twentieth century.

    Modern Man is a riveting biography of Le Corbusier—a man who invented new ways of building and thinking. Modern Man is a penetrating psychological portrait of a true genius and constant self-inventor, as well as a sweeping tale filled with exotic locales, sex and celebrity (he was a lover of Josephine Baker), and high-stakes projects. In Flint’s telling, Corbusier isn’t just the grandfather of modern architecture but a man who sought to remake the world according to his vision, dispelling the Victorian style and replacing it with something never seen before. His legacy remains controversial today, as the world grapples with how to house its skyrocketing urban population and the cult of the “starchitect” continues to grow.

    Modern Man is for readers fascinated by the complex personal lives and outsized visions of both groundbreaking artists and dazzling, charismatic innovators like Steve Jobs.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateNov 4, 2014
    ISBN9781491529553
    Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow
    Author

    Anthony Flint

    Anthony Flint is the author of two previous books: Wrestling with Moses and This Land. A former Boston Globe reporter, he is a fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and contributes to The Atlantic Cities website.

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    Reviews for Modern Man

    4.5/5

    20 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Flint's lively biography of Le Corbusier should appeal to an audience of general readers interested in architecture, 20th century history, or 20th century biography. Without sacrificing accessibility, it also appears designed to benefit deeper readers who are interested in planning and urban studies, but have next to no background knowledge about Le Corbusier as an architect or city planner.As Flint suggests of himself in an afterword, I had always read references to Le Corbusier in the context of modern urban theory - Jane Jacobs, New Urbanism, or anti-sprawl surveys of post-WWII American land use patterns. Most of these cast Le Corbusier as a sort of cold and brutal utopian, with an authoritarian approach to planning. This sensitive biography places him in a historical context that make a great deal more sense of his work and life - his great achievements, as well as his moral failures, such as trying to collaborate (mostly unsuccessfully) with the Vichy regime. One thing the book does particularly well is capture the beauty and creativity of several of Le Corbusier's finest individual buildings. (I read the book with a smartphone in hand, looking at pictures and floor plans as I read Flint's text, and would recommend that - this is a book that repays a multimedia approach). Ultimately, Le Corbusier comes across as an artist ruled by his muse - not so much authoritarian as unable to compromise with the world as it is, and badly imitated by later architects who missed distinctly human qualities in his designs.Some reviews (on other social reading sites) have criticized this book, on the one hand for providing too speculative detail; or, on the other, not providing enough insight into Le Corbusier's emotional life. Both of those criticisms seem to me misplaced. As the author notes, some points one might think would be inaccessible to a historian (for example, Le Corbusier's thoughts while watching Josephine Baker asleep in his bed, which opens the book) were drawn from Le Corbusier's uncomfortably detailed letters to his mother. As for Le Corbusier's internal or emotional life: this is a man who comes across as deeply analytical, creative, and lustful - but not reflective. Plus, he was constantly selling an image of himself. Delving much deeper into his psyche than this book does would likely yield a roiling mess that would defeat the pleasure of reading. Modern Man is not the definitive academic biography of Le Corbusier; but for anyone who cares about current urban planning, it is a fast and thoughtful introduction to an influential figure.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Enjoyed it! Sober, inspiring and thought-provoking review of a character I thought I knew.
    • 4/5
      Master or Monster?In Antony Flint’s very engaging biography of Le Corbusier, the modernist architect is a mixture of awesome design and horrible misconceptions, of fabulous jetsetting and rude, crude, bullying relationships. Le Corbusier rose to fame fast, but it did not outlive him. His designs were straightforward rectangles for the most part, with spare walls, slitty windows and amenities only he would appreciate, like Frank Lloyd Wright did in his designs. And like FLW, who refused to meet him, you inhabited a Le Corbusier space; it wasn’t yours.Dealing with the man was no treat. As Time Magazine said in its 1961 cover story, he was “moody, and difficult and resentful, holding on to grudges, and with a penchant for firing his staff”. Employees worked all nighters only to be blasted in the late morning when Le Corbusier strode in from hours of painting. He recognized his brutality, but said “I feel it essential in architecture to be this way.” His arrogance did not often pay. On his first trip to the US in 1936, he was miffed that there wasn’t a battalion of photographers waiting dockside for the historic moment of him setting foot on American soil. After 34 days of giving lectures, he returned to France – without a single commission to show for it.His personal life was no better. He married a beautiful model and basically abandoned her while he had affairs all over the world. He kept them secret from her, but wrote down and sent all the fine details – to his mother. He and his wife fought over décor, as the architect wanted a totally spare look, while his wife wanted color and furnishings. It is no great surprise she drank herself to death (on Pastis). During the occupation of France, he saw the writing on the wall and moved to Vichy to collaborate with the Germans. This did nothing for his personal relationships and it is amazing he escaped prosecution both formal and informal.He had a long string of successes, and fortunately for the world, he did not get to gut and make over the center of Paris with his dense apartment buildings raised one floor above grade, wide, inhospitable boulevards out the windows and every amenity in its personal place. That was his basic model and he tried to implement all over the world. His Swiss fussiness (Flint uses the perfect word Calvinist) showed in his designs and in his own life. Imposing it on Paris would have been fatal. It was nearly fatal in New York, where Robert Moses glommed onto those ideas, and unfortunately, also had the power to implement them. The sad result was The Projects and endless elevated highways lifted directly from Le Corbusier. It took Jane Jacobs and thousands of New Yorkers to save the city from this modernist nightmare.The book is not strictly a timeline. Suddenly, the young man who was struggling, is the owner of a state of the art Voisin car. Twenty pages later it turns out his father, a watchmaker in a rich watchmaking Swiss town, was able to steer some commissions his way, and that’s what launched his career. Flint organizes by project rather than decade, so there is overlap and back and forth involved. One thing that became annoying was the lack of photos. Flint spends a great deal of necessary effort describing buildings, amenities, elements, designs and environs, when a simple photo would do it all and put it in perspective. This is most definitely a book to read with an image search engine within reach at all times. In a biography so rich in visual concepts, not including any is bizarre.