Le Corbusier at the Pratt

The design philosophy and work of Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris – Le Corbusier – will be celebrated starting August 30 when the Brooklyn-based architecture and design school, Pratt Institute debuts a free exhibition of his architecture, design, painting, writing and urban planning.

“Le Corbusier – Miracle Boxes” will present more than 50 of Corbu’s public buildings, including his exhibition pavilions, museums, theaters, cultural centers, monument and temples, as well as documentaries on his life and work.  Pratt says this is the first New York exhibition in 60 years dedicated entirely to the work of a man who some believe was the greatest architect of the 20th century.  The last exhibit was at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1951.  (When the architect first visited New York City at the invitation of MoMA in 1935, he said New York City's skyscrapers should have been bigger and spaced farther apart.)

I’m hoping I can find a way to see this ambitious exhibit. I saw another on Corbu in Paris some years ago, and I've visited his Atelier Ozenfant on avenue Reille in Paris and the splendid Villa Savoye about 30 minutes outside the city. I remember less about how these buildings looked like than I do about how it felt standing inside -- lonely, uneasy, exposed.  You may not love the buildings, but they elicit strong feelings and you can't forget their raw beauty.  

The Miracle Box that gives this exhibit its name is a full-scale construction, based on Corbu’s smallest architectural project, a seven-and-a-half-foot cube that was originally located inside his Paris atelier. The reproduction will also feature Corbu’s 1947 sculpture “Ozon” and the 1932 painting “Verre,” which were both originally featured in the “working cell,” as he called it. The Miracle Box will be on display outside of the Pratt Library in Brooklyn coinciding with the start of the exhibition on August 30 and will be installed in the library’s lobby as part of the school’s permanent collection following the exhibition. 

Four years after Corbu wrote about his Miracle Box as a container you can fill with “everything you dream of,” he expanded the ideas behind this project into a small summer house for himself and his wife.   In fact, this tiny box was the only structure Le Corbusier ever built for himself -- a 172-square foot (16 square meter), wooden cabin at Cap Martin that he referred to as his “castle on the Riviera.”  

The exterior, at first glance, looked like thousands of other simple, French summer cabanons, but the interior was a spectacularly detailed, elegant “machine for living.” And live in it he did, spending 10 summers there, working in an adjacent studio on projects such as the pilgrimage chapel, Notre Dame du Haut Ronchamp (1955) that he “dedicated to nature.”  

After the Pratt exhibit closes in New York, it will tour Bogota, Rome, Florence, Barcelona, London, Paris and other cities. I can't wait to see it.