Le Corbusier Quotes

The problem of the house is a problem of the epoch. The equilibrium of society today depends upon it. Architecture has for its first duty, in this period of renewal, that of bringing about a revision of values, a revision of the constituent elements of the house.

Vehement silhouettes of Manhattan - that vertical city with unimaginable diamonds.

Negro music has touched America because it is the melody of the soul joined with the rhythm of the machine. It is in two part time; tears in the heart; movement of the legs, torso arms and head. The music of the era of construction; innovating. It floods the body and heart; it floods the USA and its floods the world. The jazz is more advanced than the architecture. If architecture were at the point reached by jazz, it would be an incredible spectacle.

The materials of city planning are: sky, space, trees, steel and cement; in that order and that hierarchy.

The purpose of construction is TO MAKE THINGS HOLD TOGETHER; of architecture TO MOVE US.

Vehicular traffic is completely forbidden in the green strips, where tranquility shall reign and the curse of noise shall not penetrate.

A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times : It is a beautiful catastrophe.

Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.

The city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach.

You don't start a revolution by fighting the state but by presenting the solutions.

Our own epoch is determining, day by day, its own style. Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it.

You know, it is life that is right and the architect who is wrong.

To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects.

Light creates ambience and feel of a place, as well as the expression of a structure.

Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light: light and shade reveal these forms.

Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the house and the city.

You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work.
But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: This is beautiful. That is Architecture. Art enters in.

The house is a machine for living in.

Life never stops. The torment of men will be eternal, unless the function of creating and acting and changing, living intensely through each day, be considered an eternal joy.

The "styles" are a lie.

Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois.

My research is like my feeling, directed towards what is the principle value in the life
the poetry.

Genius is personal, decided by fate, but it expresses itself by means of system. There is no work of art without system.

By law, all buildings should be white.

Architects everywhere have recognized the need of ... a tool which may be put in the hands of creators of form, with the simple aim ... of making the bad difficult and the good easy.

The home should be the treasure chest of living.

When does a building actually become a built?