Le Corbusier Sketchbooks, Vol. 3, 1954-1957 (Architectural History Foundation Book)

The publication of Volumes 3 and 4 of the Le Corbusier Sketchbooks brings to completion a major undertaking by the Architectural History Foundation. After more than a decade of searching, the Fondation Le Corbusier found a suitable partner in publication to aid in the practical difficulties of producing the last and most elusive of Le Corbusier's unpublished works. André Wogenscky, President of the Fondation Le Corbusier, has stated that the sketchbooks vividly reproduced in these four volumes "are the most private of Le Corbusier's work, the most spontaneous, perhaps the most significant, encompassing all the others - the work of an entire lifetime." Volume 1, 1914-1948 and Volume 2, 1950-1954 were published in 1981. All the volumes are included in the Architectural History Foundation/MIT Press series. Volume 3 1954-1957 During these years, Le Corbusier further developed the curving sculptural forms he had already used boldly for the pilgrimage chapel at Ronchamp and for the new city of Chandigarh, the new capital of the Punjab. Various sketchbooks record the finishing touches of Ronchamp and continuing work in the building of Chandigarh. Later sketchbooks show Le Corbusier increasingly integrating painting and sculpture with architecture, and introducing a strong symbolic element into his public buildings - such as the Open Hand at Chandigarh. Sketchbooks in Volume 3 also reveal the architect's experiments with environmental control, the use of rustic materials and strong colors in a villa in India and two villas in Paris that are notably different from the more geometric and mechanistic work of Le Corbusier's earlier years.