The Le Corbusier Foundation of Paris, the Architectural History Foundation of New York and the French publishers Herscher/Dessain et Torla present the original, complete edition of all the Carnets of Le Corbusier (1887-1965).
The Le Corbusier Foundation of Paris, the Architectural History Foundation of New York and the French publishers Herscher/Dessain et Torla present the original, complete edition of all the Carnets of Le Corbusier (1887-1965). Architect, urbanist, painter and sculptor, Le Corbusier was gifted with an extraordinary capacity for invention. Over sixty years of uninterrupted activity he traveled extensively in Europe, the Middle East and the Americas.
In approximately 1907, at the time of his first voyages, he developed the habit of constantly carrying a small sketchbook. These notebooks were to become the fundamental Carnets, filled with his notes and sketches: impressions, architectural details, landscapes, figures on which he drew for his ideas and his architectural and urban projects. In 1955 he decided to number all the notebooks, using the form he called “la nomenclature”.
At the time of his death all 63 Carnets were packed into a suitcase, over 4000 pages, numbered from A1 to T70 and dated from 1914 to 1964. These carnets had not been published. The originals were too fragile to allow their use by researchers and scholars. This publication makes them available to readers everywhere.