Le Corbusier was a challenging figure, intent on using his "five points of a new architecture" to change the "new man's" living and working spaces in order to bring them in line with the technology, aesthetics, and politics of his age. Combining a design-forward coffee table look with Frampton's (Labor, Work and Architecture) world class art historical chops, this book concisely documents 17 buildings designed by one of the most visionary architects of modernism. Moving chronologically by commission, with one chapter per project, Frampton provides contextual information about patronage and sites as vast as the capital at Chandigarh, India (Punjab province) and as small scale as the rural French domestic refuge Le Petit Cabanon. His vivid, imaginative narratives capture what it is like to walk in and around such structures as the gorgeous concrete Chapel of Nôtre Dame-du-Haut
in Ronchamp, France. The 100 color and 25 duotone images by photographer Roberto Schezen can look a little like architectural product shots, but they get the buildings at good angles and in good lights. Some of Le Corbusier's sketches further illuminate several of the most exhilarating buildings of recent times. (Nov.)
