ngs, big open spaces, big urban highways. He called it La Ville Radieuse, the Radiant City. Wherever it was tried--in Chandigarh by Le Corbusier himself or in Brasilia by his followers--it failed. Standardization proved inhuman and disorienting. The open spaces were inhospitable; the bureaucratically imposed plan, socially destructive. In the U.S., the Radiant City took the form of vast urban-renewal schemes and regimented public housing projects that damaged the urban fabric beyond repair. Today these megaprojects are being dismantled, as superblocks give way to rows of houses fronting streets and sidewalks. Downtowns have discovered that combining, not separating, different activities is the key to success. So is the presence of lively residential neighborhoods, old as well as new. Cities have learned that preserving history makes a lot more sense than starting from zero. It has been an expensive lesson, and not one that Le Corbusier intended, but it too is part of his legacy. He died in the Mediterranean in 1965.The following are celebrated quotes form Le Corbusier: “Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.” (1)“I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and allows less room for lies.” (2) “The materials of city planning are: sky, space, trees, steel and cement; in that order and that hierarchy.” (3)“Our own epoch is determining, day by day, its own style. Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it.” (4)“A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and fifty times: It is a beautiful catastrophe.” (5)Le Corbusier himself considered his creations in the domain of visual arts of primary importance and proclaimed that his architectural creations flowed from them. His noteworthy statement "there are no sculptors only, no painters only, no architects only, the plastic incident fulfills itself in an...
