Series of seven international conferences held on DaUal (october 2019 - january 2020) on the practice of XX Century Architectural Masters: Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Alison and Peter Smithson, José Antonio Coderch, Aino and Alvar Aalto, OMA, Álvaro Siza. On October 19, a conference was held by Tim Benton.
Abstract: Le Corbusier disliked the suburbs and would have eliminated them in his urban planning. And yet most of his villas were built in the suburbs, where space and building permissions were available. The ‘petite maison de weekend’ at La Celle-St-Cloud (1935) in the leafy western suburbs of Paris is an interesting project because the design phase can be separated into two clear phases: the first by Pierre Jeanneret and the second following the intervention of Le Corbusier. The differences between the two colleagues’ approach reveals fundamental political and ideological differences in their approach to the suburb and domestic design.
Tim Benton (b. 1945) is a leading researcher in Modernist architecture, with Le Corbusier as his special field of expertise. Benton has published a number of books, including a classic study of the design of Le Corbusier’s villas in Paris in the 1920s (1984) that was republished in a revised edition as The Villas of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret 1920-1930 (Birkäuser, 2007). More recent publications include The rhetoric of modernism : Le Corbusier as a lecturer (Birkhäuser, 2009), LC foto : Le Corbusier : secret photographer (Lars Müller, 2013) and Le Corbusier peintre a Cap Martin (Editions du Patrimoine, 2015) He has contributed to major exhibitions including Thirties: art and design before the war, (Hayward Gallery, 1979), Le Corbusier, Architect of the Century (Hayward Gallery,1987), Art and Power (Hayward Gallery, Art and power : Europe under the dictators 1930-45 (Hayward Gallery 1984), Art Deco 1910-1939 (V&A, 2003), Modernism Designing a New World (V&A 2006) and Modern taste: Art deco in Paris, 1910-1935 (Fundación Juan March, Madrid, 2015). He has spent much of the last five years working on the villa E-1027 by Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici ("E-1027 and the Drôle de Guerre." AA files, 2017, 74: 123-154 and Cap moderne; Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier Modernism by the sea, Editions du Patrimoine, 2020). Chairperson: Marta Sequeira.
