The Amodernist Architect: Revisiting Le Corbusier's Legacy

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In 2016, 17 of Le Corbusier's most renowned buildings were granted UNESCO World Heritage sites, cementing the status of his works for generations to come whilst preserving his legacy as the most influential architect of the 20th Century. A pioneer of the Modernist movement, Le Corbusier sought to distil a rationalised future through the poetics of industrialisation.However, almost a century later we appear no nearer to the utopic distillation set forth, as Bruno Latour reveals the complexities of Nature and Culture paint a more chaotic picture. As Le Corbusier's work traverses the line of antiquity, a contradiction arises between the production of architecture as a propelling force, in contrast to the preservation of architecture as a means to an end. We may ask the question: Are Le Corbusier's works still machines for living in, or simply signposts of a bygone era? The roots of this contradiction stem from the way we read architecture as an intrinsic product of its time, however if we ditch the timeline of historicity in favour of an anthropological framework - including building visits, ethnographic studies and Actor-Network-Theory mapping - we may empirically critique the usage of Le Corbusier's buildings and understand the agents of his legacy to illustrate a process which extends beyond the building itself.