Presentation: “Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms”

Ivorypress and Phaidon were pleased to invite you to the launch of Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms on 25 June at 7:30 p.m. There will be a panel discussion with the participation of the author, William J. R. Curtis; Luis Fernández Galiano and Jorge Sainz.

This new title by Phaidon is published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Le Corbusier’s death. It has been rigorously revised, redesigned and expanded to double its original volume, restating, however, the purpose of the original edition, published in 1986.

Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, whose first edition was published to great acclaim, is an important work of the history of architecture based on decades of investigation and deep reflection. Written with a lucid and elegant prose by the renowned and award-winning architectural historian William J. R. Curtis, it documents individual projects in detail while linking them to the architect’s philosophy, his utopian vision and his activities as painter, sculptor, urban planner and writer.

William J. R. Curtis is an award-winning historian, critic, writer, curator, painter and photographer. Educated at the Courtauld Institute and Harvard University, he has taught the history of architecture and theories of design at many universities around the world including Harvard, the Architectural Association and the University of Cambridge where he was Slade Professor of Fine Art (2003–2004). His best known books include Modern Architecture Since 1900 (third edition, Phaidon, 1996) and Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms (first edition, Phaidon, 1986), both of which have been widely translated and both of which have been referred to as ‘classics’. His Denys Lasdun: Architecture, City, Landscape (Phaidon, 1994) was also published to critical acclaim. Among his numerous awards: the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (1984), a National Honors Society Gold Medal in Architecture and Allied Arts, USA (1999), a Medal of the Museum of Finnish Architecture (2006) and a Golden Award for Global Contribution in Architecture (CERA, A+D, India, 2014).

Luis Fernández-Galiano is an architect, professor of Architectural Projects at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) and, since 1985, editor of the journals AV/Arquitectura Viva. Between 1993 and 2006 he was in charge of the weekly architecture page of the newspaper El País, where he currently writes the Opinion section. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and of the Royal Academy of Doctors, International Fellow of RIBA and has been Cullinan Professor at Rice University, visiting lecturer at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, Franke Fellow at Yale University, visiting scholar at the Getty Center of Los Angeles, visiting critic at Harvard and Princeton Universities and at the Berlage Institute and has lectured at the universities Menéndez Pelayo and Complutense.

Jorge Sainz is a translator, PhD in architecture and professor of the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura in Madrid, where he currently directs the Department of Architectural COmposition and in which he teaches the subject ‘Introduction to Architecture’. He is the author of the books El dibujo de arquitectura: teoría e historia de un lenguaje gráfico (Nerea, 1990; Reverté, 2005) and Infografía y arquitectura: dibujo y proyecto asistidos por ordenador (Nerea, 1992; with Fernándo Valderrama).