Le Corbusier Quotes

To be modern is not a fashion, it is a state. It is necessary to understand history, and he who understands history knows how to find continuity between that which was, that which is, and that which will be.

Light creates ambience and feel of a place, as well as the expression of a structure.

Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.

Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light: light and shade reveal these forms.

You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: This is beautiful. That is Architecture. Art enters in.

Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.

A house is a machine for living in.

The materials of city planning are: sky, space, trees, steel and cement; in that order and that hierarchy.

The purpose of construction is TO MAKE THINGS HOLD TOGETHER; of architecture TO MOVE US.

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.

Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois.

You don't start a revolution by fighting the state but by presenting the solutions.

The home should be the treasure chest of living.

Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the house and the city.

Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distinct and tangible within us without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms. Everybody is agreed to that, the child, the savage and the metaphysician.

To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects.

The history of architecture is the history of the struggle for light.

Life never stops. The torment of men will be eternal, unless the function of creating and acting and changing, living intensely through each day, be considered an eternal joy.

By law, all buildings should be white.

The present moment is creative, creating with an unheard-of intensity.

The city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach.

You know, it is life that is right and the architect who is wrong.

The "styles" are a lie.

Genius is personal, decided by fate, but it expresses itself by means of system. There is no work of art without system.

Cameras get in the way of seeing.