Corbusier Quotes

“We leave to monsieur Le Corbusier his style that suits factories as well as it does hospitals. And the prisons of the future: is he not already building churches? I do not know what this individual -- ugly of countenance and hideous in his conceptions of the world -- is repressing to make him want thus to crush humanity under ignoble heaps of reinforced concrete, a noble material that ought to permit an aerial articulation of space superior to Flamboyant Gothic. His power of cretinization is vast. A model by Corbusier is the only image that brings to my mind the idea of immediate suicide. With him moreover any remaining job will fade. And love -- passion -- liberty.

Gilles Ivain (aka Ivan Chtcheglov)”
― Tom McDonough, The Situationists and the City: A Reader

“Arhitectura are un alt sens și alte scopuri decât doar de a scoate în evidență construcția și de a răspunde unor necesități. Arhitectura este arta prin excelență, care atinge starea de măreție platoniciană, de ordine matematică, de speculație spirituală, de percepere a armoniei prin raporturi emoționale. Iată scopul arhitecturii.”
― Le Corbusier, Bucuriile esenţiale

“The footprint of Culardoch Shieling measures 47 square metres and the interior is lined with Sitka. In contrast to traditional shieling huts, it provides accommodation for eating only. From within, the windows mimicking Ronchamp, are placed, not as Corbusier intended, to strategically introduce a deliberate interplay of light and shadow, but rather, to frame specific viewpoints of the Beinn Avon massif. Culardoch Shieling presents us with a clever, romanticised view of what the shieling can be in 21st century Scotland. Unfortunately, it is not a structure that I find convincing. The fusion of modernist borrowings and Swiss-chalet vernacular aside, it is the conceptual basis for this 'shieling' that I find troubling. Obviously the need for shieling huts to provide shelter for those tending the dairy herd is anachronistic. However, the heritage that Culardoch Shieling pays homage to is clearly straight from a 19th century shooting textbook. It's a lunch hut. A 21st century folly, which was never intended for overnight stay, nor for sustained periods of habitation. In Glen Gairn the shieling way of life has become shieling lifestyle.”
― Charles Fletcher, Reforesting Scotland 72: Autumn/Winter 2025