Immerse Education Essay Winner – Gurzahn Singh Virdi
February 15, 2022
Gurzahn Singh Virdi, a student of Grade 8, has won a scholarship of 20% to take part in summer programs at Oxford, Cambridge and LSE through the Immerse Education Essay Competition 2022.
The Immerse Education Essay Competition provides students aged between 13 and 18 with the opportunity to submit essays related to their chosen subject. Gurzahn wrote an essay on his favourite architect. He did a wonderful job of capturing the essence of Le Corbusier and his legacy.
Gurzahn’s words depicted Corbusier’s work in a manner which made his essay stand out from the others. We are proud of your achievement, Gurzahn. Best of luck for all future endeavours!
Who is your favourite architect?
My favourite architect is Le Corbusier and I am fortunate to have been born and brought up in Chandigarh, a great city planned and designed by him. Among the twentieth century’s great architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Louis Kahn and Antoni Gaudí , Le Corbusier is, indeed, the greatest, in my considered opinion. An indefatigable many-splendoured genius, his creativity was as prodigious as it was versatile. Had he so desired he would have been as great a painter as Picasso or as great a sculptor as Henry Moore, but he chose architecture and revolutionized it throughout the world (Bhatti , 2020).
Born on October 6,1887 as Charles -Édouard Jeanneret ,he was a Swiss -French architect. Le Corbusier’s theory of architecture was multifaceted. In his book Vers Une Architecture he says, “Architecture is a thing of art, a phenomenon of the emotions, lying outside questions of construction and beyond them. The purpose of construction is to make things hold together; of architecture to move us. Architectural emotion exists when the work rings within us in tune with a universe whose laws we obey, recognise and respect” (Le Corbusier,1923). In the course of his work as an architect, Le Corbusier developed a series of architectural principles, which he used as the basis of his designs. The five points included Pilotis (columns), roof garden, free plan, free façade and ribbon windows. In 1918 , with the help of the artist Amédée Ozenfant, Le Corbusier adopted painting with the use of oils. Together they developed the Purism movement and collaborated on the book Après Le Cubisme. Alongside poet Paul Dermée, he founded the magazine L’Esprit Nouveau with its main subject matter being the arguable relation between art and industrial society (Choay, 2021).
Thus he was a gifted architect, provocative writer, divisive town planner ,talented painter and unparalleled polemicist (Rory,2019). His career spanned five decades and he designed buildings throughout the world especially in Europe, Japan, India, North and South America. He was a founding member of the Congrès Internationaux d’ Architecture Moderne (CIAM). It is due to his remarkable designs that many scholars consider him as the father of modern architecture.
Le Corbusier declared: “Town Planning expresses the life of an era. Architecture reveals its spirit.” Through a town plan he sought to combine a new order with economy, health, rationality and clarity—so that Sun, Space, and Verdure could become the prized heritage of every citizen. In championing such a significant cause of the humankind, Le Corbusier went far beyond his “Mastery of Form” to become the twentieth century’s most versatile creative artist since the advent of the Quattro-cento Masters of the Italian Renaissance.
The crowning feature of his truly exceptional diversity of interests, insights and skills was his abiding concern for the human condition, which eventually led him “to rediscover man who had become lost in the frenetic development of technique.” He has left an unparalleled legacy of more than 32,000 architectural and urbanistic drawings and plans, 400 projects, some 300 paintings, more than 7000 drawings, illustrated books, lithographs, engravings, works in enamel, tapestries and furniture (Bhatti,2020) .His work continues to be studied, criticized and reinterpreted today , gaining new meanings and influencing generations to come ( Catarina,2017).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bhatti S.S. “The Unforgettable Corbusier ”, Surfaces Reporter , 5 October 2020,
https://www.surfacesreporter.com
Catarina Flaksman, Peter Clericuzio. “Le Corbusier: Artist Overview and Analysis”. [Internet]. TheArtStory.org,17 April2017,
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/le-corbusier/
Choay, Françoise. “Le Corbusier”Encyclopedia Britannica, 23 Dec. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Le-Corbusier
Le Corbusier.”Towards a New Architecture” Dover Publications,Inc., New York, 1986 ,
Reprint .Originally published:London:J.Rodker,1931
Rebecca Bates.” Le Corbusier’s Most Significant Projects” Architectural Digest,September 30,2014.
https://www.architecturaldigest.com
Rory Stott .”Spotlight : Le Corbusier” Architecture News,ArchDaily,6 October2019,
https://www.archdaily.com/434972/happy-birthday-le-corbusier-2
