Le Corbusier : Les Voyages d'Allemagne

Travels in Germany

Le Corbusier’s notebooks pertaining to his travels in Germany precede the Orient ones, spanning the period from April to May 1911.

Le Corbusier met architects and artists

His travels in Germany, touching on Munich, Berlin, Halle, Naumburg, Ratisbon, Augsburg, enabled Le Corbusier to meet personalities who would have a profound influence on him: among others Theodore Fischer, representing the most nonconformist trend in German architecture, Baron Gunther von Pechmann, William Ritter, a critic and a man of letters, and last Peter Behrens. It becomes apparent in the German notebooks that the architect changed the initial purpose of his trip - to draw up a report on the overall situation of applied art in German schools on behalf of the Ecole d’Art of La Chaux-de-Fonds, becoming instead more and more absorbed in the great urbanistic programs, the themes of working-class housing, the need to complete his own training as an architect.

Impressive number of drawings

In these notebooks, writings, short critical comments, travel impressions and notes accompany an impressive number of drawings, landscapes and monuments, design studies and watercolours, that show how receptive Le Corbusier became to the important ideological and urbanistic issues of the time.