"These notebooks are the most private of Le Corbusier's work, the most spontaneous, perhaps the most significant, encompassing all the others–the work of an entire lifetime." –André Wogenscky, President, Fondation Le Corbusier
This second volume in the series of four Le Corbusier Sketchbooks contains notes and sketches Le Corbusier made in the 1950s, a particularly rich period for him. During that time, he received the commission for Chandigarh—a mandate to create an entirely new capital to house the government of the recently created state of Punjab. The next year, he began working on projects for two villas and the Millowners' Building at Ahmedabad. All ten original notebooks record Le Corbusier's reaction to this exotic and complex culture, his interest in its vernacular architecture, and his preoccupation with environmental control through architectural design. They demonstrate how he converted new experiences into unique and very personal designs. They also record his bitter disappointment at being excluded from work on the United Nations building in New York. These sketchbooks also document the years when Le Corbusier transformed his strict, glass-and-metal International Style into aggressively sculptural forms. Here are the initial drawings for this changing sensibility: the Unité d'habitation at Marseille (1947-1952) and the revolutionary pilgrimage chapel at Ronchamp (1950-1954).
