Le Corbusier on Camera : The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann

The book is based on amateur films, shot by the architect Ernest Weissmann (1903-1985) with a Pathé Motocamera in the years 1929-1933 at the Atelier Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, among others. These films have never been published before and capture moments from Le Corbusier's life that have never been seen before. It also documents his friendships with Pierre Jeanneret, Josep Lluís Sert, Charlotte Perriand, Norman Rice, Kunio Maekawa, Sigfried Giedion and others. In six chapters, the book shows impressive stills of these films and places them in the respective historical and personal context of Le Corbusier in introductory texts.  Two introductions are devoted to the history of these films and Ernest Weissmann's life and his life-long relationship with Le Corbusier.

•    A documentary treasure trove on the life of Le Corbusier
•    Featuring 80 previously unpublished film stills
•    Available as softcover (9783035627282), hardcover (9783035627299) and limited special edition with three photographic prints (9783035627305)

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) is considered one of the most famous visionary architects and urban designers of the 20th century. With his cousin, he ran the Atelier Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret from 1922 until 1940. During this period, most of the practice’s modernist villas were built, and bigger works such as the Centrosoyus in Moscow, and the Cité de Refuge and the Pavillon Suisse in Paris, realized. In parallel, Le Corbusier developed urban-design projects for such cities as Paris, Antwerp, Algiers, and Buenos Aires, and wrote extensively on his architectural and urbanistic ideas. He continued the Atelier Le Corbusier on an individual base from 1940 on, with projects such as the Unités d’Habitation in Marseilles and in Nantes-Rezé, Briey, Firminy, and Berlin; the Monastery of Sainte-Marie de La Tourette; and the church of Notre-Dame du Haut Ronchamp. He designed the new state capital of the north Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, Chandigarh, with its representative buildings, from 1951 on.
 
Ernest Weissmann (1903–1985) was a Croatian (then-Yugoslav) architect and developer/planner. He graduated in architecture in Zagreb, and worked for Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in Paris. He dedicated his work to the development of the prefabricated hospital-building type and city planning viewed from social and economic points of view. He was an active member of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) from 1929 until 1947. From 1942 until 1966, he worked for the United States Board of Economic Warfare and United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, Economic Commission, and Department of Economic and Social Affairs. At the UN, Weissmann was in charge of housing, building, and planning at a global scale.

Veronique Boone is an architect from the University of Ghent, Belgium and doctor from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Lille (ENSAPL), France and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium. She is an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre Horta at the ULB. She lectures on architectural history and theory as well as on the conservation of 20th-century architecture. Her research focuses on the history and theory, as well as alternative narratives of modern architecture. She has published extensively in academic publications on Le Corbusier and the mediation of architecture by film and television, and is a correspondent for Belgian and international architectural magazines on contemporary architecture. She has worked on several exhibitions as curator and/or contributor to catalogues – among them, Lucien Hervé, l’oeil de l’architecte, CIVA, 2005; Le Corbusier and the Power of Photography, Musée des beaux-arts La Chaux-de-Fonds, 2012; L’Architecture modern à l’écran, Cinematek, 2014; In the Studio at 35, rue de Sèvres: an Amateur cameraman’s Informal View, Fondation Le Corbusier, 2017 and Atelier Jespers, 2018. She is also Vice-President of DOCOMOMO Belgium.