Canonizing Le Corbusier: The Making of an Architectural Icon as Colonial Hegemony

In 2016, it was announced that iconic Franco-Swiss modern architect, Le Corbusier, and his nearly complete oeuvre of seventeen buildings, would be enshrined on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s World Heritage List. With this notable decision, Le Corbusier, the figure, moved from beatification as a “modern master” to achieving the architectural status of canonical sainthood. No other architect had been so completely enshrined on UNESCO’s list. The discussions and debates centered on this landmark decision provide evidence regarding how and why Le Corbusier’s figuration persists and is sustained. The Corbusiern figure remains foundational in architectural pedagogy, modern architectural history text writing and in the imaginaries formed in aspiring students of architecture as a global project that is both colonial and hegemonic. How this decision to reify Le Corbusier came about after a decade of debate and deliberation provides the basis for this project. The argument suggests ways to explain how we continue to tell and perform the history of modern architecture today, using Le Corbusier as a figure, as well as the legacy of the Bauhaus and International Style modernism, as pedagogical tools to perpetuate an ongoing hegemonic colonial regime situated in architectural knowledge production and pedagogy.

Department dc:contributor.department

Social Justice Education

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Nay, Eric

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Bakan, Abigail

• Colonialism
• Hegemony
• Le Corbusier
• Modern Architecture
• Pedagogy

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/102946

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/102946