Le Corbusier. Voyage d´ Allemagne, Carnets

Le Corbusier´s notebooks pertaining to his German travels precede those of the "Orient", spanning the period from April to May 1911. His travels in Germany, visiting Munich, Berlin, Halle, Naumburg, Ratisbon and 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 lastly 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 programmes, the themes of working-class housing, the need to complete his own training as an architect. 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.