University of Virginia Library

3. LE CORBUSIER ET P. JEANNERET

In the Winter of 1928, Badovici announced the next l'Architecture Vivante publication
outside of the review, to be dedicated to the "oeuvres récentes" of Le Corbusier
and Pierre Jeanneret. 12 It was promised to be of the same "luxurious form
dear to our review," and cost 100 francs, although there would be no additional
cost to the subscriber (who would have paid 135 francs for both 1929 volumes).
The book was issued in the Summer of 1929, 13 and its contents exactly reproduced
that of the printemps – ÉtÉ double issue of that year. It did not replace
this issue – subscribers still received the double fascicule with its paper cover,
and a separate standard cardboard cover if one had been ordered – but merely
reproduced it as a stand-alone work for non-subscribers, housed in a new portfolio
cover designed by Le Corbusier (fig. 3.3, plate 3).

On November 8, 1928, Le Corbusier had written to Badovici describing the
layout of the cover, proposing that it be printed on gray paper glued to a cardboard
cover, with a site plan of the Mundaneum project in white. 14 Printed across it
would be "Le Corbusier et P. Jeanneret' in red, and "oeuvres récentes de," "L'Architecture
Vivante," and "MorancéÉditeur' in black. Eventually the color changed to blue, the
Morancé name was eliminated, and the "oeuvres récentes"" dropped from the title
altogether. 15 This design forms the model for the next four covers in this series.
On the spine, in white, serifed lettering, read le corbusier et p. Jeanneret.
The only change from the review within the publication was a recasting of the
first signature: the title page no longer read "L'Architecture Vivante," but now "Le
Corbusier et P Jeanneret," and the publisher's page included the notation "extrait de
l'Architecture Vivante," indicating its source, but no mention of the date of publication.
Since the new book comprised two consecutively numbered fascicules, no
change was necessary for the pagination or the table of contents.

Morancé must have considered this portfolio a success, for the following year
they issued two more in what was now a series, ultimately to be advertised by
them as the architects' "oeuvre complète." The first of these two volumes jumped
back in time, as l:'Architecture Vivante had also dedicated the Fall 1927 fascicule
to Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. This issue now became Le Corbusier et P Jeanneret: Première série (fig. 3.1). 16 Once again, the first loose signature was reset
with the new title, and the publisher's page read "extrait de L'Architecture Vivante;"
the remainder of the text, pages 5–40, remained unchanged. But since the table
of contents of the original review was issued as part of the Winter 1927 fascicule,
and included contents for both the Fall and Winter, it needed to be replaced as
well. The new table of contents occupies pages 41 and 42, with the remaining
two pages of the added signature blank. The plates retain the original dates from
the review, automne mcm xxvii, despite the actual 1930 publication year of the
new volume. This volume was apparently also reissued at a later date, as copies
exist with both the lotus emblem and the bull's-eye emblem on the rear cover (fig. 3.2). 17

With more publications in the works, the original Le Corbusier and Pierre
Jeanneret volume also made a transformation in 1930. To keep the chronology
correct, it now had its cover and title page reset to include the subtitle "deuxième série,"
and a new spine reading le corbusier et p. jeanneret – ii (fig. 3.4).
The third volume of the series, also published in 1930, 18 reproduced the Spring
fascicule of that year (fig. 3.5). Like the "première série" volume, its only internal
changes from the quarterly fascicule to autonomous volume were the first and
last signatures: the front matter and the table of contents. The new table of contents,
incidentally, extends an error originating in the Spring 1930 sommaire and
repeated in the Summer 1930 table of contents by leaving out reference to the
drawings printed on pages 40 to 48.

In the Summer of 1931, Badovici published his next installment of Le Corbusier's work in l'Architecture Vivante, which was issued simultaneously as the "quatrième
séri" of the complete works (fig. 3.6). 19 Since the original formed the second
fascicule of the combined volume of the review, the entire page-numbering system
needed to be revised, so that the text could begin on page 5, rather than page
17, and the plates could run from 1 to 25, rather than 26–50. Like the "première
série," the original copies of this title have a lotus emblem on the rear cover, while
others have the bull's-eye emblem, suggesting a later reprinting.

The fifth volume of the series was published in late 1932, and reproduces
the contents of the Autumn fascicule of that year (fig. 3.7). The publication date
is confirmed not only by Valdras, but by an inscription from Le Corbusier to
the mayor of Algiers in one of the two copies in the Eisenman Collection at the
Beinecke Library, dated December of that year. 20 The rear cover now shows
the bull's-eye emblem adopted at the beginning of that year for the review fas-
cicules. The replacement of the front matter is the only internal change, as the
original review included a table of contents (in addition to the sommaire) for this
fascicule only, despite the fact that the same information would be repeated in
the combined table of contents issued in the Winter fascicule. Badovici may
have included this redundancy in the review in anticipation of its necessity in
the extrait. 21

In the sixth volume, we see the first alteration, although minor, to a text as
it was transformed from a single issue of the review to an autonomous publica-
tion (fig. 3.8). The original fascicule dated from the Winter of 1933 (although it
was not issued until early 1934), and was the final issue of the review. 22 In the
four-page signature that included the sommaire, and which was intended to be
discarded, was a note from the editor concerning the closing of l'Architecture Vi-
vante. Complementing this was the opening pageof the regular text, an article by
Le Corbusier entitled Au revoir à "l'Architecture Vivante." In preparing the extrait,
Badovici replaced this page with rendered plans and a photograph of a model of
Le Corbusier's project for the headquarters of a Zurich life insurance company.
Its publication date is 1934. 23

The table of contents in the Winter 1933 issue of L'Architecture Vivante had
an anomalous numbering system, from page 1 to page 4, rather than the usual
custom of continuing the numbers of the text pages. It may have been intended
to be placed at the front of the combined text pages, although thiswould have
left the four pages of front matter out; in every other volume these were un-
numbered, but counted in the overall numbering system. In the extrait, the new
table of contents (covering only the one fascicule, and renumbered) is also placed,
atypically, at the front. In order to make room for it in the first signature, there is
no half-title, and the fourth page is not its usualblank. The reason for this format
change is unclear, as two pages remain blank at the end of the final signature

of the text section, and the table of contents could have taken its expected place
there. The text pages arerenumbered from 5 to 42, and the plates from 1 to 24
(this issue is one of three that do not have 25 plates). The cover, in brown on a
yellow background, seems enough different in layout and typography from the
first five that I suspect it was not designed by Le Corbusier.

I have seen one copy of this sixth volume with an alternative construction:
the portfolio cover is exactly the same, but the contents are exactly as they ap-
peared in the Winter 1933 issue of the review (fig. 3.9). There is a sommaire with
the l'Architecture Vivantemasthead, the editor's note, and an advertisement; Le
Corbusier's farewell to the review appears on the first text page, numbered 33;
and the table of contents, numbered 1–4, lists items from the Fall 1933 issue
as well, although they are not present here. This may have been a transitional
state, with a new portfolio cover printed but the contents not yet rearranged to
their new state. But, as we will see further on, this kind of mashup occurs with a
number of the extraits, and seems to point to a later date. During the late 1930s,
and especially during the Occupation, shortages of paper and other supplies
may have led to some creative packaging: surplus copies of the review were out
of date as periodicals, but could substitute for the contents of the extraits. Either
new covers were printed to enclose the old contents, or the covers themselves
were overstock as well.

The seventh and final volume of the Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret oeuvre
complète did not originate in l'Architecture Vivante. Starting in early 1927, Morancé
began publication of l'Encyclopédie de l'Architecture Moderne, which they typically
advertised alongside l'Architecture Vivante, and which was conceived as its comple-
ment. Where l'Architecture Vivante was avant-garde, l'Encyclopédie was mainstream;
and while l'Architecture Vivante published commentary about and essays by its fea-
tured architects, l'Encyclopédie remained strictly documentary, with photographs
or renderings on the front side of each loose plate, and line drawings showing
plans or elevations on the rear, alongside descriptive text. Like l'Architecture Vi-
vante, l'Encyclopédie was published four times a year in paper folders containing
twenty-five plates, but all four were intended to be reunited in a single yearly
volume, rather than two. 24 When l'Architecture Vivante published its final fascicule
in early 1934, the editor's note directed its readers to its sister publication for
continued coverage of modern architecture; this now included the work of a
number of architects, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret among them, whose
work had previously not appeared in l'Encyclopédie.

The work shown in l'Encyclopédie was not organized in any thematic way;
like the early issues of l'Architecture Vivante, each fascicule showed work from a
wide variety of architects, with anywhere from a single plate to a series of four
or five representing each featured building. From the first fascicule of Tome

VII, published in 1934, until the second fascicule of Tome X, published in 1937,
l'Encyclopédie de l'Architecture Moderne included twenty-seven plates (out of 350 to-
tal) showing buildings and projects by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. These
plates then formed the basis for the seventh volume of the oeuvre compléte, which
we can date to 1937. 25

The cover design of the seventh volume again breaks from the format of
the earlier Le Corbusier titles, and follows instead a layout first used in 1933 for
the third volume of Russian work, and again in 1934 for the volume dedicated
to hospitals (fig. 3.10, plate 4). In each of these, a photographic image is placed
diagonally, at 60°, on the left side of the cover, and wrapping around to the rear
(interrupted by the spine). The title, Le Corbusier et P. Jeanneret , is arranged on
the same diagonal, while 7E SÉRUIE remains orthogonally in the lower right. This
dynamic arrangement was not unusual among French art publications of the
1920s and 1930s, 26 and was probably designed in-house at Éditions Albert Mo-
rancé. The background for the cover is red, although I have seen a photograph
of a version in green; 27 I have no evidence that the green version was published
at another date, or that its contents differ in any way.

The first page inside the portfolio, forgoing the usual half-title, is the title
page, which follows the format of the series exactly. On its verso is the pub-
lisher's page, which here states that the volume is an "extrait de
'l'Encyclopédie de l''Architecture'." The following twelve pages are unique in all of the true extraits,
in that they publish a text not found in the original publication from which it is
drawn: Les tendances de l'architecture rationaliste en rapport avec la collaboration de la
peinture et de la sculpture, a paper Le Corbusier had presented at a conference in
Rome in October of 1936. It had appeared in print, translated into Italian, in
the November 1936 issue of Domus, and in French in 1937 in a booklet issued by
the Reale Accademia d'Italia. 28 The final two text pages con-
tain the table of contents, and are followed by the plates of photographs and drawings, renumbered
on the recto from one to twenty-seven, and each with its original documentary
text and drawings on the verso.