I Heart Le Corbusier

IT'S TRUE. He was The Man while I was growing up. And I did go to architecture school. So I've been to quite a few buildings by Corb: I even studied in one for three years. Here are some travel tips if you're interested in seeing some of his work.

My favorites were Ronchamp, the square du Docteur Blanche and the Villa Savoye. The worst I saw was either the Unité d'Habitations in Berlin or the couvent de La Tourette. It's almost as bad a rural French convent as its American copy was as the Boston City Hall.

The photo above is me at the Unité d'Habitations in Marseille: I am the Modulor Man, precisely to the inch. If you go to Marseilles, don't do what I did as a young architecture student, which was to go straight from the train station to the Unité. There are a hundred better sights in Marseilles. Don't miss the bouillabaise.

If you're a real fanatic, stay at the hôtel Le Corbusier, on the third floor (seventh level) of the apartment building. Website here, photos and more information here.

Le Corbusier may have had more bad urban design ideas than anyone else in history (Paolo Soleri is probably the runner-up). Many of his architecture ideas weren't very good, either. But when he was at his best he managed to make his ideas look so good that a trip to his best buildings can be very rewarding.

UPDATE: The 1987 Le Corbusier Guide has just been revised.

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If you go to see the Carpenter Center at Harvard and you don't see Harvard Yard, Harvard Square, the River Houses and the neighborhoods west of the Square, you're a brainwashed architect who's missing one of America's best small cities and best campuses.