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Read modernist works,
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Works by Le Corbusier, Mies, and Wright, with what to look for and how to visit.

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Villa Savoye

Le Corbusier · Poissy, France

Architects

How to read the modern masters, and their works

Le Corbusier
The Five Points stick better as movement—from pilotis up to the roof—than as slogans to memorize. Villa Savoye is the textbook entry. Modulor can be read as linking human scale to standardization. Comparing Unité and Cabanon—large collective living versus a tiny cabin—deepens that idea. The National Museum of Western Art translates the Museum of Infinite Growth into a Japanese site. Reading master–pupil ties with Maekawa, Sakakura and others shows paths of influence into Japanese modern architecture. Swiss-born architect and planner who worked in France. He led the modern movement across houses, chapels, housing blocks, and capital planning. In Japan he is known for the National Museum of Western Art; Kunio Maekawa and Junzo Sakakura trained in his office.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
The relation of structural frame to thin enclosure is the theme. Following how columns, walls, and glass divide roles at the Barcelona Pavilion and Seagram makes it stick. Universal space: a large room not over-fixed by function. Comparing how roof and columns make “void” at Crown Hall and the Neue Nationalgalerie deepens understanding. Joints of marble, travertine, steel, and glass become the design core. At Tugendhat and Farnsworth, observe material honesty at house scale. German-born architect who later worked in the United States. Clear construction in steel and glass, universal space, and refined curtain walls internationalized modern vocabulary. After directing the Bauhaus, he taught and practiced at IIT in Chicago.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Prairie houses emphasize connection to the land with low eaves and horizontal lines. Robie House is the textbook entry. Organic architecture blurs inside and outside and starts from site and materials. Fallingwater and Taliesin West are useful poles for comparing relationships to nature. Jacobs House reads as a middle-income experiment (Usonian); the Guggenheim as public architecture where the path itself is the exhibition experience. American architect spanning Prairie style, organic architecture, Usonian houses, and late public buildings—always linking site, materials, and living. In 2019, eight major works were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage.

Works

38 works (Le Corbusier / Mies / Wright)

Read modernist works,where they stand.

Villa Savoye

Architects

Le Corbusier

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Frank Lloyd Wright

Works

Fallingwater

Villa Savoye

Barcelona Pavilion

Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Unité d'habitation, Marseille

Farnsworth House

National Museum of Western Art

Seagram Building

Complex of the Capitol, Chandigarh

Couvent Sainte-Marie-de-la-Tourette

Villa Tugendhat

Maisons La Roche et Jeanneret

Unity Temple

Frederick C. Robie House

Taliesin

Villa Le Lac

Taliesin West

S.R. Crown Hall

Cabanon de Le Corbusier

860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments

Hollyhock House

Neue Nationalgalerie

Cité Frugès

Immeuble Clarté

Houses of the Weissenhof-Siedlung

Maison du Docteur Curutchet

Maison de la Culture, Firminy

Weissenhof Apartment Building

Lafayette Park

Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House

Toronto-Dominion Centre

Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor

Haus Esters and Haus Lange

Chicago Federal Center

Maison Guiette

IBM Building / 330 North Wabash

Manufacture à Saint-Dié

Read modernist works,
where they stand.