Note 473 — CHAPTER 22 THE EARLY WORK OF THE SECOND GENERATION: WALTER GROPIUS, LE CORBUSIER, MIES VAN DER ROHE, AND THE DUTCH

Confused by Le Corbusier’s description of his houses as machines à habiter and the general ‘machinolatry’ of much of his early writing, many have mistakenly supposed that his was a machine-aesthetic. Just how to define his aesthetic other than by begging the question and merely calling it ‘Corbusian’ is, however, far from clear. For an analysis stressing Le Corbusier’s ‘formalism’, but not in the pejorative sense of Stalinist criticism, see Rowe, C., ‘Mannerism and Modern Architecture’, Architectural Review, CVII (1950), 289-300.