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Abstract
In May 1911, the architect known as Le Corbusier, set out on a journey to the Eastern part of Europe and he finally arrives to Constantinople. This travel, which can be placed in the romantic tradition of the Grand Tour, will have an important influence on his future work. In his adventure across the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, the architect will the starting point for the creation of a modern architecture based on the analogies and the re-reading of the universal patterns guessed in the classic art.
Keywords: Le Corbusier, travel writing, Eastern Europe, Grand Tour, architecture.
Introduction
In May 1911 Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier,2 decides to travel throughout the Eastern part of Europe until he finally arrives to Constantinople. This adventure belongs to the Romantic tradition of initiation and formative travels which European young artists and writers used to do for accomplishing their academic instruction.3 The purpose of this article is to point out to what extent this experience of instruction, initiation and discovery through Eastern Europe will have a clear influence on the future works of Le Corbusier, both in his architectural projects and theoretical reflections.
At the beginning of the 20th century there were two institutions on Western Europe, the academic and the polytechnic, dedicated to the teaching of architecture and both of them counted on with the collaboration of well-known architects in whose workshops apprentices could complete their instruction. In this context, Charles Édouard Jeanneret (1887-1965) is instructed in painting, drawing and engraving, and he also acquires some basic knowledge on architecture at the Advanced Course in Art School at La Chaux-des-Fonds, thanks to his teacher and trainer Charles l'Eplattenier. In 1908 the young Jeanneret collaborates at the Parisian workshop of Auguste Perret, pioneer in the use of concrete for the construction of buildings, and two years later, in 1910, he begins to work as a designer at Peter Behrens' workshop, in Berlin, where he would meet Mies Van der Rohe.4 In spite of the theoretical and practical instruction that he acquired, Le Corbusier is to a great extent a self-educated artist. For this reason his travels, either the current one we are describing or the one he did previously, in 1907, through Italy, accompanied by...