“Unlike the famous monocular-born giant Polyphemus described by blind poet Homer, well-known Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier had to deal with the loss of one eye when aged 31. Monocular vision practically means a radically different perception of the space. Also, a matter which – for somebody reputed to be the most important architect of the last century – is quite something.
The 50th anniversary of Le Corbusier’s swim at la Roquebrune-Cap Martin (France) – where he gave up his soul to the Mediterranean Sea on August 1965, while Pete Townshend of THE WHO was writing My Generation – might be an opportunity to give our attention to this story.
1. Le Corbusier’s Mask, the monocular tool I designed jointly with Veronica Citi for the Gran Touristas Project at the Italian Pavillion, Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 – after being kindly invited by Susanna Legrenzi and Stefano Mirti; it’s actually one of the projects belonging to the Gran Box collective work.
2. An early research carried out together with students in the Architectural Design courses I held at the School of Architecture, University of Florence, from 2000 to 2005. The first related essay On Le Corbusier – From Two to Three Dimensions, written at Les Roches Noires (Ile de La Réunion) on the fortieth anniversary of Le Corbusier’s swim, August 28th, 2005 – has been published in 03d - Da Zero a Tre Dimensioni/From Zero To Three Dimensions by pioneering Italian publisher Domenico Cogliandro at Biblioteca del Cenide [Piraz Pirazzoli, Collotti, 2008].
