Memories of Le Corbusier

1911-2015
Memories of Le Corbusier
On the footsteps of the Franco-Swiss Master

RoundTable: Istanbul and a young architect: Le Corbusier
Date: October 5, 2015 
Time: 14.00-18.00
Place: santralistanbul Campus, Faculty of Architecture

Speakers:
Emiliano Bugatti ( Yeditepe University, Istanbul) Following Le Corbusier’s Footsteps Today
Christiane Garnero Morena (ENSA Paris) Le Corbusier, the Ottoman
Claude Prelorenzo (Association Internationale des Amis de la Fondation Le Corbusier Paris) Le Corbusier Photographer in Istanbul
Cânâ Bilsel (METU Ankara) From the Voyage d’Orient to the City of Tomorrow: Tracing the Influence of Le Corbusier’s impressions of Istanbul in his Evolving Thoughts on Urbanism and the Green City Idea
Burcu Kütükçüoğlu (İstanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul) Remembering Voyage d’Orient after 100 years
Bruno Reichlin (University of Zurich) “Architecturer”: Le Corbusier au travail

Moderator:
Işık Aydemir (Ticaret University, İstanbul)

Language: English and French

Workshop and Exhibition:

October 6th-9th, 2015    Workshop_Reading Istanbul on the footsteps of Le Corbusier
Tours around the city with students and tutors

The workshop is free, 40 graduate and undergraduate students will be selected according to their sketching skills. Please, send a sketch of a Le Corbusier project at: lcistanbul2015@gmail.com within September 22th, results will be announced September 30th.

October 10th, 2015    Exhibition_Students sketch books and final remarks
@Circolo Roma, Meşrutiyet Cad. 75, Beyoğlu. 16.00-18.00

December, 2015    Presentation_Results of the Istanbul Workshop
@Le Corbusier Flat, Rue Nungesser et Coli, Paris.
Organized by the Services Culturel de l’Ambassade de Turquie à Paris and Association Internationale des Amis de la Fondation Le Corbusier.

Le Corbusier:
August 27th 2105, marks the fiftieth year since the passing of Le Corbusier. He died at the seaside in Roquebrune Cap Martin, in Southern France, after his last swim in the Mediterranean Sea, in front of his cabanon, a small summer shelter that he loved to define as a kind of Turkish “yalı”.

Le Corbusier, one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century, was born in Switzerland in 1887 in the town of La Chaux-de-Fonds. Since an early age, he developed a very special interest in Mediterranean culture, in particular during a sojourn in 1911 to Southern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean region, in which he visited important architectural sites as the Villa Adriana in Tiber, The Akropolis of Athens and the city of Istanbul.

Two countries in particluar from this journey influenced his life work, namely Italy and Turkey. In 1911, at the age of 24 he arrived in Istanbul and stayed in the Beyoǧlu district for several weeks. In his famous carnet “Voyage d’Orient”, Le Corbusier carefully noted and sketched many Ottoman buildings, from important monumental mosques by Mimar Sinan to other small timber houses in back streets of the historic peninsula of Stamboul. This visit to Istanbul was his initiation to becoming an architect.

Memories of Le Corbusier was organized in Istanbul to celebrate Le Corbusier’s journey of 1911 to Istanbul. This year we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his death, with a round table discussion about the role of the city of Istanbul in Le Corbusier’s architectural research. The afternoon will conclude with a series of workshops and sketching tours which follow Le Corbusier’s footsteps of his “Voyage d’Orient”.