Le Corbusier Le Grand is doubly well named. First, the book is the size of two breeze blocks and notably heavier. It is, according to Jean-Louis Cohen, not a coffee-table book but the coffee table itself: all you need do is fit legs to it. Ho ho. But he has a point. It is the least wieldy book I have ever been propelled across a room by – it is 0.67m wide when opened, and demands a physical as much as an aesthetic will if it is to be appreciated. This is peculiarly apt, for Le Corbusier’s buildings themselves require the attention of every sense you can think of and then some: they need to be swooned through. They are not comprehensible by intellect alone.
Second, this was a great artist, among the greatest of his century.
more from the New Statesman here.