Le Corbusier’s urban work never managed to make the leap from proposal to reality, a happy state of affairs for modem urban critics being that his plans, if they had been thus transformed, would have signified irreversible and not necessarily positive changes for the city’s functional and formal aspects. While it is true that he represented a sort of «hard line» which would end up becoming a dangerous weapon for urban culture, he cannot be blamed for all the outrages committed in the name of modernity.
Le Corbusier never built a skyscraper. Throughout 40 years he planned dozens of them, proposing that high-rise living be the radical remedy for the ills of urban life. Faced with the crisis of large European cities that were unhealthy, stagnant and unable to absorb the multipliying masses of people and cars, he stubbornly stuck to the same prescription: large skyscrapers separated by parks and freeways. But luck or destiny had it that not once was he to actually carry through on one of his plans...[+]
