Le Corbusier has designed some “grand projects”, but is the United Nations Headquarters one of them" There is a lot we do not know about the pioneering architect.
Today -the 24th of October- is United Nations Day. Two years after the intergovernmental peace-seeking organization was founded, it started planning for constructing an international headquarters and settled on a land plot looking over the banks of the East River in New York City; a city that was geographically accessible for all members of the UN to come together.
That was back in 1945, World War II has just ended and everyone is tiptoeing?as part of their peacekeeping agenda, the UN invited some of the world’s prominent architects to collaborate on this project instead of creating a competitive atmosphere?their assignment was to design a Headquarters that would be “a symbol of the bright, peaceful future ahead that did not dwell upon the past.” Courtesy of Whitney Starbuck Boykin
Led by the American architect Wallace K. Harrison, the international team to design the UN Headquarters included Le Corbusier from France, Oscar Niemeyer from Brazil, Howard Robertson from the UK, and several other iconic names in the world of architecture.
A Little Backstory…
By the end of the 1920s, the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier was only determined to work on major commissions, or what he called “Les Grands Projets”. One of these grand projects was his proposal for the com...