9 Novembre / Lecture di William J.R. Curtis "The Shadows of Time" Echoes of Le Corbusier's 'Voyage D'Orient / Istituto Sturzo / Roma

One hundred years after Le Corbusier's 'Voyage d'Orient' the Italian Association of Architecture and Criticism_presS/Tfactory, the reviews presS/Tletter and presS/Tmagazine present:

Rome, November 9th 2011, at 6pm Aiac Critic Lesson #2:

WILLIAM J. R. CURTIS 
“THE SHADOWS OF TIME”

ECHOES OF LE CORBUSIER’S ‘VOYAGE D’ORIENT

Istituto Luigi Sturzo, Palazzo Baldassini 
via delle Coppelle 35, 00186 Rome - Tel. 06 6840421

In 1911 the 24 year old Charles Edouard Jeanneret (the future Le Corbusier) undertook his famous ‘Voyage d’Orient’ through the Balkans, to Istanbul and Bursa, the Monasteries of Mount Athos, the Acropolis in Athens, the ruins of Pompeii, the Villa Adriana, and of course Rome. As he went he sketched and photographed what he saw, storing up impressions for later use. In later life the architect referred to the Voyage in almost epic terms, as if he had returned to the roots of Mediterranean civilization in search of the essentials of architecture itself. In 1929, the year of that canonical modern work the Villa Savoye at Poissy, the so called ‘pope’ of modernism declared that he was accused of being a revolutionary but that the past was ‘his only real master’.

To honour the Centenary of the Voyage d’Orient (1911-2011) William J.R. Curtis (the author of several seminal works on both Le Corbusier and modern architecture in general) will deliver a lecture with the title ‘The Shadows of Time. Echoes of Le Corbusier’s ’Voyage d’Orient’. In this he will reflect upon the architect’s powers of observation, abstraction and transformation, suggesting ways in which Le Corbusier penetrated to the underlying ideas of past examples prior to integrating them in his own creative universe. The lecture will consider ‘the poetry of ruins’, the search for constants in tradition, and the role of metamorphoses in the architect’s processes of invention. In turn it will evoke the meaning of shadow and light in Le Corbusier’s architecture, and the role of both memory and the dark recesses of the unconscious in his mythical interpretation of the world. Above all the lecture will be concerned with the ‘presence of the past’ in the mind of a great architect.

All are invited but places limited. To participate please send an email to:

segreteria@presstfactory.com or call +39 3923294039 www.presstletter.com www.architetturaecritica.it