Born Charles Edouard Jeaneret in the Swiss town of la Chaux-des-Fonds on October 6th, 1887. He was an artist at first, then he took his eventual name of Le Corbusier in 1920 when he knew his life would be that of architecture rather than strictly art. Though he was never schooled officially, he was influenced by many, this first of which was Auguste Perret, whom taught him about the use of reinforced concrete. Peter Behrens whom he worked with in 1910 also influenced Corbusier. His biggest influence though, came from all the traveling he did. He was also greatly influenced by cubism painters and even painted several paintings himself. It was at the Acropolis in Athens that gave him the most inspiration though. He visited the Parthenon daily and drew sketches of it from all different angles. His mind was full of these classical over tones.Le Corbusier was an architect with a great imagination, which included a dream of an ideal city, a philosophy of nature, and a strong belief for tradition. He was aninternationally influential architect and city planner, whose designs combined modern movement with sculptural expressionism.He designed with the use of the grid, cube, and often used simple geometric forms, like forms of the square, circle, and the triangle in simple arrangements. As an artist, he learned the importance to control volumes, surface, and profile; the abstract sculptures he created used all of these properties. The forms appeared often to be solid chunks of concrete that had been carved and cut kind of like when an artist molds clay.Through sculpture of space and volumes, contrasting light, and shadows, he did this.He emphasized tradition by providing examples for contemporary purposes. He once stated that the past was his only true master. He saw and designed the building in not 2 or 3 but 4 dimensions. The later is nature, which brought about time and change. Nature was health, fresh air, and sunlight; he saw cleanliness in everything. He felt the need for a new architecture with the developments going on in the machine age. After all, he saw the building as a "machine for living". The functions of the house were examined then stripped to the bare essentials. His goal was to reinstall in our machine society the conditions of nature, which had been disrupted; sun, space, and greenery.

In 1911 he wrote, "I gabble elementary geometry; I am possessed with the color white, the cube, the sphere, the cylinder and the pyramid. Prisms rise and balance each other, setting up rhythms in midday sun the cubes open out into surface, at nightfall a rainbow seems to rise from forms in the morning they are real, casting light and shadow and sharply outlined as a drawing. We should no longer be artist, but rather penetrate the age, fuse it until we are indistinguishable. We too are distinguished, great and worthy of past ages. We shall even do better still, that is my belief."Le Corbusier's ideas were wrote out in 1926 when he described his five points of a new architecture; which he fitted to the five classical orders. The points were the pilotis, roof garden, free plan, free facade, and ribbon windows. These ideas of architecture would stick with him for the rest of his life. Le Corbusier is one of the most influential architects of our time. He was also a social reformer who was most inspired when thinking in terms of a whole city, great buildings, wide spaces, trees and sculpture. He died of a heart attack while swimming in the sea off the Cap Martin on the 27th of August in the year 1965.