Le Corbusier's Journey To The East

Taking stock of a collection of letters, columns, and notes, a book on Le Corbusier records the iconic architect’s observations during his many peregrinations.

- Aparna Andhare

When people become legends, we hardly imagine them as young lads, still trying to figure their way to their practice and professions. For architects, biographies are often traced via their work in stone. With Journey to the East (or Le Voyage d’Orient), we meet Charles-Edouard Jeanneret before he became Le Corbusier. It’s hardly surprising the book was immensely popular, and has been published in several editions. The 2007 edition I’m reading is edited, annotated and translated by Ivan Žaknić, published by the MIT Press. Written as a compilation of columns, letters, and notes, the book is both a delight and an inspiration.

The diary maps his journey from Berlin to Istanbul (the furthest East he goes), via Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Constantinopole, Athos, Athens, Naples, Pompeii, Rome. He makes several pitstops along the way, travelling on trains, boats, carts, even foot and on donkeys, on occasion. He records his experience — treatment received, upgrades negotiated, quarantines, and the kindness of locals (or the lack of it). He laments bed-bugs (spending a night under a tree once), appreciates local hospitality, and seeks out curious handicrafts, remaining obsessed with pottery from the beginning. It is in these descriptions that one realises the book was written over a century ago, and how much the world has changed since, yet how much still remains the same. His observations on architecture are still relevant, critical and exacting. You can see him be disappointed by cities, surprised, overwhelmed in certain cases, and at times, impatient.