Output details

Geometry and Analogy in Le Corbusier's Baghdad Veils

The curated exhibition (V&A architecture gallery) included in the pdf portfolio was part of the research process for this output, a 5000 word article in AA Files. Collaboration: Dr. Irena Murray, RIBA (research and curation); Victoria and Albert Museum (venue and exhibition production); Niall Hobhouse (exhibited documents); Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris (exhibited documents and archives); Canadian Centre for Architecture (exhibited documents): Mike Taylor (model).

Archival research: office letters, 900 construction drawings. Historiography: complex dating and authorship, significance in context of late work of Le Corbusier. Digital reconstruction of entire complex iconographic analysis and interpretation [phenomenological hermeneutics]

I was asked by Dr. Murray and Niall Hobhouse to curate the exhibition based on my knowledge of late Le Corbusier. Murray and I collaborated on the research in the Fondation Le Corbusier; I assembled the programme of the exhibition and co-ordinated with the V&A exhibition team on its layout. The exhibition is the first full and proper presentation of the project anywhere; the article breaks new ground in understanding LC’s late work in the context of European modernist architecture. It also re-thinks the nature of LC’s use of geometry as a framework for his analogical concerns (the 'Poem of the Right Angle', 1953), and draws conclusions on the nature of analogical (therefore ethical) thinking in architecture. The article was read in late draft form by Professors Mary McLeod and David Leatherbarrow both of whom called it original, profound, a significant contribution to our understanding.