Description

[004663] Le Corbusier; Francia, Peter De and Bostock, Anna (Trans.) The Modulor – A Harmonious Measure to the Human Scale Universally Applicable to Architecture and Mechanics WITH Modulor 2. London: Faber and Faber, 1954. First Edition. 8vo. Hardback. Good+ / Good. Two volumes – Volume One – [4], 5-243p, [1] and Volume Two – [6], 9-336pp. Original cloth in DJ’s

DJ spines faded and lightly browned, slightly chipped to spine ends and corners, second volume with chip to foot of upper panel and head of lower panel, tape stains to endpapers with some off setting on to DJ flaps, and a scuff to fore edge of lower panel, but generally complete. Top edge of text blocks lightly dust stained, former owner’s name to ffep of first volume, text very lightly browned but generally clean

“In Le Corbusier’s buildings and art a recurrent silhouette appears: the Modulor Man. It’s a stylised human figure, standing proudly and square-shouldered, sometimes with one arm raised, the mascot of Le Corbusier’s system for re-ordering the universe.The Modulor was meant as a universal system of proportions. The ambition was vast: it was devised to reconcile maths, the human form, architecture and beauty into a single system. This system could then be used to provide the measurements for all aspects of design from door handles to entire cities, and Corbusier believed that it could be further applied to industry and mechanics. The modulor system had a series of scales and measurements, laid out in a modulor rule. The fundamental ‘module’ of the Modulor is a six-foot man, allegedly based on the usual height of the detectives in the English crime novels Corbusier enjoyed” (ICON website)