The Man Who Built Forward Better

What Le Corbusier understood about architecture is that it must always confront the present. The need for shelter is deeply ingrained in us, that sense of “being at home” that we can always intuit when we feel safe in the place we’re residing. But when architecture falls out of sync with the conditions we live in, home begins to feel more and more ... See more

This order created uncoordinated systems that worked, without staff, as if by magic. Such was Jacobs’s “Sidewalk Ballet.” With density, she argued, came “eyes on the street,” a community-based security system that required neither barbed wire nor an extensive police presence. With wide sidewalks comes trusted interactions, even with strangers—a qua... See more