This revelatory study is the most unexpected and vital piece of Le Corbusier scholarship to appear in years. Adolf Max Vogt looks to the early, formative years of the architect's life as a key to understanding his mature practice, taking aim at such fundamental riddles as "Where did his design vocabulary come from?" and "How was his aesthetic sense formed?".

Vogt's investigation of LC's early life and education not only reveals important, previously unacknowledged influences on specific projects such as the League of Nations headquarters and the Villa Savoye, but also suggests why LC throughout his career preferred to lift buildings above the ground, to give them the appearance of "floating." This tendency had decisive consequences for buildings associated with the modern movement and continues to influence architecture today.

By uncovering crucial dimensions of LC's early life and resurrecting primary documents and source materials overlooked by other scholars, this book changes the face of LC studies.