Yet modern architecture remains uncannily modern, even as it rapidly approaches the status of antique. The modern is being retooled as seductively exotic history. Everything has conspired to position the modern in the past, and an industry has been developed to accomplish this, armed with scholars, preservationists, technicians, archives, galleries, publishing houses, journals, collectors, local governments, and auction houses. The modernist icons have become museums containing themselves, proud exhibitionists flaunting their historical value, strangely pristine jewels extracted from the relentless entropy of their original use as houses, schools, or offices, to be treated as precious art objects exchanged in an endlessly inflating international market. More and more of the surviving buildings are being meticulously restored to their original condition and cleaned for viewing by ever-increasing waves of architectural tourists. Permanent physical and legal defenses have been erected against decay, renovation, addition, and demolition. Indeed, for more than fifty years there have been attempts to preserve key works of modern architecture against the effects of time. Hardly a surprise: The new has long been old. The modern will officially become antique. This new mode of living derived from a new spirit defining the industrial age, demanding a rebirth of architecture based on function and a new aesthetic based on pure form.IN JUST A FEW YEARS, the first works of modern architecture will be one hundred years old. Each essay dismisses the contemporary trends of eclecticism and art deco, replacing them with architecture that was meant to be more than a stylistic experiment rather, an architecture that would fundamentally change how humans interacted with buildings. The polemical book contains seven essays. That unparalleled influence has continued, unabated, into the 21st century.

The architectural historian Reyner Banham once claimed that its influence was unquestionably 'beyond that of any other architectural work published in this century to date'. The book has had a lasting effect on the architectural profession, serving as the manifesto for a generation of architects, a subject of hatred for others, and unquestionably a critical piece of architectural theory.

This classic work is a collection of essays written by Le Corbusier advocating for and exploring the concept of modern architecture.

Towards a new architecture