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Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier, whose real name was Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris saw a city as "a centre of intense life and effort." (Le Corbusier, 18). He believed that:
"a heedless people, or society, or town, in which effort is relaxed and is not concentrated, quickly becomes dissipated, overcome and absorbed by a nation or a society that goes to work in a positive way and controls itself. It is in this way that cities sink to nothing and that ruling classes are overthrown." (Le Corbusier, 18)
"the house, the street, the town, are points to which human energy is directed: they should be ordered, otherwise they counteract the fundamental principles round which we revolve; if they are not ordered, they oppose themselves to us, they thwart us, as the nature all around us thwarts us…" (Le Corbusier, 21).
"After our examination of the things which affect us physically and agitate our hearts, we shall come to an important decision; we shall come to consider as more important than the mechanism of the city, what we may call the sould of the city. The soul of the city is that part of it which is of no value from the practical side of existence: It is, quite simply, its poetry, a felling which in itself is absolute, though it is so definitely a part of ourselves. The mechanism of a city is merely a matter of adaptation…" (Le Corbusier, 62)
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