Pioneer It is the fate of brilliant young innovators to
become respectable institutions in their old age. Le Corbusier escaped this because of his own persistent inventiveness and because of some- thing prickly and sardonic in his temperament. Pevstier once described him as the Picasso of architecture. It is true that in their brilliance, their prolific flow of ideas and their unpredict- ability, the two men had much in common. But when you met Le Corbusier you were at once aware of something waspish in him, whereas on the few occasions when I have met Picasso he radiated a sort of puckish serenity. I suppose visionary architects are exposed to greater frustrations than any other kind of creative man. So much of Le Corbusier's most daring work was, (not sui.prisingly) never translated from .paper into solid building, and his. big projects often meant prolonged tussles with official bodies. It must be easy in such circum- stances to grow impatient with the indifference or unappreciativeness of society. In the case of Le Corbusier architects seem to agree that it is exceptionally difficult to assess his importance because so much of it resides in the effect of his ideas on other men's minds. Heaven knows how many architects around the world are to some extent in his debt. He was one of the first to proclaim that architecture had to take an enormous leap forward to meet the multiplying urban problems of the technological age: he also maintained that his objective, as an archi- tect, was to create poetry. How many of our glass-bok designers could say the same?
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