Le Corbusier and the other humanities

The 2007 international conference in Lincoln that inspired this collection of essays was focused on a concern about “how we can restore - or indeed radically transform - the traditional dialogue between intellectual enquiry in the humanities and design creativity” within architecture. Many agree that the value of the traditional dialogue between the humanities and technical knowledge or inventiveness has been largely lost in contemporary architecture. Buildings nowadays seem to lack the powerful synthesis of the arts and sciences of earlier architectural monuments. Yet I argue that the issue is more complex than somehow re-establishing that traditional balance in design considerations. How the work of an architect may relate to the humanities cannot be understood without acknowledging the fact that the humanities have radically changed in recent decades. Distinguishing between current intellectual inquiries versus traditional discourses within the humanities is key to this argument.