The Le Corbusier Galaxy František Sammer and a global network of avant-garde architects

Foreword by Mary McLeod  Introduction  Author's Note  Letter for the Reader  Part 1: The Research Diary  Part 2: The Le Corbusier Galaxy  ‘Livre noir’  Sammer’s photograph collection  35 rue de Sèvres, Paris, 1931  The family from the atelier  Architect-photographer  Summer 1931  In the gravitational field of the galaxy  The Depression as a bonding agent  A professional in a crew of amateurs, 1932  The female element  On marriage  Urban planning  Leaving 35 rue de Sèvres, Spring 1933  Spain and the Maghreb  West Kirby  CIAM IV  The architects brigade from Paris: ‘The Le Corbusier Group’  Moscow  Merging with the masses  35 rue de Sèvres outside Paris  The Grand Tour, Autumn 1934  A Life worth living  The land of 1,001 Sakakuras  The Soviet Union, 1935–37  Paris, January–February 1937  Japan revisited  India  Real war  Great Britain, 1946–1947  Returning  The galaxy reflected in the ‘Livre noir’  Part 3: Escursuses  Excursus 1: Great Britain, 1931  Excursus 2: Spain and the Maghreb, 1933  Excursus 3: Japan, 1935  Excursus 4: The Caucasus, summer 1936

Biography

Martina Hrabova is an art historian who specializes in the history of modern architecture. She obtained her PhD in art history from the Charles University in Prague, where her dissertation addressed new findings on Le Corbusier‘s connections with the former Czechoslovakia. She is a recipient of numerous grants and fellowhips, including a Fulbright Fellowship, a French Government grant and the Canadian Centre for Architecture Visiting Scholarship. She has published articles in JSAH, Room One Thousand and Art/Umění. The Czech-language edition of her book Galaxie Le Corbusier received the prestigious 2022 Josef Krása prize for the best art book in the Czech Republic. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Art History at Palacký University in Olomouc.

"This is an astonishing piece of research, full of detail and new material that will fascinate expert historians of modern architecture. It is a significant addition to the field and part of a trend to research architects who passed through the atelier at the rue de Sèvres."

Tim Benton, Professor Emeritus of Art History, The Open University

"This book will clearly make a major contribution to our understanding of Le Corbusier and the way that his office worked."

Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Professor of Art History, University College Dublin

"Martina Hrabová’s book offers splendid new insights into the world of Le Corbusier’s atelier and the many extraordinary young assistants who worked for him there. What makes this book especially intriguing is that it presents a previously unknown photographic record of the "galaxy" around Le Corbusier, mostly in the guise of informal snapshots. This deeply personal record offers the reader a compelling look at modernism’s heady years and those who made it."

Prof. Christopher Long, Professor of Architectural History, University of Texas at Austin

"Hrabová’s book is unique in its subject matter and there are really no competing works.  It moves the focus away from Le Corbusier, as important as he remains, to the young people in the atelier who helped make the interwar work so exciting, including women! The book covers material not covered in other publications and places a greater emphasis on the personal friendships that were forged in Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret’s atelier and their lasting impact on careers and architecture."

Mary McLeod, Columbia University, Professor of Architecture at Columbia GSAPP

"In her new book, Martina Hrabová charts a circuitous search for the more nuanced meaning of modern architecture in the period between the two World Wars. She deftly explores the documentary, historic and social significance of the photographs concealed for close to eighty years in the remote locality of an Indian ashram. Thanks to the author’s informed and empathetic approach, the reader of this highly original book gets to discover anew the contribution of some architects whose own role in the service to modern architecture is at long last revealed to be of an undeniable international significance."

Irena Žantovská Murray MArch, PhD, HonFRIBA