Le Corbusier buildings named world heritage sites

Structures include the Maison Guiette, in Antwerp, Belgium, the National Museum for Western Art in Tokyo among others.

A file picture of the Punjab and Haryana High Court building, designed and built by French architect Le Corbusier, in Chandigarh. Photo: Akhilesh Kumar

Seventeen buildings designed by Swiss-French architecture pioneer Le Corbusier have become UNESCO world heritage sites, the Swiss government said on Sunday, opening up the chance of more funding for conservation.

The structures include the Maison Guiette, in Antwerp, Belgium, the National Museum for Western Art in Tokyo, and other structures in France, Switzerland, Argentina, Germany and India.

Central contribution

“The work of Le Corbusier is a central contribution to modern architecture,” the government said in its statement.

The properties “embody the exceptional architectural and constructive responses to the social challenges of the 20th century,” it added.

To him, house a machine to live in

Le Corbusier — famed for calling a house a machine for living in — was born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, in 1887. He adopted the alias Le Corbusier — from his maternal grandfather, Lecorbesier - in 1920. He became a French citizen in 1930 and died in 1965. His image appears on the Swiss 10 franc note.