A large proportion of the architectural fraternity turned out for the opening of the show ‘Le Corbusier: The Art of Architecture’, at London’s Barbican Centre, last Wednesday.

The show has made the move from from Lutyens Crypt at Liverpool to the London’s Barbican Centre, and by all accounts, the move has been a positive one for the legibility of the show. From the people I spoke to on the opening night, Lutyens crypt had been a difficult space to negotiate for Architecture’s most famous Modernist. The Barbican’s imposing Brutalism proves a far more forgiving backdrop for the biggest assembly of the Master’s photos, models and drawings since the 1987 Corb retrospective at the Hayward Gallery.

The displays have been put together in a far more coherent and logical way, avoiding the dead ends that appeared at the exhibition in Liverpool. The ground floor elements of the show is full of models, while the upper areas are more devoted to the drawings of the master. Most interesting perhaps, is the model of the Villa Schwob. I have previously only ever seen this as a photograph, so it is quite a revelation to see the model at 1:50 scale. There is a real sense of how modern the building is, in a way that photographs do not convey. The model manages to reveal the classical trimmings on the buildings as exactly that – trimmings, and the actual volumes are proto-Modern.

But most enduring of all is the video of Chandigarh showing the everyday life of the city. Sometimes Le Corbusier’s work can be bound up in theory and rhetoric, but this charming little visual diary shows just how effectively Le Corbusier’s uncompromising, western design has bedded down over time, deep within the Indian subcontinent.

Images: ©FLC/DACS, 2008-2009