“Baghdad is at end of the world,” wrote Le Corbusier, “My responsibility as an architect is to be careful and not to be embark the client on adventures or misadventures.” But that’s exactly the fate that met the architect’s design for the Baghdad Gymnasium. A series of (mostly) misadventures would delay the realization of Le Corbusier’s sports complex nearly 25 years, from 1957 when the first plans were submitted to the Iraqi authorities to 1982 after Saddam Hussein had assumed power and completed the concrete structure as a monument to his rule. In that time, the original project underwent several iterations precipitated by the 1958 revolution and Le Corbusier’s death in 1965, among a series of other factors. Now, the building will enter into a new phase of life, as Iraq seeks aid from France to restore the obscure modernist work. Le Corbusier in Iraq? Woah, I had no idea this existed. 

“Baghdad is at end of the world,” wrote Le Corbusier, “My responsibility as an architect is to be careful and not to be embark the client on adventures or misadventures.” But that’s exactly the fate that met the architect’s design for the Baghdad Gymnasium. A series of (mostly) misadventures would delay the realization of Le Corbusier’s sports complex nearly 25 years, from 1957 when the first plans were submitted to the Iraqi authorities to 1982 after Saddam Hussein had assumed power and completed the concrete structure as a monument to his rule. In that time, the original project underwent several iterations precipitated by the 1958 revolution and Le Corbusier’s death in 1965, among a series of other factors. Now, the building will enter into a new phase of life, as Iraq seeks aid from France to restore the obscure modernist work.

Le Corbusier in Iraq? Woah, I had no idea this existed. 

8 notes | Reblog
1 year ago
Posted on May 7th at 11:11 PM
Tagged as: Architecture. Iraq. Baghdad. Le Corbusier. Modernist Architecture.
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