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

Drawing on the author‘s discovery of an unknown, long-forgotten collection of photographs in an Indian ashram, this book offers an exciting, new view of the international community of young architects who served as Le Corbusier‘s assistants in the inter-war years. A collection of some 500 snapshots, assembled by the Czech architect František Sammer between 1931 and 1939, had been stored unnoticed for more than 70 years in an unlikely location – the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India. Sammer was one of Le Corbusier‘s closest assistants from the early 1930s. Later, Sammer worked in the Soviet Union, Japan and India. During, and after, his time in Paris, he personally took or collected these photographs, which he then deposited at the ashram when he left to fight in World War II. The images offer a remarkable view of the international community of people who worked in Le Corbusier’s atelier in the 1930s. Among those featured in the photographs are Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Jeanneret, Jane West (the first American woman to work for Le Corbusier), Gordon Stephenson, Antonin Raymond, Junzo Sakakura and Josep Lluís Sert. Given the travels and international background of these individuals, the photographs are from different countries around the world, including the USSR, England, France, Czech Republic, Greece, USA (Tennessee, Montana, California and New Mexico), Japan and India. The Le Corbusier Galaxy successfully brings together serious archival research with a fascinating narrative, and it captures the human dimension of modern architecture, which is all too often neglected in today’s accounts.