Editing Le Corbusier (section)

==Early life (1887–1904)==
[[File:Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret), 1920, Still Life, oil on canvas, 80.9 x 99.7 cm, Museum of Modern Art.jpg|thumb|Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret), 1920, ''Nature morte'' (''Still Life''), oil on canvas, {{convert|80.9|x|99.7|cm|1|abbr=on}}, [[Museum of Modern Art]], New York]]

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret was born on 6 October 1887 in [[La Chaux-de-Fonds]], a city in the [[Canton of Neuchâtel|Neuchâtel canton]] in the [[Romandie]] region of [[Switzerland]]. His ancestors included [[Belgium|Belgians]] with the [[surname]] ''Lecorbésier'', which inspired the [[pseudonym]] ''Le Corbusier'' which he would adopt as an adult.<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Simonin|first=Laurianne|date=May 19, 2021|title=Le Corbusier: 5 Facts to Know|url=https://www.barnebys.com/blog/le-corbusier-5-facts-to-know|magazine=Bbys Magazine|publisher=Barnebys Group|access-date=May 6, 2024}}</ref> His father was an artisan who enameled boxes and watches, and his mother taught piano. His elder brother Albert was an amateur violinist.{{Sfn|Journel|2015|page=32}} He attended a kindergarten that used [[Fröbelian]] methods.<ref>Marc Solitaire, Le Corbusier et l'urbain – la rectification du damier froebelien, pp. 93–117.</ref><ref>Actes du colloque La ville et l'urbanisme après Le Corbusier, éditions d'en Haut 1993 – {{ISBN|2-88251-033-0}}.</ref><ref>Marc Solitaire, Le Corbusier entre Raphael et Fröbel, pp. 9–27, Journal d'histoire de l'architecture N°1, Presses universitaires de Grenoble 1988 – {{ISBN|2-7061-0325-6}}.</ref>

Located in the [[Jura Mountains]] {{convert|5|km|mi}} across the border from [[France]], La Chaux-de-Fonds was a burgeoning city at the heart of the [[Watch Valley]]. Its culture was influenced by the Loge L'Amitié, a [[Masonic lodge]] upholding moral, social, and philosophical ideas symbolized by the right angle (rectitude) and the compass (exactitude). Le Corbusier would later describe these as "my guide, my choice" and as "time-honored ideas, ingrained and deep-rooted in the intellect, like entries from a catechism."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Birksted |first=Ian |url=https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/le-corbusier-and-occult |title=Le Corbusier and the Occult |publisher=MIT Press |year=2009 |isbn=9780262026482 |location=Cambridge, Mass.}}</ref>

Like his contemporaries [[Frank Lloyd Wright]] and [[Mies van der Rohe]], Le Corbusier lacked formal training as an architect. He was attracted to the visual arts; at the age of fifteen, he entered the municipal art school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds which taught the applied arts connected with watchmaking. Three years later he attended the higher course of decoration, founded by the painter [[Charles L'Eplattenier]], who had studied in [[Budapest]] and Paris. Le Corbusier wrote later that L'Eplattenier had made him "a man of the woods" and taught him about painting from nature.{{Sfn|Journel|2015|page=32}} His father frequently took him into the mountains around the town. He wrote later, "we were constantly on mountaintops; we grew accustomed to a vast horizon."<ref>Le Corbusier, ''L'Art décoratif d'aujourdhui'' (1925), p. 198.</ref> He reported later that it was L'Eplattenier who made him choose architecture. "I had a horror of architecture and architects," he wrote. "...I was sixteen, I accepted the verdict and I obeyed. I moved into architecture."<ref>Cited by Jean Petit, ''Le Corbusier lui-meme'',  Rousseau, Geneva 1970, p. 28.</ref> His architecture teacher was architect René Chapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusier's earliest house designs.