Aircraft

“For years I have been using an eye that is ten thousand meters above the ground!” Le Corbusier was always fascinated by technological progress and always included chapters on ocean liners, automobiles, airplanes and later elevators in his first books.
In 1929, he was in an airplane flying over South America. This first flying experience inspired him to accept a proposal from the English publisher The Studio to produce a book on aviation. The publisher provides him with a large selection of photographs gathered from important collections around the world. In particular, he enlists Antoine de Saint-Exupéry as a consultant. The book appears in 1935 in the collection “The New Vision”, which will later include Raymond Loewy’s book “Locomotive”.
It seems ironic that the original artwork was destroyed in a V2 attack on London in 1942, just as Le Corbusier was trying to get a German edition published. Almost 80 years later, it is finally being published by Wasmuth & Zohlen Verlag. It has been expanded to include a foreword by Engelbert Lütke Daldrup and an afterword by Gerwin Zohlen.