Dali on Le Corbusier

'Karl Marx suffered from the same kind of illusions as poor Le Corbusier, whose recent death filled me with great joy. Both of them were architects. Le Corbusier was a pitiable creature working in reinforced concrete. Mankind will soon be landing on the moon, and just imagine: that buffoon claimed we'd be taking along sacks of reinforce concrete. His heaviness and the heaviness of the concrete deserve one another.... Le Corbusier simply went down for the third time, because of his reinforced concrete and his architectures, the ugliest and most unacceptable buildings in the world. All the same, if God exists, He'd expect me to act like a gentleman. So I ordered some everlasting flowers for the anniversary of his death, next year, and I cried out: "long live anti-gravitation"'

Alain Bosquet, Conversations with Dali, New York, 1969, pp16, 17, 31

Le Corbusier, Chandigarh, Sector-17

“M. Le Corbusier has enthusiasm and a remarkable faculty for begging the question, and whatever the value of his writings I find his buildings simply unintelligible in their purpose and wholly unpleasant to look at”[1].

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[1] Blomfield, R. (1934). Modernismus. London, Macmillan and Co., p57

The Royal Liverpool University Hospital

Designed by Holford Associates around 1963, it opened its doors to the sick and inflicted in 1978. According to Sharples the back is "undeniably impressive, if intimidating" (Sharples, 2004, "Liverpool" Yale University Press).

Perhaps the best bit is the boiler house with its 'hammer-like' chimney. The determined grid of the facade is also successful, framed by the ventilation stacks and emergency escapes at either side.

Now that various properties have been demolished in the Mount Vernon area a new view has opened up of the hospital (see photograph). I recommend interested readers head up to the Mount Vernon public house, Kensington and have a look for themselves. It certainly is impressive. The scale of the building is vast, something visitors will not necessarily experience as they approach the hospital entrance because of the podium.