The big crow-like one

Went to gay Paree the other day on the Eurostar (first class, don't you know), for a jolly paid for by the good folks at Phaidon. The trip was for this book on Le Corbusier, a snip at £100, which is an overview of Corby's career with a lot of photographs, documents and artwork that have only previously been seen by scholars. Actually, it is a snip - it is one of these massive coffee-table sized luxury books and for what you get, £100 is not that bad.

We got to tour around a few Le Corbusier designed houses, most of which are off limits to the public. I do appreciate Corby (which is what one of the heads of Fondation le Corbusier kept calling him) as a theorist - this whole idea of creating better living conditions in crowded urban environments, in one house he separated body from mind: it was two connected bits, the library and art gallery in one half (mind), eating and sleeping quarters in the other (body).

But I don't know if I ever would want to live in any of his buildings. They look austere, almost brutal. He often didn't think of comfort. We went to the Pavilion Suisse, student housing at the Cite University and the rooms were just boiling because of the use of single glazing for the massive windows and over reliance on concrete (the woman at the Pavilion said it was also very cold in the winter). It was all about theory and nothing to do with the people who were living there - the university has had to make a number of adjustments to improve the students' lives. Putting in places to eat, for example.

He wasn't the best builder. 'Here's another miscalculation by Le Corbusier,' our tour guide would point out frequently, showing us a bit that had to be replaced because the wrong materials were used. For example, the staircase at the Pavilion (above) is lit by natural light from a unique kind of glass tiles. Problem is, these tiles explode in the sunlight and constantly have to be replaced.

I was with a number of architecture journalists who didn't seem to share my views. 'When one walks into this space,' one intoned in a plummy Oxbridge accent as entered the Pavilion lobby, 'one feels the presence of genius.'