Did Somebody see Mr. Corbu ? Gwénaëlle Abolivier

Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier was born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in 1887 and died in 1965. He is one of the most important representants of the modern movement with, for example, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropuis, Alvar Aalto and Theo van Doesburg. Installed in Paris since 1917, he participates to the creation of the Esprit nouveau, an art and architecture magazine in which he uses the pseudonym of Le Corbusier. After the WWII, he proposes his "unités d'habitation" (habitation units) and realises Marseille's Cité radieuse.

Great theoretician, he maintains his publications with le Modulor (1950), presentation of modern architecture.

Gwenaëlle Abolivier

Journalist and writer Gwenaëlle Abolivier is also a voice on France Inter radio. For more than twenty years, she traveled the world as a foreign correspondent and program producer. Today, she focuses on literary and poetic writing: Tu m’avais dit Ouessant (Le mot et le reste, 2019) won the 2020 Marine Bravo Zulu prize.

She is the author of the illustrated portrait Ella Maillart, l’intrépide femme du globe (Paulsen, 2023), several stories including La Forme du fleuve (Le mot et le reste, 2023) and Qui a vu Monsieur Corbu ? (Bernard Chauveau Édition, 2016). In 2022 and 2023, she is an associate author at Maison Julien Gracq, where she is also the artistic and literary director.

She has a particular fondness for islands around the world and the maritime universe.