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Le Corbusier. Une petite maison. Zurich : Girsberger, 1954
“Two books published in 1954 and 1958 -the first devoted to the house for his parents on the shore of Lake Geneva, the second to the chapel at Ronchamp- also display a determination to lift the genre of architectural monograph to the rank of artist’s book. Like Poésie sur Alger, both of these covers employ handwritten lettering, and Ronchamp also includes several enlargements of handwritten notes that thus acquire the twin status of text and illustration. In the 1954 book, Une petite maison, drawings often appear alongside photographs, allowing the author to stress the simultaneously subjective and creative aspect of the project through a constant reminder of handcrafted labor. Furthermore, Le Corbusier printed his own portrait of his mother as the basis of an original visual composition across a double page spread. In the book on Ronchamp, the series of photographs -more formalist and documentary, featuring cropped framing or unexpected angles- work not so much to give a legible view of the building as to convey the artistic feeling of the site, thereby exploiting the format of the book to lend another dimension to the presentation of the project.”
Catherine de Smet. Le Corbusier, architect of books. Baden: Lars Müller, 2005 (p. 91-92)