Le Corbusier. L'architecture d'aujourd'hui: Le Corbusier, 2ème numéro spécial. Boulogne, Seine: L'Architecture d'Aujourdhui, 1948

“Another special issue of L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, dated 1948 was devoted to Le Corbusier and notably contained a text originally called ‘Synthèse des arts’ (Synthesis of the Arts) but finally titled ‘Unité’ (Unity). It was a direct extension of the task begun with New World of Space, proposing a new, more sophisticated version of ‘synthetic’ layouts. Here art, architecture, and town planning were skillfully merged thanks to montage and superimposition of effects made possible by new printing techniques. Thus a skyscrapper planned for Algiers seems literally incorporated into a painting, while drawings of spiraling, shell-like animal bones form a pattern that partially screens a photograph of the Stein Villa in Garches. Elsewhere, transparent colored shapes -flat areas of yellow, blue, and green- are superimposed on columns of text and images (not unlike paintings by Ferdinand Léger). Seeking to demonstrate the close links between the diverse fields of architecture, painting, sculpture, and town planning, Le Corbusier came to handle the printed page itself as an artistic medium; the unity of his oeuvre found its best argument through a concept that was itself highly creative.”

Catherine de Smet. Le Corbusier, architect of books. Baden: Lars Müller, 2005 (p. 91)