Le Corbusier was born in Switzerland in 1887. Trained as an artist, he travelled extensively through Germany and the East. In Paris he studied under Auguste Perret and absorbed the cultural and artistic life of the city. During this period he developed a keen interest in the synthesis of the various arts. His invention of :the golden section ratio” in “modulor system” was widely used for the scale of architectural proportion. He saw this system as a continuation of the long tradition of Leonardo da Vinci’s the “Vitruvius”.

Le Corbusier was influenced by the problems he saw in the industrial city. He thought that industrial buildings and housing techniques led to crowding, dirtiness, and a lack of a moral landscape. So he began to take physical form, mainly as houses which he created as “a machine for living in” and which incorporated his trademark five points of architecture. In 1922, he also presented his scheme for a “Contemporary City” for three million inhabitants.

Le Corbusier always thought big. He once proposed replacing a large part of the center of Paris with 18 sixty-story towers. He was also wrote books on interior decoration, painting and architecture. Le Corbusier placed systems of harmony and proportion at the center of his design philosophy, and his interest in the mathematical order was described to “golden section” and “fibonacci” the series. He was a tireless proselytizer, addressing the public in manifestos, pamphlets, exhibitions and his own magazine. Le Corbusier wrotes a new journal called L’Esprit Nouveau. His dictum “Architecture or Revolution”, became his rallying cry for the book Vers une architecture.

His career spanned five decades, with his iconic buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one structure each in North and South America. Le Corbusier also loved Manhattan. He loved its newness, its Cartesian regularity, and besides all he loved its tall buildings. “His influence was universal and his works are invested with a permanent quality possessed by those of very few artists in our history” (notes from Lyndon B. Johnson, US President). Although he dressed like a bureaucrat, in dark suits, bow ties and round horn-rimmed glasses, he was really an artist. National Museum fo Western art Tokyo, Saddam Hussein Gymnasium, Unite de Habitation, UN Headquarter (project) and Notre Dame du Haunt were some of his creations. © ar-chi-tect.org (article wrote by several editing notes).

Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (February 3, 1898 — May 11, 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer, sometimes called the “Father of Modernism” in the Nordic countries. His work includes architecture, furniture and glassware.

Alvar Aalto was born in Kuortane, Finland. He studied architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology from 1916 to 1921. He returned to Jyväskylä, where he opened his first architectural office in 1923. The following year he married architect Aino Marsio

Although he is sometimes regarded as among the first and most influential architects of Nordic modernism, a closer examination of the historical facts reveals that Aalto (while a pioneer in Finland) closely followed and had personal contacts with other pioneers in Sweden, in particular Gunnar Asplund and Sven Markelius (edited from wiki, photo © by alvar aalto foundation).

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the agricultural town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, just two years after the end of the American Civil War. Originally named Frank Lincoln Wright, he changed his name after his parents’ divorce to honor his mother’s Welsh American family, the Lloyd Joneses of Wisconsin. His father, William Russell Cary Wright was a locally admired orator, music teacher, occasional lawyer and itinerant minister. His father had met and married Anna Lloyd Jones, a county school teacher

Wright never attended high school and was admitted to the University of Wisconsin as a special student in 1885. While attending classes at the university, he joined the Fraternity of Phi Delta Theta. He took classes part time for two semesters, while apprenticing under a local builder and professor of civil engineering.

One of Wright’s most famous private residences was constructed from 1935 to 1939 was Fallingwater, built for Mr. and Mrs. Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., at Bear Run, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. It was designed according to Wright’s desire to place the occupants close to the natural surroundings, with a stream and waterfall running under part of the building. Wright practiced what is known as organic architecture, Lynch even states as one of FLW intern, that organic architecture evolves naturally out of the context, most importantly for him the relationship between the site and the building and the needs of the client, edited from wiki, picture from myweb.stedwards.edu.

As an engineer, an architect, the builder, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptualising a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, and the double hull, and outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime,but some of his smaller inventions such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics. Info edited from wiki, picture from fascade.com.