Tim Benton is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the Open University. His research interests include Le Corbusier’s work of the 1920s and 1930s and the history of modern architecture and design. For several years he has been working on Le Corbusier’s domestic architectural designs (1914-1935) which includes a study of all the architectural drawings and documents associated with these projects. He has developed computer software for the analysis of architectural drawings as part of this research. He contributed to two major exhibitions at the V&A: Art Deco 1910-1939 (2003) and Modernism Designing a new world (2006) and to the first major retrospective exhibition of the work of Charlotte Perriand at the Pompidou Centre, Paris (2006).
His classic study of the design of Le Corbusier’s Villas in Paris in the 1920s was republished in a revised French edition by Editions de La Villette and in English by Birkhäuser: The Villas of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret 1920-1930 (2007). His book Le Corbusier conférencier was published in French by Editions Le Moniteur, Paris (2007) and issued in English by Birkhäuser in 2008. This is a major study of the rhetorical methods used by Le Corbusier in the lectures with which spread his ideas across the world, using previously unpublished manuscripts, sketches and photographs.
He is currently working on a life of Le Corbusier (Reaktion Books) and a book on Le Corbusier’s domestic architecture (1910-1935). He is directing a series of three volumes of all the texts, drafts, drawings and critiques of Le Corbusier’s lectures for the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris.
At the Open University, he is responsible for introducing a curriculum strand on heritage studies, beginning with an online short course (A180) in April 2008, followed by a second level course (A280) in 2009.
In 2008 he was visiting Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University. In 2009 he was the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History at Williams College, Massachussetts.
The Modernist Home, V&A Publications, April 2006
The Villas of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret 1920-1930, Birkhäuser and Editions de La Villette, 2007
Le Corbusier conférencier, Editions Le Moniteur, 2007. This book was awarded the 2008 Prix National du Livre (ex aequo) by the Académie d’Architecture in France.
‘Building Utopia’ and ‘Modernism and Nature’ essays and catalogue entries in Modernism, (V&A Publications, 2006), 149-224, 311-340
‘The Modernist Interior’, in Centre for the Study of the Design of the Interior, Imagined Interiors, (V&A Publications, 2006), 220-239
‘Les années Le Corbusier’, in Charlotte Perriand catalogue, Editions du Centre Pompidou, December 2005, 11-23
33 entries in Le Corbusier Plans, DVD publication of all 33,000 architectural drawings by Le Corbusier, (Echelle-1, Paris and Tokio, 2004-5)
‘Pessac and Lège revisited: standards, dimensions and failures’, Massilia, 2004, 64-99
‘The Style and the Age’ (co-authored with Charlotte Benton), ‘Art Deco architecture’, ‘Italian architecture and design’, ‘Avant-garde sources’ (co-authored with Charlotte Benton), ‘Decline and Revival’ (co-authored with Charlotte Benton) in Art Deco catalogue, (V&A, 2003), 12-27, 100-111, 218-229, 244-259, 426-9
‘From Jeanneret to Le Corbusier: Rusting Iron, bricks and coal and the modern Utopia’, Massilia, 2003. 28-39
‘La maison de week-end dans le paysage Parisien,’ in Le Corbusier et Paris, Les Rencontres de la Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, 2001, 95-111 (also published in Le Corbusier and the architecture of re-invention, Architectural Association, London, 118-139)
‘Humanism and Fascism’, Comparative Criticism, (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 69-115
‘From the arengario to the lictor’s axe: memories of Italian Fascism’, in M. Kwint, C. Breward and J. Aynsley eds., Material Memories, (Berg, 1999)
‘"La Rocca": Maison La Roche as the Opus 1 of Le Corbusier’s architectural career’, in K.Schmidt, H. Fischer and G. Hatje, eds., Ein Haus für den Kubismus, Die Sammlung Raoul la Roche, (Ostfildern-Ruit, 1998)
‘Multiple Media and Multimedia: Some Possible Options for the History of Art and Design’, Journal of Design History, 9:3, 1996
‘Speaking without adjectives: architecture in the service of totalitarianism’ and ‘Rome refinds its empire’, ed., Art and Power, catalogue, (Hayward Gallery, South Bank, 1995)
See also Open Research Online for further details of Tim Benton’s research publications.
