The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier

Seventeen works in seven countries, chosen from what Le Corbusier built over about half a century of what he called patient research, form a single World Heritage property. The earliest is the Maisons La Roche and Jeanneret in Paris, from 1923 to 1925, and the group includes his houses at the Weissenhof-Siedlung in Stuttgart of 1927, the Villa Savoye of 1928 to 1931 and the Capitol Complex at Chandigarh in India.

France placed 14 properties on its Tentative List in 2006 and nominated them jointly with five other countries. Decisions were deferred in 2009 and 2011 because the case for the nomination was judged insufficient, and a nomination cut to 17 sites with Chandigarh added was inscribed in 2016 at the 40th session of the World Heritage Committee in Istanbul.

The Japanese component is the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. When the Japanese government asked for the return of the art collected by the industrialist Kojiro Matsukata, which had stayed in France through the war, France made a museum by a French architect a condition, and Le Corbusier was chosen. His Japanese apprentices Kunio Maekawa, Junzo Sakakura and Takamasa Yoshizaka prepared the detailed drawings and supervised construction; the building was completed in March 1959 and opened on 10 June that year.