“His travels became a search for origin and meaning in a world increasingly without either”

The early travels of architect, urban planner, artist and all-around Renaissance man Le Corbusier were highly influential on both his later work and his philosophy of how to live. What began as reconnaissance turned into a lifelong obsession as he crisscrossed the globe, studying and executing ideas on how to set the great advances of modern civilization against their calamitous repercussions on society. Today, we can travel from France to India and back again to see the outcome of his experiments, but to better understand his intentions, it’s best to look back on his first sojourns.

Born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris in 1887 and raised in the small Swiss town of La Chaux-de-Fonds in the Jura mountains, Le Corbusier came from a family of watchmakers and musicians. Feeling confined b...