Toward an Architecture

Vers une architecture (Toward an Architecture, originally mistranslated as Towards a New Architecture) is a 1923 collection of essays written by French architect Le Corbusier advocating for the tenets of modern architecture. It dismissed eclecticism and Gothic architecture as mere stylistic experiments, instead advocating for fundamentally changing how humans interacted with buildings. It claimed that the industrial age demanded an architecture and aesthetics based purely on the relationship between function and form. It is notable for positing that architecture can help solve social issues, a key aim of early modern architecture. The manifesto is sometimes referred to simply as Vers in English.

Since its publication, it has been influential on discourses of modernism in architecture, attracting both supporters and detractors inside and outside the profession. In 1960, the architectural historian Reyner Banham wrote that its influence was "beyond that of any other architectural work published in this [20th] century to date."