Frank Lloyd Wright once said about Le Corbusier, "Now that he has finished one building, he'll go write four books about it." In his first major work, Towards A New Architecture, collected essays he'd written for the magazine L'Esprit Nouveau, dismissing the then-popular trends of Art Deco and eclecticism, "The house is a machine for living in," Le Corbusier said, laying out his architectural ethos. Some of the essays had been co-written with artist Amedee Ozenfant, though Ozenfant claimed they were only inspired by conversations he had had with Le Corbusier.

His Modulor and Modulor 2 were far more technical works, setting forth his scale of proportions, based on classical influences and recent mathematics. Though Le Corbusier described the scale as universally applicable to architecture, it was not always obvious how to derive practical applications from his mathematics.

His later work, The Poem of the Right Angle, is a clearer statement of his aims. A series of 19 paintings accompanied by text, it's carefully arranged and color-coded so as to apply concepts from alchemy to modern architecture.

Books Written by Le Corbusier

Jeanneret, Charles-Édouard, Étude sur le mouvement d'art décoratif en Allemagne (La Chaux-de-Fonds: Haefli & Cie., 1912)
Ozenfant, Amédée, and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, Après le Cubisme (Paris: Edition des Commentaires, 1918)
Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant, eds., L'Esprit nouveau 1-28, 1920-25 Le Corbusier-Saugnier, Vers une architecture (Paris: Crès & Cie., 1923)
Le Corbusier, L'Art décoratif d'aujourd'hui (Paris: Crès & Cie., 1925)
Ozenfant, Amédée, and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, La peinture moderne (Paris: Crès & Cie., 1925)
Le Corbusier, Urbanisme (Paris: Crès & Cie., 1925)
Le Corbusier, L'Almanach d'architecture moderne (Paris: Crès & Cie., 1926)
Le Corbusier, Une Maison - un palais (Paris: Crès & Cie., 1928)
Le Corbusier, Précisions sur un état présent de l'architecture et de l'urbanisme (Paris: Crès & Cie., 1930)
Le Corbusier and Paul Otlet, Mundaneum (Brussels: Les Associations Internationales, Palais Mondial, Publication nºº 128, 1928)
Le Corbusier, Requête à M. le Président de la Société des Nations (Paris: Imprimerie Union, 1931)
Le Corbusier, Claviers de couleur (Basel: Salubra, 1931)
Le Corbusier, Croisade ou le crépuscule des académies (Paris: Crès & Cie., 1933)
Le Corbusier, Aircraft (London, New York: The Studio, 1935)
Le Corbusier, La Ville radieuse (Boulogne: L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, 1935)
Le Corbusier, Quand les cathédrales étaient blanches. Voyage au pays de timides (Paris: Plon, 1937)
Le Corbusier, Des canons, des munitions ? Merci ! Des lois... S.V.P. (Bologne: L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, 1938)
Le Corbusier, L'IIôt insalubre 6 (Paris: Tournon, 1938)
Le Corbusier, OEuvre plastique, peintures et dessins, architecture (Paris: Morancé, 1938)
Le Corbusier, 'Le Lyrisme des temps nouveaux et l'urbanisme', in Le Point, n° XX, 1939
Le Corbusier, Destin de Paris (Paris, Clermont-Ferrand: Sorlot, 1941)
Le Corbusier, Sur les quatre routes (Paris: Gallimard, 1941)
Le Corbusier, La Maison des hommes (Paris: Plon, 1942)
Le Corbusier, Les Constructions 'Murondins' (Paris, Clermont-Ferrand: Sorlot, 1942)
Le Corbusier, La Charte d'Athènes (Paris: London, 1943)
Le Corbusier, Entretien avec les étudiants des écoles d'architecture (Paris: Denoël, 1943)
Le Corbusier, Les Trois Établissements humains (Paris: Denoël, 1945)
Le Corbusier, Manière de penser l'urbanisme (Boulogne: Editions de l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, 1946)
Le Corbusier, Propos d'urbanisme ((Boulogne: Bourrelier, 1946)
Le Corbusier, UN Headquarters (New York: Reinhold, 1947)
Le Corbusier, Grille Ciam d'Urbanisme (Boulogne: Editions de l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, 1948)
Le Corbusier, New World of Space (New York: Raynal & Hitchcock, 1948)
Le Corbusier, Le Modulor (Boulogne: Editions de l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, 1950)
Le Corbusier, 'Le Unite d'habitation de Marseille', in Le Point, n° XXXVIII, 1950
Le Corbusier, Poésie sur Alger (Paris: Falaize, 1950)
Le Corbusier, Une petite maison (Zurich: Girsberger, 1954)
Le Corbusier, Modulor 2 (Boulogne: Editions de l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, 1955)
Le Corbusier, Le Poème de l'angle droit (Paris: Verve, 1955)
Le Corbusier, Les Plans de Paris (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1956)
Le Corbusier, Ronchamp (Stuttgart: Hatje, 1957)
Le Corbusier, Claviers de couleur Salubra (Basel: Salubra, 1959)
Le Corbusier, Main Werk/L'Atelier de la recherche patiente (Stuttgart: Hatje, 1960)

Books on Le Corbusier

Ando, Tadao, Le Corbusier: Houses (Tokyo: Toto, 2001)
Baker, Geoffrey, Le Corbusier: An analysis of form (London: Routledge, 1996)
Beer, Oliver, Lucien Hervé: Building Images (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2004)
Benton, Tim, Le Corbusier: Le Grand (London : Phaidon, 2008)
Benton, Tim, ed., Le Corbusier, Architect of the Century (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1987)
Benton , Tim, The Modernist Home (London: V&A, 2006)
Benton, Tim, The Villas of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, 1920-1930 (Birkhauser Verlag AG, 2007)
Boesiger, Willy, ed., Le Corbusier, Oeuvre complete (1929-1979) (Zurich: Birkhauser, 1995)
Cohen, Jean-Louis, Le Corbusier (Cologne: Taschen, 2004)
Cohen, Jean-Louis, Le Corbusier and the mystique of the USSR: Theories and Projects for Moscow, 1928-36 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992)
Colomina, Beatriz, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994)
Curtis, William, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms (Oxford: Phaidon, 1986)
Curtis, William, Modern Architecture since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon, 1987)
De Heer, Jan, The Architectonic Colour: Polychromy in the Purist Architecture of Le Corbusier (Rotterdam: Uitgeverij 010 Publishers, 2008)
de Smet, Catherine, Le Corbusier: Architect of Books (Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2007)
Eliel, Carol S., L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918- 1925 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2001)
Frampton, Kenneth, Le Corbusier (Paris: Hazan, 2001)
Fox Weber, Nicholas, Le Corbusier: A Life (New York, Toronto: Alfred A. Knoff Publishers, 2008)
Hervé, Lucien, Le Corbusier: As Artist As Writer (Neuchâtel: Editions du Griffon, 1970)
Hervé, Lucien, Architecture of Truth: The Cisterian Abbey of Le Thorenet (London: Phaidon, 2001)
Janson, Alban and Carsten Krohn, Le Corbusier: Unité d'habitation, Marseille ( Fellbach : Edition Axel Menges, 2008)
Jencks, Charles, Le Corbusier and the Continuing Revolution in Architecture (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2000)
Jencks, Charles, and others, Le Corbusier and the Reinvention of Architecture (London: Architectural Association Publications, 2003)
Lucan, Jacques, ed., Le Corbusier, Une encyclopédie (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1987)
Murray, Irene, and Julian Osley, eds., Le Corbusier and Britain, an Anthology (London: Routledge, 2008)
Novakov, Anna and Elizabeth Schmidle, eds., The Artistic Legacy of Le Corbusier's Machine á Habiter (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008)
Phaidon Editors, Le Corbusier Le Grand (London: Phaidon, 2008)
Prakash, Vikramaditya, Chandigarh's Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2002)
Richards, Simon, Le Corbusier and the Concept of Self (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003)
Rüegg, Arthur, and René Burri, Le Corbusier : Moments in the Life of a Great Architect (Basel : Birkhauser Verlag AG, 1999)
Rüegg, Arthur, and Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier before Le Corbusier: Applied Arts, Architecture, Painting and Photography, 1907- 1922 (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2002)
Rüegg, Arthur, Le Corbusier Polychromie Architecturale: Color Keyboards from 1931-1959 (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag AG, 2007)
Samuel, Flora, Le Corbusier: Architect and Feminist (London: John Wiley & Sons, 2004)
Trieb, Marc, Space Calculated in Seconds: The Philips Pavilion, Le Corbusier, Edgard Varèse (Princeton, NJ, Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1996)
von Moos, Stanislaus, Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis ( Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 1979)
von Vegesack, Alexander, and Mateo Kries, eds., Le Corbusier: The Art of Architecture (Wiel am Rhein: VITRA Design Museum, 2007)
Wogenscky, Andre, Le Corbusier's Hands (Cambridge, MA, London: MIT, 2006)