Prof Tim Benton

Professional biography

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 three major exhibibtions at the South Bank Centre: Thirties; art and design before the war (1979) and Le Corbusier; architect of the century (1987) and Art and Power (1995) as well as 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). Research into Le Corbusier’s photography led to his contribution of a room to the exhibition ‘Construire l’image: Le Corbusier et la photographie’ at the Musée des Beaux Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, with a chapter in the catalogue and, a year later, a single-authored book, LC Foto.  In 2014 he contributed a room on Le Corbusier and the Mediterranean to the exhibition Domus Mare Nostrum at the Hôtel des Arts de Toulon, with a chapter in the catalogue. In 2015 he curated  an exhibition on Art Deco at the Fondation Juan March, Madrid. In 2024 he contributed one room to an exhibition on Le Corbusier's Villa Baizeau in Tunis. He has also worked on Italian architecture and design in the 1920s and 1930s.

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) as well as several foreign language editions.. 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rhetorical methods used by Le Corbusier in the lectures with which spread his ideas across the world, using previously unpublished manuscripts, sketches and photographs.His book LC Foto (2013) opened up a new field in the study of Le COrbusier's photographs. In 2015 he published Le Corbusier peintre a Cap Martin (2015), adapted and reissued in English as The painter Le Corbusier; Eileen Gray's villa E1027 and le cabanon (2023) tackled the controversial subject of Le Corbusier mural paintings in Eileen Gray's villa on the Cote d'Azur. 

He is cuirrently working on an edition of the correspondence between Le Corbusier and Robert Rebutato, the boy he befriended and mentored and who later joined the architect's studio.

At the Open University, he was responsible for introducing a curriculum strand on heritage studies, beginning with an online short course (A180) in 2008, followed by a second level course  Understanding global heritage (AD281) in 2009. He contributed a chapter on the history of modern architecture and design to Exploring art and visual culture (A226) .