Le Corbusier: an architecture of nature and humanity
A talk by Mike Tonkin
19.00-21.00 on 22nd July 2025
at the Alan Baxter Associates Gallery, 77 Cowcross St, London EC1M 6EL and online.
Docomomo members go free. To book a member’s ticket please see here. To become a member see here.
Tickets for attendance in person and online are available here. Tickets will also be available on the door.
A link to watch the talk online will be sent to attendees before it begins.
As a wandering observer seeking firsthand experience, I have spent many years of my life travelling and photographing nature and people in places around the world. This has created a body of knowledge informing the storytelling apporach in the work undertaken by Tonkin Liu.
My collection of photographs spans over 50 years and encompasses a diverse range of architects. To visit Le Corbusier’s buildings and surrender to their idiosyncratic charm is to venture into his ‘magnificent play of form in light’. Many of the photographs depict repeat visits to his buildings in varying states of repair and different qualities of light.
I have made a selection for Docomomo of buldings by Le Corbusier from Europe, South America, and India. They will be presented as journeys of discovery focusing on the relationship between nature and humanity.
Mike Tonkin, PhD, MA RCA, BA (Hons), FRSA, CMLI, ARB, RIBA
Mike qualified as an architect in 1989, the year he established his practice. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1986, having received first-class honours at Leeds Polytechnic. Mike completed an apprenticeship as an architectural technician, with training at Bath Technical College. His interest in nature prompted his qualification as a landscape architect in 2014. Mike directed practices in Hong Kong and London before co-founding Tonkin Liu with Anna Liu in 2002.
Mike has taught for many years, with a particular interest in storytelling, including a decade at the University of Bath and as a Unit Master at the Architectural Association and the University of Westminster. He has been an external examiner for the master’s courses at UCL and a longstanding visiting critic. He completed his PhD in the Engineering Department at the University of Bath and is currently a visiting professor at the Manchester School of Architecture.