The first English edition of Le Corbusier's text The Athens Charter. With introductions by Josep Lluis Sert and Jean Giraudoux, translated by Anthony Eardley. "The Athens Charter was first published in Paris - clandestinely, its author anonymous, with an introduction by jean Giraudoux - in 1943, at the height of the Nazi occupation. Not until the second edition was published in 1957 did the name of Le Corbusier illuminate the Charter. This great modernist manifesto, a milestone in the history of urban planning, was the result of the fourth meeting of the CIAM (International Congress for Modern Architecture), held in 1933 aboard the steamship Patris II, which cruised from Athens to Marseilles and back. On board were such avant-gardists, as Léger, Moholy-Nagy, Giedion, Jeanneret, Aatlo, Moser, Van Eesteren, Sert - architects, planners, scientists, doctors, technologists, artists, and others. The participants brought iwth them studies and plans of more than thirty-three cities, prepared over the previous four years, and together created a comprehensive outline of the problems, trends, and cures for the cities of the future. The document, which Le Corbusier later expanded, exposes the insidious decay of cities, the dehumanization of their people, and the laissez-faire attitude of their public officials, and lays down the requirements and priorities necessary to establish a healthy, decent, humane environment for man. The ninety-five clauses of the Charter are, remarkably, as meaningful and pertinent today, in our own search for solutions to the untended ills of the city, as when they were so compellingly documented by Le Corbusier after that historic conference forty years ago." -- from interior flap. Printed in black-and-white.