ABSTRACT
When Jeanneret was tasked by his teacher Charles L’Eplattenier in 1910 with writing a piece on urban design for an upcoming conference in his Swiss hometown La Chaux-de-Fonds, he embarked on an intense journey into the depths of the libraries in Munich and Berlin, and visited many German towns and cities. In around six months, Jeanneret compiled a Manuscript of more than 600 pages. He never completed La Construction des villes: it remains a collection of fragments. Yet these fragments can be largely reconstructed, and we can also deduce how Jeanneret planned to complete the Manuscript while writing it in 1910. This chapter traces Jeanneret’s studies during that year, evaluating the impact the various authors had on his understanding of urban planning. Architects Camillo Sitte, Paul Schultze-Naumburg, and Karl Henrici and art historian Albert Erich Brinckmann are Jeanneret’s most valuable sources for his investigation into the morphology of the city.
