Now that Frank Lloyd Wright is gone, chief rivals for the title of world dean of international architects are German-born, Chicago-based Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 73, whose skin-and-bones style (Manhattan's Seagram building) has spread the vogue for glass-curtain walls across the U.S., and France's prickly, Swiss-born Le Corbusier, 72, whose dramatic structures (Ronchamp Chapel) qualify as large-scale sculptures in concrete. Last week "Corbu," who has long been rankled by the fact that U.S. clients have fought shy of his turbulent genius, landed his first U.S. commission—a $1,500,000 Visual Arts Center for Harvard University.
Surrounding himself with all the secrecy of a...