Attention, early modernist aficionados! In lieu of the pictures of the “Evil Villa Savoye“ we reported last month, today we bring you these lovely greeting cards inspired by Le Corbusier’s most famous buildings. Produced by London-based Stefi Orazi Studio, each pack of cards features minimalist illustrations of Le Corb’s canonical works. The roster includes (the real) Villa Savoye, Notre Dame du Haut (Ronchamp), Unité d’Habitation Marseille, Cité de Refuge, and Unité d’Habitation Berlin-Charlottenburg. Click through to see them all!

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Despite what right-wing media and reddit trolls would have you believe, architectural counterfeiting is not limited to emerging East Asian countries (duh). The fact is that architecture, in the West or East, is no stranger to copying, a (professionalized) practice that continues to this day in all corners of the world. (For sterling proof see these 10 copycat buildings.) We find the latest example in Australia, where at the National Museum of Australia (NMA) in Canberra, strolling visitors may come across a black replica of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye.

Spotted on the Tumblr webz this week, the sinister doppelgänger is every bit as awkward and cheaply built — or not so cheaply, the structure cost $13.8 million to build — as you’d imagine a copy to be. The double is actually one of several follies that dot the grounds of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), which shares its campus with the NMA. The replica was “designed” by architecture firm Ashton Raggatt McDougall at 1:1 scale with the original, though the latter’s canonical forms have here been submitted to strange mutations. A staircase grows from one of the structure’s sides, connecting the second floor to the quad, while the upper loggia and roof deck are nonexistent, hemmed in by a panes of dark, opaque glass. The white stucco specified by Corbu is replaced with black aluminum panels that scream “bad  80s achitecture,” and which, when coupled with rooftop’s solidified forms, lend the structure a heaviness entirely missing from the original scheme. It’s also scary as hell.

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Whoever is curating LEGO’s Architecture series has our approval. The legendary toymaker has already pixelized some fantastic, if obvious, buildings, from the Villa Savoye to the Farnsworth House and, of course, Fallingwater. Now, LEGO has announced the next classic to be immortalized in the plastic colored bricks. Frank Lloyd Wright’s tragically demolished Imperial Hotel will be the first of the LEGO “Architect” sets to be released in 2013, setting the bar high for the coming toy year. Continue.

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‘Tis the season to make merry. And what’s merrier than gingerbread!? We launched our Gingerbread House Competition yesterday, and to celebrate, we’ve scoped the interwebs for some great gingerbread architecture to get your creative juices going. The following “houses” are all modeled on modernist classics, like the Villa Savoye and the Guggenheim Museum (FLDubbs approves, or that’s how we’re interpreting that “smile” above). Of course, your gingerbread house can be anything you want, either based on a famous building, modernist or not, or a new “building” all your own. We’re giving away a brand new iPad mini to the best gingerbread creation, so you’ll definitely want to go all out! Click through and happy baking!

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Surprise! LEGO has unveiled the next in their highly bloggable Architecture toy series, Le Corbusier’s definitive modernist house and monument, the Villa Savoye. The set will make its debut in stores and online on Sept. 1, where it will retail for a steep $69.99. From the looks of it, the model is a fairly faithful copy of the canonical design, though it’s unclear whether the interiors will be articulated, via bumpy recreations of the original spiral staircase and ceremonial ramp that figured greatly in Le Corbusier’s promenade architecturale. The roof pavilions are there, appropriately curvilinear, and the ribbon windows accurately proportioned. The real test is whether or not the U-shaped driveway can accommodate a turning LEGO toy car (aha!). With the release of the LEGO Villa Savoye, Corbu will finally join the ranks of Mies and Wright, each of whom have long been honored with sets–three in Wright’s case–of their own.

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In considering the work of Le Corbusier “from the frog’s perspective,” Adolf Max Vogt crafted a thrilling, if not an altogether, fantastical account of the origins of one of Modernism’s most signifying elements: the pilotis, load bearing, freestanding columns which lifted entire structures off the ground and into the air. In his book “Le Corbusier, The Noble Savage,” Vogt posits that the pilotis or “piles” which became a hallmark of Le Corbusier’s architecture, in fact, indexed the prehistoric water dwelling architecture that once dotted Switzerland’s great lakes. Mexican artist Santiago Borja furthers Vogt’s thesis with his site-specific art installation SITIO, a grand, ironic gesture which directly foregrounds the Villa Savoye in order to reveal the traces of primitivism which exist in it. More after the jump!

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