On August 27, 1965, Le Corbusier went for his daily swim off Cabbé beach in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. His doctor warned him against such strenuous exercise at his age, but he waved the doctor away. While in the water, he suffered a heart attack. He made it back to the rocky beach, but struggled to pull himself to shore. Passerbys offered to help, but he waved them away. He failed in pulling himself onto the rocks and slipped into the water and drowned. He was 77.
After his wife died in 1957, Corbu buried her at the municipal cemetery in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, a stunning hill-hugging resting place overlooking the Mediterranean. Corbu bought a plot for himself next to her and designed his own headstone, a miniature Brutalist structure. Colored enamel plates represented the sea and sun with seashells pressed into the cold concrete.
The hazy horizon seemed to say "the difference between materiality and nothingness is but a slow blur." A fly buzzed around us. We waved it away.
