Charles-Edouard Jeannneret Gris, the brilliant and polemic architect known as “Le Corbusier” arrived in Colombia in 1947, invited by the Colombian architects Paul Lester Wiener and Josep Luis Sert as a “Plan Director” for the city of Bogotá.  He remained there for 71 days on his first visit, which was structured around two conferences on his work given at the Teatro Colón under the title "El Urbanismo Como Supremo Ordenador Social."  He was subsequently hired to design downtown Bogota. Though he spent several years filling sketchbooks with drawings of daily life and working to create maps and charts of Bogotá’s neighborhoods, his innovative master urban development scheme only made it to the theoretical phase was not completed due to political reasons (Tarchopulos, "Las huellas del plan para Bogotá de Le Corbusier, Sert y Wiener.," Revista Electrónica De Geografía y Ciencias Sociales Universidad de Barcelona).  “Le Corbusier en Bogotá 1947-1951” (O’byrne, 2010) is a compilation of Le Corbusier’s work in Bogota. As part of the study and the publication, an exhibition to divulge Le Corbusier’s work and Bogota’s urban heritage was mounted.

 In 1943 Le Corbusier had founded a new association of modern architects and builders, the Ascoral, the Assembly of Builders for Architectural Renovation. The work of this think tank would lead to the postwar publication of two new books, The Three Human Establishments (1945) and Looking at City Planning (1946).