Digital Guide

B 3     In the Studio

B 3.1.

In the mid-1920s, Le Corbusier began working in two different studios, using space to structure his working process. The workshops in a former Jesuit monastery at the Rue de Sèvres in Paris, which are no longer extant, consisted of a long corridor with a small office for the “maître.” This space, designated for the design and planning of construction projects, was where his staff, including Pierre Jeanneret, André Wogenscky, Charlotte Perriand, Georges Candilis, Jerzy Sołtan, José Luis Sert, and Fernand Pouillon, worked.

B 3.2.

By contrast, the live-in studio in Immeuble Molitor at Rue Nungesser-et-Coli, which Le Corbusier built and then moved into in 1934, was primarily intended for solitary work, design, and art. Le Corbusier was convinced that regular artistic activity fed a vibrant imagination. At the same time, it provided a counterbalance to the many restrictions and constraints of project-based architectural planning. 

Furniture design

Throughout his life, Le Corbusier designed numerous pieces of furniture. He understood the furnishing of homes early on as an integral part of architecture. Some furniture he designed himself, while for others he collaborated with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret and the architect and designer Charlotte Perriand (1903–1999). This is the case with the LC2 armchair and the LC3 sofa, which the trio designed for the villa of the American writer Henry Church. In 1929, they were also presented to the public.

The construction of these pieces of furniture emphasizes the separation of the supporting structure and the upholstery. For the time, it was also very unusual to use "industrial" materials such as steel tubing in furniture design. Steel tube furniture was invented in the 1920s by designer Marcel Breuer at the Bauhaus in Germany and was further developed internationally by many designers, including Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, Mart Stam, Eileen Gray, and Alvar Aalto. Due to Le Corbusier's higher level of recognition, the furniture pieces designed by Perriand, Jeanneret, and Le Corbusier are marketed with the abbreviation "LC," which repeatedly raises the question of the authorship of the furniture.

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