Le Corbusier’s Mini Buildings

By Daniel Chen

January 10, 2008

Andre Wogenscky, a close associate of Le Corbusier for more than thirty years

reminisced on his friend and employer a decade after his death, “Many think that Le

Corbusier developed furniture to go with his architecture. I prefer to take the view that he

designed architecture to go with his furniture. Thinking on the scale of the furniture means

thinking about the body, about hands and eyes – this is the origin of Le Corbusier’s

architecture.”1 When one first thinks of Le Corbusier, what comes to mind are often his

iconic building designs such as the ones for Villa Savoye or Unite d’Habitation. What

come next are his architectural theories and ideologies espoused in his publication L’Esprit

Nouveau. His furniture and interior designs however, usually come towards the end when

listing Le Corbusier’s influential achievements.

Nevertheless, Wogenscky’s quote provides insight into how Le Corbusier’s

furniture can serve as a lens to analyze the designer’s life. In fact, we should view each

furniture piece as a carefully distilled piece of mini-architecture. His shift from using

commercially produced pieces to designing and producing his own furniture demonstrated

a progression towards a unified aesthetic in which he imbued virtually every component of

his buildings with his own ideas and theories. The chairs, tables, kitchens, and storage units

serve as both analogs and counterpoints to the spaces that contain them. They exhibit many

of the same features such as efficiency, standardization, and the machine aesthetic. His

furniture and building designs were in constant dialectic conversation, each playing off one

another. The designs also demonstrate Le Corbusier’s fundamental appreciation and

understanding of the human body. Wogenscky later writes, “He loved the body of things

and the life of the bodies he perceived...All thinking is tied to the body, to its volumes and

1 Andre Wogenscky, “Movement, Furniture, and Le Corbusier,” 1978 (Typed Manuscript) as cited and translated in Volker Fischer, The LC4 Chaise Longue by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand (Frankfurt: Verlag Form, 1999), 13.

shapes.”2 To Le Corbusier, furniture represented the opportunity of first contact with the

individual. Hence, although he might claim that his furniture pieces were designed to be

nothing more than purely functional, they also served as spatial mediators, distillations of

the very same ideas that inspired his architectural designs.

While his most famous furniture designs do not appear until the late 1920s, it is

important to understand Le Corbusier’s conceptions of the interior earlier in his career. In

his independent practice at Le Cheau-de-Fonds, it is clear that architecture for Le Corbusier

represented more than just the exterior structure. On his studio letterhead, he referred to

himself as “Architect-consultant for all matters concerning interior decoration conversions,

furnishings and garden designs.”3 His design for Villa Schwob which he began work on at

the end of 1913 is a good example from which to start. With its flat roof, double height

living room, and ocean liner like oval windows, it represented the beginnings of Le

Corbusier’s maturing aesthetic present in his work during the 1920s and 1930s. As for the

interior, he was involved in every aspect from choosing colors and fabrics to furniture and

lighting fixtures. Sketches and photographs of his interiors from this period also indicate

that his ideas were most inspired by the forms of the French Directoire, Empire and

Restoration styles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.4 With heavy curtains

and ornate chairs, the interior seems to be the antithesis of Le Corbusier. One wonders how

did his conception of the interior transform so drastically within the next decade. Two years

after the completion of Villa Schwob in 1919, he revisited the building only to write a letter

to Mme Schwob complaining of the backward taste of the interior: “The living room is…

not yet right. The chief reason is the awful and enormous carpet which takes away all the

2 Andre Wogenscky, Le Corbusier’s Hands (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), 9. 3 Cited in J. Petit, Le Corbusier lui-meme, Rousseau, Geneva, 1970, 45.4 Nancy J. Troy, Modernism and the decorative arts in France: Art Nouveau to Le Corbusier (New Haven, CT.: Yale University Press, 1991), 114

tranquility and grandeur and destroys the spirit of the architecture. The clutter caused by

furniture of doubtful quality is responsible as well. It is essential to purify…In architecture

as demanding as this, all efforts must be concentrated on purifying, on eliminating the

superfluous, on serving only the useful…”5 What were the origins of this rhetoric when

only a couple years before Le Corbusier was helping clients choose wallpapers, fabrics, and

furniture pieces inspired by 18th and 19th century French restoration styles?

A significant explanation for this shift was Le Corbusier’s growing relationship

with artist, friend, and publisher Amedee Ozenfant whom he first met through an

introduction by his mentor August Perret between 1916 and 1917. For the next decade,

Ozenfant would heavily influence Le Corbusier’s thinking. Encouraging him to draw and

paint, he indoctrinated Le Corbusier with Purism, the cultural aesthetic movement which

sought visual and physical purification, a “Period of Vacuum-cleaning” as Ozenfant would

later write in his memoirs.6 During these years, Le Corbusier focused on forming the

polemic ideas that he would later published in his magazine L’Esprit Nouveau. He

experimented with painting and drawing to explore the forms that he would later use as

inspirations for his interior and furniture designs. With his newly found Purist ideals, he

began to regard the client as a vandal who contaminated his carefully designed spaces. He

viewed the purification of historical styles as necessary for modern living. Along with a

more streamlined conception of space, he also demonstrated his interest in the machine age

by replacing the term furniture with equipment: “A new term has replaced the word

furniture…the new word is the equipment of the house. To equip is through the analysis of

5 Letter of 8 September 1919, cdf LC ms. 112., as translated and cited in Charlotte Benton, “Le Corbusier: Furniture and the Interior,” Journal of Design History 3.2 (1990): 109.6 Ozenfant, Memoires, 103 as translated and cited in Carol S. Eliel, L’Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art), 22.

the problem, to classify the various elements necessary to domestic functioning…”7 By

1925, the partnership culminated in the Pavilon de L’Esprit Nouveau at the International

Exposition of Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925. Here, the two demonstrated their

beliefs in physical form. Architectural historian and critic Renato De Fusco condenses Le

Corbusier’s theories on furniture into three principles: standardization, furniture as tools

and extensions of the body, and technology.8 We can look for examples of each of these

three tenets in Le Corbusier’s writings and the interior of the pavilion.

In Towards a New Architecture, he writes, “It is necessary to press on towards the

establishment of standards in order to face the problem of perfection.”9 Le Corbusier

believed that society should concentrate on a few prototypes to be perfected and mass-

produced for everyone. Perhaps the best example of a prototype for future standardization

found in the pavilion is Le Corbusier’s storage system or “casier standards.” These units

served as a structural base for the modern interior. Inspired by office furniture and the fitted

wardrobes of the American manufacturer Innovation, these flexible storage components

freed up space, frequently acting as flexible walls.10 They enabled homeowners to store,

organize, and hide away their personal objects, allowing the individual to experience the

architecture in a sparser environment. Corbusier hoped that these designs would become

the standard mode of storage for society.

Second on De Fusco’s list was Le Corbusier’s belief that furniture should be

considered tools to fulfill a universal set of needs. In The Decorative Art of Today, Le

Corbusier writes a chapter called “Type-Needs, Type-Furniture” in which he claims that all

7 Le Corbusier, Oeuvre Complete Vol.1 (1910-1929), 100.8 Renato De Fusco, Le Corbusier, Designer, Furniture, 1919 (New York: Barrons, 1977), 17-28.9 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 153.10 Le Corbusier, Almanach d’architecture moderne, 113 as cited and translated in George H. Marcus, Le Corbusier: Inside the Machine for Living (New York: Monacelli Press, 2003), 35.

objects can be categorized into certain types: “the human limb objects are type-objects,

responding to type-needs: chairs to sit on, tables to work at, devices to give light, machines

to write with (yes indeed!), racks to file things in…”11 For the interior of his pavilion, he

defines seating into two chair types: the Thonet bentwood chair and the Maple club chair.

Its organically inspired form fit the body well. Furthermore, made from only six pieces of

wood, the Thonet chair exhibited the material and financial economy Le Corbusier

promoted. The Thonet chair had been successfully mass-produced for more than two

decades. Its long production life had enabled its manufacturer to refine and distill its design

to its most basic purposes: the roles of the working and dining. He writes, “During the long

and scrupulous process of development in the factory, the Thonet chair gradually takes on

its final weight and thickness…this process of perfecting by almost imperceptible steps is

the same as that to which an engine is subjected, whose poetry is run well—and cheaply.”12

Next to the Thonet chair, Le Corbusier placed club chairs manufactured by the Maple

Company in England. He writes, “The Maple armchair, which is attuned to our movements

and quick to respond to them, assumes an ever more distinctive profile.”13 The generously

upholstered chair exuded comfort and fulfilled the role of a relaxation and conversation

chair. Le Corbusier believed that these two chairs were the best commercially produced

designs to fulfill the seating needs for the typical individual.

Lastly, De Fusco states that technology was the third inspiration for Le Corbusier’s

selection of furniture. In his writings, he constantly refers to applying the engineer’s

mindset to architecture and design: “Every modern man has the mechanical sense. The

feeling for mechanics exists and is justified by our daily activities. This feeling in regard to

11 Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 75.12 Ibid., 76.13 Ibid., 76.

machinery is one of respect, gratitude and esteem.”14 At this point in his career however,

Le Corbusier’s writings on technology are inconsistent with his interior designs. Granted,

the Thonet bentwood chairs benefited from a unique technological manufacturing process

that used steam to efficiently bend wood. It is also true that the artwork and the mass-

produced glassware seem to evoke associations of technology. However, he continues to

use traditional materials like wood in his furniture. Moreover, his choice of a handmade

berber rug underneath the Thonet chairs seems to undercut the goal of the exhibition.

Hence, his furniture does not yet overtly display the technological machine-like quality we

see later in his work.

The pavilion of 1925 represented a sharp contrast from the interiors that Le

Corbusier had designed in the past. The interior demonstrated Ozenfant’s influence on him

with its sparse and spacious layout. His furniture selection was a commercial “survival of

the fittest” one in which he chose pieces that industry and society had gradually refined

over decades. Le Corbusier’s trend towards restricting clients to certain pieces of furniture

also illustrated his belief that the interior and the exterior were inextricably linked. For his

architecture to be fully appreciated, it had to be experienced in the right environment. The

curving Thonet chair acted as a counterpoint to the rectilinear walls and windows. The

colorful purist paintings of bottles and other ordinary objects were not only images for

individuals to meditate on, they also echoed or contrasted against other forms in the

pavilion. Furthermore, it must be remembered that Le Corbusier envisioned the pavilion as

a model for the basic unit of the immeubles villa, a collective building made from these

modular cells.15 Although De Fusco’s attributes were originally in reference to Le

Corbusier’s furniture, these same ideas informed his architecture. In other words, his

14 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, 123.15 Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow, 231.

architecture extended his ideas on a larger scale and vice versa. The glassware, the chairs,

the casiers, the modular cells all were designed and selected to fit within the conceptual

framework Le Corbusier had laid out in his theoretical writings. Thus, we see the

beginnings of an aesthetic and ideological continuity that Le Corbusier will later attempt to

instill in all of his designs, immersing the viewer.

Ozenfant and Le Corbusier’s partnership ironically ends only two weeks after the

exhibition. Despite the end of this relationship, Le Corbusier continues to show interest in

furniture and the interior. He now began designing more of his own prototypes similar to

his work with casiers. In the fall of 1927, Le Corbusier hired the furniture and interior

expert, Charlotte Perriand.16 Her entrance marks another significant watershed for Le

Corbusier’s practice. Although he already had defined conceptions of what his own

furniture would look like, Perriand’s expertise and leadership enabled him to transform his

furniture sketches into physical realities. The move towards creating his own prototypes for

modern furniture also indicated that Le Corbusier was frustrated with the furniture

industry’s inability and unwillingness to bring machine inspired furniture to market.

Perriand was an unlikely candidate for Le Corbusier’s office. Graduating from the

Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs, a traditional French academic design school, she was

only twenty-four years old and already established as one of France’s up and coming

interior designers.17 After reading Towards a New Architecture and the Decorative Art of

Today, however, she became inspired by Le Corbusier, quickly absorbing his rhetoric and

demanded a meeting with him. Their first encounter seemed rather unpromising. In her

autobiography, Perriand writes:

The austere office was somewhat intimidating and his greeting rather frosty.

16 George H. Marcus, Le Corbusier: Inside the Machine for Living (New York: Monacelli Press, 2000), 98.17 Mary McLeod, Charlotte Perriand: an art of living (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), 11.

“What do you want?” he asked, his eyes hooded by his glasses.“To work with you.”He glanced quickly through my drawings. “We don’t embroider cushions here,” he replied, and showed me the door.18

Nevertheless, after Le Corbusier visited her exhibition “Bar in the Attic” at the 1927 Salon

d’Automne, he hired her on the spot. He was impressed by her streamlined machine

inspired interior and choices of economical, mass-manufactured furniture.19

While working for Le Corbusier, Perriand also kept an independent interior design

practice on the side. Her dining room exhibition for the Salon des Artistes Decorateurs in

1928 illustrates Perriand’s conception of the modern interior. A black hard-surfaced

extendable table supported by metal tubes is surrounded by swivel dining chairs. With easy

cleaning surfaces and floors, she demonstrated she cared about practicality and efficiency.

The long buffet with plate warmers reminds us of a more refined version of Le Corbusier’s

earlier casiers. Unlike the 1925 pavilion, we see a much more extensive use of metal and

glass. However, despite its machine and technological associations, the dining room had a

human quality. Dimensions were carefully measured to ensure that everything was within

arm’s reach. The swiveling dining chairs were carefully designed so that the human body

never touched the cold hard-machined tubular steel. All that touched the body were plump

soft cushions upholstered in rich leather.20

Her conception of the modern interior had a profound effect on Le Corbusier and

we see the outcome of their partnership in 1929 with their exhibition “Equipment for a

dwelling” at the Salon d’Automne. This model interior must be seen in reference to the

1925 pavilion only four years earlier. With floors covered in glass tiles, the double height

18 Charlotte Perriand, Life of Creation: an autobiography (New York: Monacelli Press, 2003), 23.19 Mary McLeod, Charlotte Perriand: an art of living (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), 11.20 Mary McLeod, Charlotte Perriand: an art of living (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), 40.

living room was furnished in a unified machine aesthetic. Le Corbusier formally displayed

all his new prototypes of furniture in this exhibition. Refined versions of the casiers with

mirrored glass and sliding metal doors act as room dividers.21 Whereas before in the

L’Esprit Nouveau pavilion, De Fusco would be hard pressed to find instances of extruded

and machined metal, he would find them in every corner of this apartment. With the

entrance of his own line of furniture, it was also clear that Le Corbusier had relinquished

his former strategy of commercial furniture selection. The new apartment was different; it

was cohesive and the theme was metal. Fittingly in an article Perriand writes, “if we use

metal in conjunction with leather for chairs, with marble slabs, glass and India-rubber for

tables…we get a range of wonderful combinations and new aesthetic effects. UNITY IN

ARCHITECTURE and yet again POETRY. A new lyric beauty, regenerated by

mathematical science.”22 Le Corbusier’s scientifically planned interior brought aesthetic

unity to a new level.

In the same article Perriand also writes, “Metal plays the same part in furniture as

cement has done in architecture. It is a revolution.”23 The exhibition made extensive use of

metal especially in the new prototypes of furniture they had developed together. In this new

scheme, Le Corbusier designed a separate chair for working, dining, relaxation, and

reclining. Inspired by the “safari” chair originally from East Africa, the siege a dossier

basculant represented Le Corbusier’s conception of the ideal machine for working.24 The

pivoting back conveyed a sense of mechanization and machinery. Tubular steel and tautly

stretched calfskin or leather provided a rigid support system. For dining, Le Corbusier

designed a chair inspired by its counterpart from the earlier pavilion in 1925. Named the

21 Ibid., 51.22 Charlotte Perriand, “Wood or Metal?” The Studio 97.433 (April 1929): 278-279.23 Charlotte Perriand, “Wood or Metal?” The Studio 97.433 (April 1929): 278-279.24 Renato De Fusco, Le Corbusier, Designer, Furniture 1929 (New York: Barrons, 1977), 58.

siege tournant, it was the modern interpretation of the Thonet bentwood chair with similar

organic enveloping curves except manufactured out of tubular steel. By adding the

swiveling component, Le Corbusier borrowed functional ideas from industrial office desk

chairs.

The chair that garnered the most attention was the iconic chaise longue, the

machine for reclining. A low sweeping recliner made from bicycle metal tubing and

stretched leather or calfskin, the chair followed the shape of the body and literally

demonstrated Le Corbusier’s love of the human form. De Fusco remarked, “this beautiful

resting machine, resembling a perfect Freudian analyst’s couch, is almost unrecognizable

as an article for use in the home, when seen without the presence of a person occupying

it…there is a quality of mimicry in it when seen perfectly in profile, copying the shape of

the human body: it resembles a flaccid puppet with a round cushion in the place of a

head.”25 Le Corbusier and Perriand had conscientiously studied the body to best position it

for total relaxation. We can look to previous forms that may have influenced Le

Corbusier’s thinking, the most significant inspiration being the “Surrepos, Super Relaxing,”

a chair designed by a Parisian physician named Dr. Pascaud. It was an anatomically correct

chair, thickly upholstered with flexible armrests and an adjustable tray that could serve as a

drink holder. Originally designed for invalids, the Surrepos was designed for supreme

comfort.26 Perriand however, hints that the overall system was more simple, inspired by the

”basic idea of the simple soldier who when he is tired lies down on his back, puts his feet

up against a tree, with his knapsack under his head.”27 Whether the chair was based on

25 Renato De Fusco, Le Corbusier, Designer, Furniture 1929 (New York: Barrons, 1977), 36.26 George H. Marcus, Le Corbusier: Inside the Machine for Living (New York: Monacelli Press, 2000), 102.27 Charlotte Perriand, in: Cassina 1987, Meda/Milan 1987, 51 as cited in Volker Fischer, The LC4 Chaise Longue by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand (Frankfurt: Verlag Form, 1999), 13.

Perriand’s description or influenced by Dr. Pascaud’s design, it is clear that Le Corbusier

had carefully studied the body to design a recliner for total relaxation. Hence, Le Corbusier

might argue that the alluring chaise longue was purely a machine for relaxing. Indeed he

writes, “I thought of the western cowboy smoking his pipe, his feet up above his head,

leaning against a fireplace: complete restfulness...It is the true machine for resting.”28 As

such, this longue chair was a way for Le Corbusier to frame the person in a certain mindset

and landscape. By relaxing the body and mind, the chair altered the person’s experience of

the surrounding architecture.

However, the very form of the lounge also played a significant role for Le

Corbusier. Functionality aside, the curving shape similar to the way the Thonet chair acted

as a counterpoint in the 1925 pavilion, plays a similar part in many of Le Corbusier’s

buildings. In Villa Savoye, the zigzag recliner form is echoed in a blue mosaic tiled built-in

recliner in the shower. It nearly replicates the same body positioning as the chaise longue.

On a larger scale, the rooftop of Villa Savoye includes a sweeping curvilinear wall

contrasted against the orthogonal façade. Likewise, with its sweeping and inviting curves,

the chaise longue plays against the straight lines of the surrounding interior space. In this

way, furniture acted as sculpture, a method for Le Corbusier to mediate the spatial

experience from the smallest to the largest scale.

This spatial dialogue becomes even more apparent when looking at the “fauteil

grand confort” chair, the furniture piece that most physically reflected Le Corbusier’s

architecture. At first glance, the general form might connote images of the Maple club chair

from the L’Esprit Nouveau pavilion in 1925. It seems as if Le Corbusier inverts the

traditional chair’s structure to show the metal skeleton containing five leather cushions on

28 Le Corbusier, Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning trans. Edith Schreiber Aujame (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 118.

the outside creating a machine-age modern translation. However upon closer examination,

the chair also brings to mind Le Corbusier’s design for the exterior façade of the iconic

Villa Savoye. The chair with its solid bulky leather cushions wrapped around by steel tubes

and supported by thin tubular legs seems to float above the ground. The Villa Savoye

exudes a similar aesthetic; the main body of the house ethereally hovers in the tree-lined

landscape supported by thin pilotis. The narrow band of ribbon windows surrounding the

exterior mirrors the slick chrome tubing that wraps around the bulky cushions. By

furnishing the homes he designed with his own pieces, Corbusier conveyed a formal

likeness between object and building. This relationship correspondingly helped him

mediate the viewer’s transition from object to building. Individuals visiting Villa Savoye

would then constantly be reminded of Le Corbusier’s designs and influences on all levels.

In his essay “Furniture Design and the Common Object,” architectural critic

Sigfried Gideon thus proclaims, “it was not only that the bentwood chair entered into a new

type—but a new vision.”29 By using the term “vision,” Gideon aptly touches on the breadth

of Le Corbusier’s intentions. After examining his progression from his early interiors at

Villa Schwob to the 1925 L’Esprit Nouveau pavilion to finally the 1929 Equipment for a

Dwelling exhibition, we now better understand his development and search for visual and

theoretical continuity. For Le Corbusier, object and building were intimately related; the

Thonet chair and every other component that Le Corbusier selects or later personally

designs was part of a larger agenda. Object and building were in constant dialogue.

Moreover, as both an architectural practitioner and a theorist, Le Corbusier was always

looking for ways to convey his ideas visually, literally, and tactically. He was constantly

seeking methods to channel his theories on modern life to the public. Hence, furniture

29 Sigfried Gideon, “Furniture Design and the Common Object,” Le Corbusier, architect, painter, writer ed. Stamo Papadaki (New York: Macmillon Company, 1948), 40.

because it was so related to our daily living activities, was the perfect outlet for further

expression. Furniture was just another part of this scheme. Wogenscky writes:

“When he thought of a house, he first thought of a man, woman, a child, their movements, and their behavior…So that’s why he first put someone in an armchair or chair, and then positioned him in a landscape. Then he thought about the architecture surrounding this person, like a sensitive passé-partout defining the space around this person and his furnishings. First the person, in other words, then his table, his chair, his bed…”30

In this quote Wogenscky refers specifically to how Le Corbusier’s architecture was

fundamentally influenced by an intense study of the body. Nevertheless, his statement goes

beyond this aspect of Le Corbusier. It points to the multiple layers upon which he designed.

Le Corbusier’s brand of architecture was more than just shelter from the natural

environment. He strived for an aesthetic and more broadly a foundation for modern living

in which his theories and principles hoped to permeate every level of existence.

30 Andre Wogenscky, “Movement, Furniture, and Le Corbusier,” 1978 (Typed Manuscript).