As the formerly unrealised La Maison au Bord de l’Eau by Charlotte Perriand is unveiled by luxury brand Louis Vuitton in Miami, I’ve taken a look back at the life and work of the French architect and designer in an article for Disegno Daily.
Perriand had a fascinating career, which included ten years at the office of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, work with famous Modernist architects including Jean Prouve and Oscar Niemeyer, and several years in Japan helping the government improve product design.
Reading her autobiography Une vie de creation, I smiled at the account Perriand gave for her first meeting with Le Corbusier. When she first walked into Le Corbusier’s studio on rue de Sèvres, Paris in 1927 to try and persuade him to hire her as a furniture designer, Le Corbusier took one look at her portfolio of drawings and curtly told her: “We don’t embroider cushions here”. Unperturbed by his brusque manner, Perriand invited Le Corbusier and his cousin and business partner Pierre Jeanneret to see her Bar sous le Toît – a rooftop bar installed at the Salon d’Automne exhibition in Paris in 1927. And that was the beginning of her career- he duly apologised and hired her for the next decade. To read more, see the piece here.
La Maison au Bord de l’Eau at Design Miami, Images courtesy of Louis Vuitton
