Art deco tour in XVIth arrondissement
Along with Mies Van der Rohe and Alvar Aalto, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret aka Le Corbusier is the inventor of the modern architectural movement in the 1920s. Born in Switzerland, he will first learn watchmaking after his father but will soon start travelling around Europe to discover more. In Paris, in the 1910s, he will work in the office of August Perret, pioneer of reinforced concrete, later he will learn architecture with Joseph Hoffman in Vienna, then he will travel to Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria before returning to switzerland as world war I will begin. At the end of hostilities, he arrives in Paris and opens his very first architectural studio. He will start building his first white villas, an architectural concept based on pure lines, absence of ornamentation, an aesthetic revolution in the early years of the art deco. With the great depression of 1929, he will expend and reformulate his scheme for a contemporary city with some utopic projects for the reconstruction of Le Marais in Paris or the construction of La Cité Radieuse in Marseille. As he got older, he decides to create a foundation in Paris hosted in two of his buildings in a discreet private street in the XVIth arrondissement, Villa La Roche and Maison Jeanneret. The houses are opened to the public every day from Monday to Saturday and tours are available in French and in English upon reservation. A great opportunity to enter an architectural masterpiece on a human size where documents and prototypes of his famous designs -the most copied pieces of furniture in the world- are displayed and explained. Around the corner is located another architecture masterpiece, the Robert Mallet Stevens street. Several buildings built between the two world wars and by miracle saved from the real estate investors that damaged the neighborhood in the 1970s. For sure the most hush-hush places in town!
Fondation Le Corbusier
10 square du Docteur Blanche 75016 Paris
www.fondationlecorbusier.fr
Cité Robert Mallet Stevens
Rue Mallet Stevens 75016 Paris
www.mallerstevens.com
Crédit photo: Fondation Le Corbusier
