House museums #34: Le Corbusier’s apartment-studio

A black-and-white photograph, probably taken in the early 1960s, shows Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (1887-1965) working in his Paris studio. The bespectacled Swiss-French architect bends over a makeshift table, surrounded by heaving bookshelves, Cubism-inspired paintings pinned to walls and rolled-up blueprints tumbling across the floor.

The dishevelled space is perhaps not what might be expected of Le Corbusier, as he called himself — a pioneer of modern architecture, with its pristine geometric forms and egalitarian functionalism.

A contemporary of such luminaries as Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí in 1930s Paris, Le Corbusier said a home should be “a machine for living in”. A tour of his apartment and studio in the 16th arrondissement reveals his mechanistic approach and utilitarian philosophy.

The duplex tops the eight-storey Molitor Building, designed by Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret between 1931 and 1934. He lived there with his wife Yvonne Gallis, a former fashion model, from its completion until his death.

My tour begins in the studio of that old photograph. Ilona Bernard, an architecture historian at the Fondation Le Corbusier, tells me its distinctive arched ceiling was devised to diffuse natural light. But the huge, decidedly organic wall of exposed stone and brick again tests preconceived notions about the architect — should that not be raw concrete?

Industrial materials do abound in the residence, and while creative confusion may have been permitted in the studio, the home suggests order and practicality.

Chunky glass bricks funnel light into the rooms, while windows in the writing area (Le Corbusier wrote or contributed to dozens of books) feature the wired safety glass commonly found in 20th-century factories. The rolled, semi-opaque surface of the glass “made being distracted by what was happening outside when he should be working impossible”, says Bernard.

The kitchen, with its scrubbed pewter sink and worktops, has a mortuary vibe, while the rooftop garden, with its giant aloe vera plants, was deliberately left to grow semiwild after becoming unruly during the second world war.

His wife once declared, ‘All this light is killing me, driving me crazy’

Le Corbusier used colour to delineate spaces, and these were changed often as he used his home as a testing ground. Scarlet dominates in the compact living area, the bathroom is a pale blue, while royal blue and canary yellow make for a vibrant bedroom.

Little in Le Corbusier’s designs was left to chance. The balcony balustrade, visible through the window, would have obstructed an enviable view towards the rolling hills and Paris skyline when reclining on a normal bed.

Le Corbusier’s solution? “He built a bed that is very special, positioned 83cm off the floor,” Bernard says, patting the elevated mattress. The founding father of modern architecture and his wife would clamber into it via a specially designed set of steps.

Though it is said Gallis once declared, “All this light is killing me, driving me crazy,” she was “a very modern woman”, Bernard says, who happily indulged her driven husband’s quest for utility over old-fashioned comfort.

Gallis drew a line at the bidet, however, that Le Corbusier had placed in open view in their bedroom. She hid the offending appliance with the equivalent of a gigantic tea cosy.

fondationlecorbusier.fr

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