Le Corbusier & Charlotte Perriand in the 1929 Salon d’Automne #Charlotte Perriand #Le Corbusier

After finding out the furniture designed at the Bauhaus School in the Stuttgart Dwelling Exhibition in July 1927, Le Corbusier finally decided to design his own furniture according to his view on architecture.

The evolution of modern times should lead us to introduce architecture in the house” Le Corbusier, “Ou en est l’architecture? L’architecture vivant, otoño-invierno 1927

With this aim, he recruited young architect Charlotte Perriand as “associated for the interior arrangement of houses” after seeing her work in the Paris 1927 Salon d’Automne. Le Corbusier, Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret defined a series of standard seating positions and designed the LC furniture series out of them.

Three chairs from this series were produced in 1928 for the equipment of the Vila La Roche, finished four years before, and the pavilion of the Maison Church: the fauteuil à grand confort, an elegant but comfortable armchair; the chaise longue, a lounger for relax, and the fauteuil à dossier basculant, for conversation. The complete series, including also the siège tournant stool and the table tube d’avion, was introduced to the public at the stand L’equipment de la maison within the 1929 Salon d’Automne. The stand was a minimum apartment where the different rooms of a dwelling were defined only by furniture.

The LC furniture series was based on the same principles as Le Corbusier’s architecture during the twenties: machine-like aesthetics, adaptation to the function, exposed structure and pure geometrical shapes. This furniture series was designed to be mass-produced but Peugeot refused Le Corbusier’s proposal. The furniture displayed at the Salon was purposely manufactured by Thonet and it was finally mass-produced by the Italian firm Cassina from the sixties.