Tan pronto como en 1927 Charlotte Perriand se incorporó al estudio de Pierre Jeanneret y Le Corbusier, decidió romper con el acadecismo arquitectónico para adoptar teorías que tuvieran en cuenta los materiales, la funcionalidad y los placeres del bienestar. Se interesó por la vivienda social que fue uno de los temas más recurrentes, por su emergencia, en el periodo de entreguerras. En este periodo, para tenerse por arquitecto moderno era preciso implicarse decididamente en esta cuestión.
En 1929, guiada por un espíritu renovador dimite del Salón de artistas decoradores y funda junto con más miembros de la Union des Artistes Modernes, destacando Robert Mallet-Stevens. Este movimiento se propuso explorar las posibilidades de los nuevos materiales y técnicas para adaptarlas a una visión moderna y actualizada de las artes decorativas.
En noviembre de 1931, Le Corbusier firma un artículo de trienta páginas que contenía estudios y dibujos que apareció en el noveno número de la revista Plans, en él se presenta su trabajo en torno a una habitación mínima de 14 m2 por habitante. Charlotte Pierrand colaboró activamente en este estudio, los 184 documentos originales fueron más tarde localizados en su archivo privado y no en el del estudio compartido. Ello lleva a pensar que es atribuible a ella gran parte de la autoría. Pero no será hasta la publicación de un libro en 1935 que su nombre nombre aparezca como colaboradora.
One of the most influential furniture designers of the early modern movement, CHARLOTTE PERRIAND (1903-1999) introduced the ‘machine age’ aesthetic to interiors in the steel, aluminium and glass furniture she created at Le Corbusier’s architectural studio in the late 1920s and 1930s. She then continued her experiments with different materials.
When the 24 year old Charlotte Perriand strode into Le Corbusier’s studio at 35 rue de Sèvres, Paris in 1927, and asked him to hire her as a furniture designer, his response was terse. “We don’t embroider cushions here,” he replied and showed her the door. A few months later Le Corbusier apologised. After being taken by his cousin Pierre Jeanneret to see the glacial Bar sous le Toît, or rooftop bar that Perriand had created in glass, steel and aluminium, for the Salon D’Automne exhibition in Paris, Le Corbusier invited her to join his studio.
Once there, Perriand found herself wrapping her legs in newspaper during the winter in a desperate attempt to stay warm. She also forged friendships with the gifted young architects and designers from all over the world who, like her, had jumped at the chance to work for Le Corbusier as an unpaid or, if they were very lucky, poorly paid assistants. Together with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Perriand developed a series of tubular steel chairs, which were then – and are still today – hailed as icons of the machine age.
Those chairs are still her best known work, yet Perriand remained at Le Corbusier’s studio for over a decade and went on to collaborate with the artist Fernand Leger and furniture designer Jean Prouvé. She remained an influential figure in the modern movement until her death in 1999, when she was acclaimed as one of the very few women to have succeeded in that male domain.
Born in 1903, Perriand divided her childhood between Paris, where her father worked as a tailor and her mother as an haute couture seamstress, and her grandparents’ home in the mountainous rural region of Savoie. In 1920, she enrolled as a student at the Ecole de l’Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs and studied there for five years. Frustrated by the craft-based approach and Beaux-Arts style championed by the school, Perriand searched for inspiration in the machine aesthetic of the motor cars and bicycles she saw on the Paris streets.
