File:LC4 lounge - Le Corbusier Charlotte Perriand (27986818339).jpg

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier (1887-1965) was born in Switzerland. His father was an artisan who enameled boxes and watches. He enrolled at the art school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds at the age of 15, where he learned applied arts. Three years later, he enrolled in an advanced course in painting taught by Charles L'Eplattenier and a course in architect taught by René Chapallaz. L'Eplattenier pushed him into architecture. He began reading heavily in architecture and sketching buildings. In 1905, he built his first house (under the supervision of Chapallaz). He traveled for in Italy, Hungary, and Austria for two years, then worked as an architectural draftsman in Paris from 1908 to 1910. His Paris work was for Auguste Perret, who pioneered the use of reinforced concrete in residential construction. For six months in late 1910 and early 1911, he we worked as a draftsman in Berlin alongside Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius.

He settled down in Paris 1917 and opened his own architectural practice. After meeting the Cubist painter Amédée Ozenfant in 1918, he and Ozenfant began inventing a new style called Purism, which rejected the complex and textured forms of Cubism in favor of plane (and plain) forms. He adopted the nickname Le Corbusier (an altered form of his maternal grandfather's name) as a pseudonym in 1920.

Le Corbusier focused on painting between 1918 and 1922, and then turned toward implementing his Purist style in residential homes. He designed and built the l'Esprit Nouveau Pavilion at the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. In this work, he rejected deocrative arts and focused on standardization, "machine life", and the home as a "cell" within a larger city. In 1928, Le Corbusier, Pierre Chareau, and others hosted the first meeting of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (International Congresses of Modern Architects; CIAM). It led to more meetings, and a major manifesto of Modern art in 1943.

In his 1925 book L'Art Décoratif d'aujourd'hui (Decorative Art Today), Le Corbusier called for mass-produced, inexpensive furniture. He began designing his own furniture in 1928, and invited the architect Charlotte Perriand to work with him. Le Corbusier liked the sleek, tubular steel club chairs designed by Marcel Breuer, and was thrilled by the sleek, mass-produced furniture featured on the decks of ocean liners.

Le Corbusier and Perriand developed three chairs in 1928: The LC4 Chaise Lounge; the LC3 Fauteuil Grand Confort club chair; and the LC4 fauteuil a Dossier Basculant chair. All three were intended for use in Le Corbusier's Maison la Roche in Paris and a pavilion for Barbara and Henry Church.

The LC4 chaise has a base of wood and a tubular steel frame for the chair seat and back. Metal fixtures serve to affix the headrest to the frame, and as feet. The chair was intended to be upholstered in cowhide -- the natural, unbleached skin and hair of a cow. (Cowhide can be later transformed into leather.) This textile is not original to the chair.

1. CMAJazzAge