Too Good To Be Ignored: Charlotte Perriand
Too Good To Be Ignored: Charlotte Perriand
Field Trip: Essay
The story of Charlotte Perriand is an inspiring tale of a designer committed to improving people’s quality of life, whose place in history is often overshadowed by her male contemporaries. In 1927 Perriand applied for a job to work for Le Corbusier, she was twenty-four years old when she walked into his studio on the Rue de Sèvres in Paris to be met with his famously condescending remark, “We don’t embroider cushions here.”
Le Corbusier later retracted his snap judgement when he saw Perriand's work on display at an annual fair for young artists, the Salon d'Automne, in 1929. He was impressed by her installation, "Bar sous le Toit" (Bar in the Attic), a simple staging of modern, industrial-looking interior design, and asked her to join his team.
In varying degrees of collaboration with Le Corbusier and his studio director and cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, Perriand created chairs, armchairs and sofas that remain famous today, including the B306 chaise longue. The trio presented the tubular steel furniture in 1929 at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. Perriand was responsible for many of the atelier’s most famous creations and the interiors of numerous public commissions, yet she was unpaid and received little to no recognition.
Despite this, she remained concentrated and creative, tapping into her progressive imagination to fuel her desire to create new objects. She knew design could play a crucial role in drafting solutions to make society more equal, and like Le Corbusier, believed that the objects around us help define our mental state.
In 1937, Perriand stopped working with Le Corbusier. Her daughter Pernette explained in 2019, “They parted temporarily, mainly on political grounds – Charlotte became highly politicised in the 30s, as did many intellectuals united against the rise of fascism. Perriand’s approach to architecture was collaborative, while Le Corbusier was more authoritarian and individualistic.”
The goal to create good living spaces is the defining pillar of Perriand's work. As explained by Esme Hawes, assistant curator at The Design Museum, the appreciation that design is about providing a service to people was a recurring theme of Perriand's practice: “A lot of her design is really focused around making things accessible and improving people's lives and their quality of life, through design.” Hawes continues, “I think that's something that a lot of female designers do.” She noted women in design often have to work harder to establish themselves, “They feel they really have to use their platform once they earn it.”
In 1940, Perriand received a then-extraordinary invitation to travel to Japan to work with the Department of Trade Promotion to help enhance Japanese products and increase sales to the West. While there, she discovered an affinity with the country’s tradition of flexible room layouts, with their sliding partitions and furniture that could be stowed away when not in use. Japanese homes underscored her belief in "flexible emptiness" – the idea that you can live well without lots of furniture, as long as they are highly functional pieces. As Perriand once said, “Better to spend the day out in the sun, than dusting your useless objects.”
In 1952, she designed student accommodation for La Maison de la Tunisie at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. In the same year, Perriand reconnected with Le Corbusier and for his L’Unité d’Habitation apartment block in Marseille, she designed open-plan interiors to ensure that women didn’t feel trapped in the kitchen.
In 1967, she led a team of architects for her most ambitious project, the Les Arcs ski resort in Savoie. This modernist design blended into the landscape with tiered apartments leaning into the slopes, while their terraces and large windows maximised views of the landscape.
Pernette described how, unsurprisingly, Perriand worked all hours of the day: “She worked obsessively, stopping only for meals and a siesta. She’d often call me around midnight, saying, ‘I’ve got a new idea’. Her creative life meant everything to her. She would often say, Weekends? What are they?”
Charlotte Perriand is now receiving the recognition she deserves with multiple exhibitions having showcased her extensive, multifaceted collection of work. She transcended the prejudices women faced in a male-dominated world and has become a prolific designer in her own right.