Charlotte Perriand

Char­lotte Perriand believed that good design began not with form, but with life. Born in Paris in 1903, she came of age during the rise of modernism but never accepted its auster­ity at face value. After study­ing at the École de l’Union Centrale des Arts Déco­rat­ifs, she caught Le Corbusier’s atten­tion with her Bar sous le Toit instal­la­tion — an aluminum and glass inte­rior that announced a new language for domestic space.

Perriand spent her career expand­ing that language, insist­ing that inte­ri­ors could be demo­c­ra­tic without losing their sensu­al­ity. Her collab­o­ra­tions with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jean­neret shaped the furni­ture of the machine age, yet her later work — wooden chaises, woven stools, modular shelv­ing — revealed an inti­macy modernism often forgot.

From the moun­tains of Savoie to postwar Japan, she treated design as both a social and mate­r­ial exper­i­ment. Wood, metal, bamboo — each was used for its honesty, its human touch. Today, Perriand’s work feels less like a relic of modernism than a quiet blue­print for how to live well: rigor­ous, humane, and always unfin­ished in the best sense.