Exhibition : « 1924-1926, Almanac of a New Spirit » – Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret’s Pavilion at Maison La Roche

This exhibition revisits the pavilion, a physical manifestation of the research conducted by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret and published in their journal L’Esprit Nouveau. Deemed “too modern” for its time, the pavilion emerged in a context where the Art Deco style and the modernist movement clashed. Le Corbusier and Jeanneret developed an ambitious program: “to deny decorative art” and “to affirm that architecture extends from the smallest everyday object to the house, the street, the city, and beyond.”

Unlike other participants in the Exhibition, they were the only ones to propose a comprehensive response to the question of housing for a “modern man” with universal needs, from the city to the object. Their proposal took the form of a full-scale model apartment, designed using standardized elements and mass-produced furniture, breaking away from the expensive, one-of-a-kind pieces featured in other pavilions.

The exhibition invites visitors on an architectural journey through Maison La Roche. It retraces the intellectual and artistic ambition of this major milestone in modern architecture, which had a lasting impact on the emergence and influence of the movement in France and abroad.

Through original drawings, photographs, publications, archives, furniture, objects, and paintings, primarily from the collections of the Fondation Le Corbusier, the exhibition offers a rediscovery of this key, yet often overlooked, achievement in Le Corbusier’s body of work. It reveals the ambition, significance in the history of the 20th-century avant-garde, and the dissemination and legacy of the pavilion.

Established in 1968, the Fondation Le Corbusier’s primary mission is the preservation and promotion of the architect’s work. As the legatee of Le Corbusier’s entire estate, it holds the majority of his original drawings, studies, and plans, as well as a significant collection of written and photographic archives. The Foundation ensures the respect of moral rights over Le Corbusier’s entire body of work worldwide.

Housed in Maison Jeanneret, the Foundation also manages Maison La Roche, Le Corbusier’s Apartment-Studio in Paris, and the Petite Maison on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

As part of its mission to enhance and transmit 20th-century architectural heritage, our agency, Architecture de Collection, regularly engages in dialogue, interaction, and collaboration with the Fondation Le Corbusier.

Kenya Amaro