After two consecutive years of success at the Avignon Festival, “La Cabane de l’Architecte” comes to Paris !

On August 27, 1965, during a summer spent with his wife Yvonne in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, Le Corbusier drowned near his vacation cabanon. The play opens as Robert Rebutato, now an architect, learns of his mentor’s death. Standing before the coffin, he reflects on their first meeting, his apprenticeship, and the decades of artistic, intellectual, and human adventure that followed. His conversations with Le Corbusier during the architect’s stays at L’Étoile de Mer inspired a vocation in the young boy from Nice, leading him to establish his own studio in 1965. The play traces a journey from the dawn of modern living to the present day, through the eyes of Robert as both a child and an adult.

Louise Doutreligne and Jean-Luc Paliès vividly and humorously depict the initiatory and picturesque journey of this apprentice architect. The production is a luminous celebration of the value of transmission: the theories, architectural visions, and skills passed down by Le Corbusier to Robert Rebutato and to posterity. The theater extends the legacy of Le Corbusier’s work, blending the power of oral tradition with the theoretical, graphic, and visual impact of architecture to bring the iconic productions of the modern era to life on stage.

The performance is inspired by a remarkable place: the cabanon, a “small wooden hut set against the Mediterranean.” Adjacent to the L’Étoile de Mer café, the cabanon embodies the minimalist cell, rooted in ergonomic and functionalist principles. Echoing the myth of the primitive hut, it was built according to the dimensional rules of the Modulor, concentrating multiple functions in a minimal space. Rustic and vernacular, the Cabanon is a manifesto of modern architecture, now an icon featured in countless exhibitions and publications worldwide.