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La cabane de l’architecte, la main tendue vers le Corbusier at the Festival d’Avignon

By 20 June 2024July 8th, 2024No Comments

From 3rd to 21st July 2024, the Influenscènes company is performing La Cabane de l’Architecte, la Main Tendue de Le Corbusier, at the Festival Off d’Avignon. This creation, directed by Jean-Luc Paliès, is the theatrical adaptation of Louise Doutreligne’s novel, Robertino, l’Apprenti de Le Corbusier (2015, Editions de l’Amandier).

© Influenscènes

On 27th August 1965, during a summer he spent with his wife Yvonne in Roquebrune Cap Martin, Le Corbusier drowned at the foot of his holiday cottage. The play opens as Robert Rebutato, now an architect, learns of his death. Standing in front of his coffin, he recalls how they met, the apprenticeship with the master, and those few decades of an artistic, intellectual and human adventure. His conversations with Le Corbusier, during the architect’s many stays at the Etoile de Mer, gave birth to a vocation for architecture in this young boy from Nice that would lead him to set up his own studio in 1965. The play takes us on a journey from the beginnings of modern housing to the present day, through the eyes of Robert, first as a child and then as an adult;

With verve, humour and energy, Louise Doutreligne and Jean-Luc Paliès deliver the initiatory and picturesque journey of this apprentice architect. It celebrates the value of transmission: the theories, architectural visions and know-how left by Le Corbusier to Robert Rebutato and posterity. Here, the theatre extends the continuity of Le Corbusier’s work; oral transmission combines with architectural transmission to bring to life on stage the emblematic productions of the modern period.

© Influenscènes

The show is based on an inspiring location: the cabanon, a “little log cabin set in front of the Mediterranean”. Backing onto the “Etoile de mer” guinguette, the cabanon is the archetypal minimalist cell, based on an ergonomic and functionalist approach. Reviving the myth of the primitive hut, the habitat is built according to the rules of the “Modulor” dimensions, which concentrate different functions in a minimal space. Vernacular and rustic, the Cabanon is a manifesto of modern architecture that has been the subject of numerous exhibitions around the world.

© La Fondation Le Corbusier

To help cover the costs of staging the show (lighting, sound, sets, costumes and props), the company Influenscènes is offering to sponsor the project through the Proarti platform: