Purpose

“On 30^th December 1951, on the corner of a table in a little café on the Cote d’Azur, I drew, as a birthday present for my wife, the plan of a hut which I built the following year on top of a rock lapped by the waves” (qtd. in Alison 30).  

Le Corbusier designed Petit Cabanon as a modest summer home for himself and his wife. The couple often spent their Christmas’s there as well. During periods when Le Corbusier was traveling, his wife, Yvonne, visited the cabin alone. “In the fifteen square metres of the cabanon, in the shade of a great carob tree, Le Corbusier arranged everything necessary for rest and work, with no element other than the essential, but also with all the superfluous that is indispensible to the happiness of man” (Alison, 12). In this sense, the cabin serves as an example for the cultured art of living. Le Corbusier focused his design on meaningful solutions with modest dimensions, a kind of existence-minimum.

Posted by: Meghan Robidoux