The Savoye villa in Poissy (Yvelines), a white parallelepiped perched on stilts in its green setting, is worth the detour in itself. Another reason to visit this nugget of modernist architecture – delivered in 1931 by Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and listed as a UNESCO world heritage site since 2016 – is the thirty or so design works from “Interior Natures”, the exhibition orchestrated within its walls until March 2, 2025 by the Center des monuments nationaux (CMN) and the National Center for Plastic Arts (CNAP).
Seaweed curtain by the Bouroullec brothers, reconstituted wooden bench in the style of a tree trunk by Mathieu Lehanneur – the designer of the Paris 2024 Olympic torch –, or shelves hidden under a raffia hut by the Campana brothers: the works resonate here with the landscape framed in the long strip windows of the villa, from one room to another. “From the outside, your architectural work will add to the site. But from within, she integrates it”Le Corbusier told his students.
From the entrance, at the foot of the helical staircase and inclined ramp of the villa – which Le Corbusier had designed as an architectural promenade – sits the famous Miss Blanche armchair (1988), by Shiro Kuramata (1934- 1991). “This piece, with its red roses captured in the thickness of the Plexiglas, sums up the masterful combination between nature and artifice so present in the architecture of the villa”enthuses curator Céline Saraiva, responsible for the Decorative Arts, Design and Crafts collection at the CNAP. The idea for the exhibition was inspired by the collection of pebbles, bark and shells that Le Corbusier gleaned during his walks, like Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999).
Of these humble fragments of nature – around a hundred pieces kept at the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris – we can see examples for the first time in a showcase on the first floor. Some of them, which the architect cherished as “objects with a poetic reaction” or “evocative companions”inspired his constructions, such as the ceiling of the Palace of Soviets, for Moscow, similar to a conch, a 1930 project which did not see the light of day. Or that of the chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp (1953-1955, Haute-Saône), which takes its shape from a crab shell picked up on the beach.
Lemon tree trunk and engraved aluminum
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