Le CORBUSIER - Villa La ROCHE

Le CORBUSIER - (1923) - Villa La ROCHE (Paris, France) La Maison La Roche-Jeanneret is a double house built by Le Corbusier in 1924. They are in the Rue Doctor Blanche to the numbers 8-10. They are the seat of the Le Corbusier Foundation http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/. The project dates back to 1923, when Raoul La Roche commissioned to the Helvetic architect a house where he could also be exposed his art gallery. Was used the new technique of reinforced concrete and, in line with the experiences of the modern movement, ran out all the decorations in favor of an absolute set of volumes of pure geometrical features. Villa Jeanneret was instead built in collaboration with the architect Pierre Jeanneret in 1925. The two buildings are joined in today. [...] Open the door, go under a bridge, and the tight space explodes upwards and through punched-out voids that are mysteriously backlit. Go across the triple-height space, look at the Purist paintings, one of which you now seem to be moving through, turn left up a stair, and survey the pure prisms from a balcony....Catch your breath, turn around, and proceed to the culmination, La Roche's curved gallery... [M]ount the brown ramp to the left, to Le Roche's aerie, his top-lit library. The spatial sequence is remarkable and remained a constant preoccupation of Le Corbusier. It also became the stock in trade of subsequent Modern architects.[...] (Charles Jencks)