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saw the furniture items he included as aesthetically neutral tools, passive
pieces of ‘equipment’ rather than as elements within a decorative scheme.
He selected metal doors, produced by the Roneo company, a manufacturer
of steel office equipment; prefabricated metal windows; a tubular
metal staircase (inspired by ones used on ships); bentwood armchairs
(recalling the communal café rather than the private living room); a metal
table made by L. Schmittheisler, a producer of hospital equipment; and
some standardized modular storage units, described as ‘class-less furniture’.
8 The leather ‘club’ armchair he included, discussed in the previous
chapter, was suggestive of a masculinity that had been created within a
semi-public sphere. The overall aim was to eliminate any traces of
individualized domesticity and to provide the occupant with the basic
utilitarian requirements for everyday life. The architect immodestly
described his little pavilion as ‘a turning point in the design of modern
interiors’. 9 Ironically, though, as was often the case with Modernist proposals,
in reality many of its supposedly standardized items had to be
custom-made. Special small versions of Maples’ leather armchairs, for
example, usually produced to standardized measurements, had to be
produced to fit Le Corbusier’s space. 10
Although Le Corbusier included a tubular steel stair handrail in his
pavilion, he did not at that time realize the potential of that material for
the design of furniture pieces that would bring the world of industry into
the home. 11 In fact it wasn’t until 1927 that, with Pierre Jeanneret and
Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier began to design chairs in tubular steel.
From as early as 1925, however, the Bauhaus-trained architect and
designer Marcel Breuer had understood the potential of that material
– encountered through his bicycle – to transform the bulky club armchair,
of which Le Corbusier was so fond, into a skeletal version of the
same design. With its open tubular steel frame Breuer’s Wassily chair of
1925 could provide the same utilitarian function as a traditional armchair
but without blocking the spatial continuity of the room that contained it.
He was dissatisfied with his first version, writing: ‘It is my most extreme
work, both in its outward appearance and in the use of materials; it is the
least artistic, the most logical, the least “cosy” and the most mechanical.’
He went on to develop it through several stages until it was finally
resolved to his satisfaction. 12 In contrast to Le Corbusier’s idea of using
‘off the shelf’ items, Breuer’s approach was to design his own massproduced
furniture pieces to enhance and reinforce the spatiality of
his interiors and their standardized nature. It was a strategy that was