The Modern Interior

The living room in the Villa Jeanneret-Perret, designed by Le Corbusier (then Charles-
Edouard Jeanneret), 1912.
universalizing and rationalizing aspects of the movement, focusing
primarily on its architectural achievements. A second trajectory, more
visible in France than in Germany, emphasized the decorative aspects of
the movement and the quest for an appropriate modern form of decoration
for the modern age. A couple of decades later the Modernist architects
and designers were to reject decoration, however, seeing it as synonymous
with nineteenth-century bourgeois domesticity and social aspiration.
Ironically, though, given their clear and frequently articulated distaste
for the interior, several of them had begun their careers in that field. Le
Corbusier, for example, had worked as a decorator in his native Chauxde-Fonds,
when he was still known as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret. 11 The
salon he created for the Jeanneret-Perret residence in 1912 was highly
dependent upon the language of nineteenth-century bourgeois domesticity
featuring, as it did, patterned rugs and wallpaper, draped curtains,
items of antique furniture and ornaments on the mantelpiece. The
German Modernist architect, Walter Gropius, had also worked on a
number of interior projects in his early career, among them an advocate’s
consulting room in Berlin in 1910. His introduction of leather-upholstered,
padded furniture gave that space the appearance of a traditional 93