Charlotte Pierrand Biography
Charlotte Perriand (1903–1999) was a designer and architect. He studied design at the École de l'Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, France, from 1920 to 1925. In Paris in 1927, he began running his own interior design studio for 10 years. Perriand worked with Le Corbusier (Switzerland, 1887–1965) and Pierre Jeanneret (Switzerland, 1896–1967) in Paris as an associate responsible for furniture and accessories from the late 1920s to the late 1930s. Jean Prouvé (French, 1901–1984), Pierre Jeanneret, and Georges Blanchon all worked with Perriand in Paris between 1937 and 1940. His work was recognized internationally, reaching as far as Tokyo and Indonesia, where he worked as an independent designer from 1941 to 1942 and from 1943 to 1946. Perriand had a habit of taking walks, which served as inspiration for her to create flexibly and freely. In this way she freed herself from the rationalist mentality of the 1920s and developed a unique style that still resonates in many projects today. Perriand had worked with Cassina since 1978, pushing hard to initiate production methods that respected the philosophy and designs developed by the trio of Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Perriand in the 1930s. Perriand's best-known work is his series of tubular steel chairs that he developed in those early years with Le Corbusier and Jeanneret. Some of Perriand's other notable works are his 1929 model apartment in tubular steel and glass called Équipement d'Habitation (Living Equipment) at the Salon d'Automne, his design of Le Corbusier's new apartment on rue Nungesser -et-Coli in 1934, and here design for the League of Nations building for the United Nations in Geneva in 1957. A retrospective of his work was exhibited at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1985 and his autobiography, Vie de Création (Life of Creation), was published in 1998 together with a presentation and retrospective at the Design Museum in London. His work was exhibited in 2011 at the Petit Palais, part of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, under the title De la Photographie au Design. Perriand died in Paris in 1999.
