For as long as I’ve been able to recognise the laid-back modernist chaise longue, I’ve thought of it as the “Le Corbusier chaise longue”.
Just him, the Swiss-French architect and designer, and I suspect I am not alone in this attribution.
In fact the now ubiquitous chaise was designed by three people with, I’d like to think, Charlotte Perriand, having the most input. As a young architect and designer she applied for a job in the studio Corbusier ran with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret. The (now legendary) brutal rejection from the architect, who was nearly 20 years her senior, said that “We don’t embroider cushions here”. Well neither did she, which she proved through becoming known in Paris design circles for her adventurous modernist approach to furniture and interior design, working with aluminium and chrome.
Soon she was collaborating with the two cousins – the collaboration lasted until 1937 – on a project called l’équipement d’intérieur de l’habitation. The chaise was designed when she was 25. While not looking particularly comfortable – there’s something exposing about lying on one , like lying on a doctor’s examining table – the chaise follows the shape of the human body and its chrome frame is adjustable. A roll cushion at the head – also adjustable – provides some comfort. The ponyskin idea is hers, though there were several versions in different coloured leathers.
Her designs for this fashionable design house, she later wrote, were “determined by the requirements of architecture, setting, and prestige”, the idea behind the chair being that form and function should come together to create a relaxing experience for the user.
The LC4 has been produced by Cassina since the mid-1960s. The company incidentally does give full credit to the three designers behind it: Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand.
