Le Blah Blah Blah
Women in Design
“A house is not a machine to live in. It is the shell of man, his extension, his release, his spiritual emanation. Not only its visual harmony but its organization as a whole, the whole work combined together, make it human in the most profound sense.” — Eileen Gray
When Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999), at the tender young age of twenty four, was first entering the world of design, she applied to work at the hallowed studio of architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965): “The austere office was somewhat intimidating, and his greeting rather frosty,” Perriand wrote in her memoirs. “‘What do you want?’ he asked, his eyes hooded by glasses. ‘To work with you.’ He glanced quickly through my drawings. ‘We don’t embroider cushions here,’ he replied, and showed me the door.” Merely months after this unforgivably sexist snub, Perriand would cause a succès de scandale, when she exhibited furniture in aluminium, chrome, glass and leather at the prestigious 1927 Salon d’Automne exhibition in Paris. The furniture, originally designed for her own tiny attic apartment on place Saint-Sulpice, was reimagined as a bar, a cutting edge installation embodying l’esprit nouveau. Upon visiting the exhibition, so impressed was Corbusier with Perriand’s work (which was entirely attuned to his idea of houses as “machines for living in”) that he hired her on the spot — and so began her decade long collaboration with the Swiss-French architect and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967). Despite the visionary nature of her work, light years ahead of its time, especially when one considers Perriand was designing such furniture at the peak of the Art Deco movement (this was, after all, a time when designers and makers like Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (1879-1933) and Jean Dunand (1877-1942) ruled the roost, and whose work, whilst indisputably moderne, was still heavily ornamented, highly expensive and far removed from Perriand’s egalitarian design principles), it was only after her death in 1999 that people really took note of her extraordinary contribution to the canon of design history (some 476,000 people queued to see the highly anticipated retrospective of her work at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris). This is perhaps all the more surprising given the fact that unlike for e.g. Eyre de Lanux (1984-1996) whose career was relatively short-lived, Perriand was not a “lone genius” designing products from an ivory tower — she was a great collaborator, working not only with Corbusier, but French painter Fernand Léger (1881-1955) in the 1930s (with whom she embarked on an “art brut” photographic project) and architect Jean Prouvé during the 1950s.
Lina Bo Bardi at Casa de Vidro © Instituto Bardi/Casa de Vidro/Francisco Albuquerque
Air France travel bureau, London, designed by Perriand and Thomas and Peter H Braddock, 1950
If one thinks of the entirety of Perriand’s oeuvre, excluding her now iconic, and much imitated furniture, the designer’s most significant work is probably her scheme for the sprawling French ski resort Les Arcs; which suitably showcased the full breadth of her extraordinary talents as an interior, furniture and landscape designer. Opened in 1968 it was a project led by Perriand and a collective of architects — though it was she who proposed the resorts series of cascading terraces, building into the incline and sloping roofs downwards so as to preserve the mountain views. This was not however an exclusive, luxury escape, it was a resort that was able to cater to the new frontier of mass-tourism in the 1960s. A committed socialist and feminist, the project is the very embodiment of a mantra Perriand applied throughout her career, namely that good design enables one to live a better life, and that in turn, it should be available to all, and not just an elite few. In this regard, rental apartments were designed to be affordable, and yet at the same time were filled with beautiful, durable, site specific furniture and fixtures. In a similar vein, Perriand insisted that there be an open plan kitchen/living area, so that women weren’t sequestered away from the rest of their families. As was often the case during the twentieth century, Perriand’s work, sadly, was often overshadowed by the renown of her male contemporaries. Corbusier was frequently credited as the sole creator of pieces that were, at the very least, collaborative; it was Perriand for e.g. who ultimately developed the compact modular kitchens for his acclaimed Unité d’Habitation housing project in Marseille. Corbusier openly confessed to having very little interest in designing l’équipement intérieur (furniture and fittings), something for which he had very little patience or aptitude: “Le Corbusier always interested himself in the ‘why’ of things,” Perriand explained in a 1984 interview for Architectural Review. “[He] had no time for what he called ‘le blah blah blah’.” Yet, three of the most significant designs to come out of Corbusier’s studio — the B301 sling back chair, LC2 Grand Comfort, and the adjustable B306 Chaise Longue (a “machine for relaxing”) — were for many years attributed to Corbusier alone; a fallacy as, while he may have specified the overall parameters, i.e. pieces that were “modernist”, it was Perriand who came up with the actual designs, based on sketch analysis of Le Corbusier’s “seven states of sitting”.
The bathroom at Eileen Gray’s Villa E-1027 on the Côte d’Azur © Association Cap Moderne/Manuel Bougot
Of course, Perriand is far from the only great female designer to have been overlooked, and indeed wronged by Le Corbusier; the Irish architect Eileen Gray (1878-1976) is perhaps one of the most distinguished, and one of the most hard done by (at one stage, Gray was in such a state of penury that, so as to stay warm in winter, she was forced to burn precious furniture in the fireplace of her rue Bonaparte apartment). Decades ahead of her time, and for that matter, many of her male contemporaries, she took the lead in redefining architecture as a plausible profession for her sex; she was a true forerunner for e.g. of Eva Jiřičná (b. 1939), Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) and Annabelle Selldorf (b. 1960). So affronted was Corbusier by the fact that Gray’s modernist masterpiece — Villa E-1027 (1929) (a house of exquisite simplicity, built into a cliff at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin) could have been designed by a woman, that, the petulant man-child that he was, he defaced its walls with series of lewd murals — in his characteristic sub-Picasso style — flouting Gray’s express wish that it be left free of decoration. An angry exchange between the two ensued; with Gray calling the murals “an act of vandalism” that betrayed her principles and demanding their removal. “If not”, she wrote, “I will be forced to do it myself, thus to re-establish the original spirit of the house by the sea.” Corbusier refused to apologise, and instead photographed the murals for publication, so as to establish his imprimatur.
The British architecture critic Rowan Moore said of the painting of the murals: “As an act of naked phallocracy, Corbusier’s actions are hard to top ...” adding pithily and succinctly that, “[He] asserted his dominion, like a urinating dog, over the territory.” Corbusier was so utterly obsessed with E-1027 that after failing to purchase it for himself, he acquired a plot of land alongside it, where he built his rustic Cabanon de vacances (1951) (the only house he ever designed for personal use). Zeev Aram, of London retailer Aram, which currently holds the worldwide copyright to Gray’s designs, first came across her work when he chanced upon a selection of her drawings at a small exhibition held at London’s Heinz Gallery in 1973. Already in her 90’s, half-blind and suffering from the late stages of Parkinson’s, Aram recalls Gray was “a bit bemused that somebody was interested in her work.” There and then he made a pact to reintroduce several of her designs for the first time in years, a gamble that paid off, as today they are some of the most sought after design classics (something evidenced by the fact that Gray’s glass-and-tubular steel E-1027 side table is one of the most faked pieces of furniture in modern history).
Similarly, the work of architect, designer, editor, curator and activist Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) is still too little known. Born in Italy, she made a name for herself in Brazil, notably in her adopted home city of São Paulo, where she emigrated in 1947, against a backdrop of military tensions after years of political dictatorship. The obstacles of course were not only political, she was a woman working in a male-dominated world, as well as an outspoken critic and a foreigner, where she was “both part of the establishment and an outsider: an insurgent in noble garb,” wrote Zeuler R. M. de A. Lima in a recently published biography. Nevertheless, over the course of five decades, she directed museums and designed sought after furniture (which, like Perriand and Gray, has resulted in a florid market in fakes), assimilating modernism with local influences, and in turn, promoting the Brazilian folk culture for which she had a profound passion and affinity. Whilst Bo Bardi had no desire to shrug off her European heritage, she famously explained: “Brazil is the country I chose, and it is therefore twice my country. I was not born here, I looked for this place and decided to live here. I chose my country.”
Indeed what makes her a pioneer within architecture and design is the particular care and attention she paid to the nuances of life and its relationship to architecture, its environment and its people. This was something entrenched within the theory of the time, as the very nexus of art and architecture around the Second World War and into the post-war decades was about thinking how to develop a more egalitarian world, something particularly relevant to Bo Bardi who envisaged the role of an architect as being an “enabler of society”. Casa de Vidro, the concrete and glass house she she created for herself and her husband, is particularly extraordinary. An iconic work of rationalist art, it was radical, not only for its structure, but the way in which it was decorated; an avid collector, Bo Bardi combined antiques and pieces of her own design — thus creating an interior which is instantly relatable to the way in which we live now. Bo Bardi was undeniably influenced by the European modernism of Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), yet her architecture feels less austere than that of her male counterparts. She was able to absorb and assimilate the avant-garde sensibilities of her time without ever forgetting the past, or the basic human need for comfort. Arguably, Bo Bardi’s buildings seem so incredibly timeless because it is not about the container, but the content; it was the programme that mattered, her architecture is complete when it is inhabited.
Fauteuil “Ohio” (2017), Aluminium, upholstery, designed by Ingrid Donat, at Carpenters Workshop Gallery
The work of another Italian artist and designer, Gabriella Crespi (1922-2017) has become increasingly popular in recent years; Milan’s Dimore gallery recently reissued several of her table and lamp designs created between 1970 and 1980. “Crespi inspires us because she was modern and daring,” explains founder Emiliano Salci. “Everything about her was sophisticated and unconventional.” An almost mythical figure of Italian creativity, Crespi’s style epitomises the louche, international, jet-set milieu of the 1970s. Known for her glamour and celebrity status as much as for her furniture, the Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli (b. 1971) described her as “the Greta Garbo of Milan”. A mix between Mid-Century Modern and the decorative arts traditions of the past — especially Art Nouveau and Art Deco — a unique duality exists in Crespi’s work, combining the rigor of geometry, ergonomics and functionality, with naturally sensuous lines and materials. Born in Tuscany, Crespi moved to Milan in 1944 to study fine art at the Liceo Artistico at the prestigious Accademi di Belle Arti di Brera and then architecture at the city’s Politecnico; a highly unconventional choice for a woman in the 1940s in Italy. Architecture was the business of men — women were not thought able to design, at the most they could become assistants or decorators. “She was so impulsive that she faced life without thinking too much about the consequences,” says her daughter Elisabetta Crespi, who has managed her late mother’s production since the 1970s and now also runs the Archivio Gabriella Crespi. “Her passion for her work helped her to overcome any obstacles. I remember her as always being in movement — a volcano of ideas, with her sketchbook always at hand.” An artist that stood out from the mainstream, Crespi distinguished herself for the originality of the objects she designed, creating archetypes and items of furniture that offered new ways of seeing contemporary design. “She was a woman, she was an aristocrat, she was wealthy,” explains Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli. “But today, in this post-ideological moment, all the things that would have worked against her are no longer valid. People look at the work, and they want to buy it because it’s so special”
Attitudes are, thankfully, changing and there has been an uncovering and reinterpretation of the histories of some of these otherwise side-lined women architects and designers of the modernist era; including, in recent years, exhibitions of the work of architects Jane Drew (1911-1996) and Lina Bo Bardi, as well as the Barbican’s 2019 exhibition: Breaking Ground: Architecture by Women. Following on from a major retrospective of Perriand’s work in 2019-2020 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, there is, currently, a new, albeit much smaller, show at London’s Design Museum — Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life. Through a series of thematic displays the exhibition attempts to straddle collaboration and originality, the modern movement and the individual, as well as what Perriand referred to as “the art of living” — though given the designer struggled through being patronized and put down down by her male peers, I do wonder what she would have made of some of the marketing material. Promotional images on the Design Museum’s Instagram page, featuring fashion “influencers” lounging over re-editions of her tubular steel furniture, are accompanied by the captions “Can you pose like Perriand?” and “Can you get the Perriand look?”. Such puerile tactics do seem somewhat unnecessary, and perhaps do something of a disservice to designer’s extraordinary legacy.
However, looking at the silver lining, shining a spotlight on the work of such women designers can only be a positive, encouraging greater diversity in a profession that is, as yet, still far from equal, and where women, even those working in the higher echelons, are often still not taken seriously by their male co-workers. There are of course numerous and celebrated contemporary women designers whose work goes some way to redressing the balance; for e.g. American architect and multidisciplinary designer Johanna Grawunder (b. 1961) — who, having worked with Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007) from 1985 to 2001, has gone on to achieve great solo success with her minimal, abstract light installations. As with many of the great women designers that came before her, this was, in part, due to her own strong-willed perspicacity. In high school, at the age of thirteen, she had wanted to study draughtsmanship — a subject at the time deemed suitable only for boys; she convinced the headmaster to allow her to take her chosen subject on the proviso she would also study “sewing” (as apparently in the mid-seventies attitudes had changed little since Perriand first applied to the offices of Corbusier nearly five decades prior). It took renowned sculptor Diego Giacometti (1902-1985) to persuade French-Swedish designer Ingrid Donat to start creating her own furniture. Now much sought after by collectors, Donat’s work is a symbiosis of the finest qualities of Art Deco sophistication — in particular, it brings to mind the works of Armand-Albert Rateau (1882-1938) — and the force of African tribal art. There are now, thankfully, numerous female designers creating waves in the design industry, and producing work that will, hopefully inspire the next generation of artists, architects and designers.