The Fondation Suisse or Pavillon Le Corbusier is a building designed by

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...

between 1930–31 and is located at the Cité Internationale Universitaire, in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

. Weston, Richard: ''Key Buildings of the 20th Century: Plans, Sections and Elevations'', W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Description

The building was designed to house the Swiss students at the Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris. It consists of a single story part and a four-story slab building on

piloti Pilotis, or piers, are supports such as columns, pillars, or stilts that lift a building above ground or water. They are traditionally found in stilt and pole dwellings such as fishermen's huts in Asia and Scandinavia using wood, and in elev ...

. The pavilion summarises Corbusier's key ideas from the 1920s.

Construction

The construction of this Pavilion was entrusted, without a competition, by the Committee of

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland *Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri *Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia *Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports * Swiss Internation ...

Universities to

and

Pierre Jeanneret Pierre Jeanneret (22 March 1896 – 4 December 1967) was a Swiss architect who collaborated with his cousin, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (who assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier), for about twenty years. Early life Arnold-André-Pierre Jea ...

who at first refused to be charged with this commission. The manner in which their cause was handled by the Swiss federal authorities and the majority of Swiss public opinion at the time of the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference th ...

Competition still lay heavy on their hearts. Nevertheless, at the insistence of the Swiss universities, they threw themselves into the work and built the pavilion with a budget reputed by the president of the Cité Universitaire to be only half-sufficient (3,000,000.00 fr.) The construction of the building, under exceptionally difficult circumstances, provided the occasion for constituting a veritable laboratory of modern architecture: the most urgent were tackled, in particular, dry-wall construction and acoustic separation.

References

External links

Fondation Suisse
{{Le Corbusier Office buildings in Paris Le Corbusier buildings in France Buildings and structures completed in 1932 Buildings and structures in the 14th arrondissement of Paris 20th-century architecture in France University and college residential buildings