This book traces the history of an encounter between a remarkable invention, half-industrial half-design object, and one of the most famous architects of the 20th century.
Created in 1921, the Gras lamp holds a unique place in the history of lighting. A revolutionary design of marvellous simplicity, its original purpose was to meet the needs of the booming manufacturing and retail sectors. The young Le Corbusier, passionate about the challenges of interior lighting, adopted it as his own from the early 1920s on. Thanks to its remarkable functionality, this lamp also perfectly corresponded to his desire to break with decoration and ornament, and the architect went on to utilise it in his studio in the rue de Sevres in Paris as well as his home. He also placed it in many of the interiors of the houses he designed: the Villa Le Lac (Switzerland), the Villa La Roche (Paris), the Guiette House (Antwerp), the Villa Savoye (Poissy), and the villa belonging to his friend Eileen Gray in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.
Relying on rich photographic documentation from the period, the book goes through the history of the Gras lamp, its patents and various models, but it also enables the reader to rediscover Le Corbusier’s interior designs through the prism of this icon of design, as he was one of this lamp’s main promoters in modern times.
Text in English and French.
AUTHOR: Didier Teissonniere opened Galerie Teisso in 1999 in the Marais district of Paris. There, he has been living his passion for the great icons of modernity, whether in the form of anonymous objects or those designed by Jean Prouve, Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, and Charles and Ray Eames. Arthur Ruegg, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland, is a specialist on Le Corbusier and the author of the Le Corbusier. Furniture and Interiors 1905-1965, Scheidegger & Spiess, 2012. Antoine Picon teaches the history of architecture at Harvard. Educated as an engineer, he is also the director of research at the Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussees and president of the Fondation Le Corbusier.
56 colour and 39 b/w illustrations