ARTISTS

PIERRE JEANNERET
EXHIBITION:
CARPENTERS WORKSHOP GALLERY POP-UP
DATES:
09/28/2017 - 01/17/2018
CURRENTLY BASED:
DECEASED
WEBSITE:
PIERRE JEANNERET

Born in 1896 in Geneva, Pierre Jeanneret graduated from the Geneva School of Fine Arts in 1921 and moved to Paris this same year.

Since then, he became his cousin Le Corbusier’s closest associate, and he is perhaps better known for this collaboration. In 1926, they wrote a manifesto explaining their architectural aesthetic vision entitled ‘Five Steps Towards a New Style of Architecture.’ With this book, they created a new type of architectural work, breaking with old methods seen then as archaic. Their ‘Villa Savoye’, designed in 1929, is the three-dimensional manifestation of this piece of writing.

In 1929, he collaborated with Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand for an exhibition at Paris’ Autumn Salon. Here, he exhibited cutting-edge furniture such as tubular steel chairs, stools, and a set of shelves, of which he often drew the first blueprints and was frequently involved in the more technological elements. Indeed, Pierre Jeanneret was also a distinguished, famous furniture designer, heading modern design in the twenties and thirties with Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand.

But above all, their greatest oeuvre lasted fifteen years. Jeanneret worked in India as Chief Architect and Designer of urban redevelopment in Chandigarh, which then became a cornerstone for modern architecture. Most famously built here was the Gandhi Bhawan building on the campus of Punjab University, which evokes a lotus flower floating on the water. Jeanneret stayed in the city after everything was finished as an advisor to the local government. He designed chairs for their offices and several private homes, too. Ever since he has remained in this country the most famous of the Jeannerets.