Isabelle Priest

Abstract

This essay examines the private houses Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier designed from 1922 to 1935 in relation to the work of cleaning and domestic labour. Of the fifteen houses Le Corbusier designed during the period many were for artists and avant-garde figures working in the art world. While these buildings were based on principles for a ‘new’ and ‘modern’ architecture – centred around discussions of cleanliness, hygiene, progress and equality – these were houses in which the presence and necessity of domestic servants were still taken for granted.

The essay argues that, despite their ostensible outwardly unconventional aesthetics, the social and spatial organisation of domestic labour in the houses Le Corbusier designed in and around Paris were based on conservative and traditional gender hierarchies and class roles. The essay identifies that these houses reinforced existing class and gender relationships and that despite being aware of long-running discussions to improve the burden of domestic labour, Le Corbusier’s designs have more in common with the conservatizing architecture of previous centuries.

The designs staged clearly differentiated architectural approaches towards owners and servants, men and women, including in the types of spaces, size of rooms, fenestration and finishes, as well as access to washing facilities and leisure space. Le Corbusier’s designs underestimated the impact of social and technical changes and, moreover, responded to contextual pressures by designing houses which rendered servants less spatially and socially visible than ever before. The essay raises important questions about how progressive and modern Le Corbusier’s architecture really was.

Keywords: Le Corbusier, cleaning, servant spaces, modernism, artists’ houses, Paris, machines for living in

Full text: OAJ ISSUE 11 FINAL_Article_2

DOI: 10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2024s02

Biographical note

Isabelle Priest is an architecture journalist. She is managing editor at the RIBA Journal, the monthly magazine published by the Royal Institute of British Architects. She studied BSc Architectural Studies at The Bartlett, University College London, and completed an AHRC-funded place for a Master’s in Architectural History, also at The Bartlett, where this research was conducted. She was awarded the International Building Press Architecture Writer of the Year in 2019 and 2016.

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