Architectural Centre

The blurb says: 

Le Corbusier’s summer cabin – a tiny bolthole built in the south of France for his wife – has been reconstructed at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. Jonathan Glancey steps inside to discover what it tells us about the architect’s other monumental buildings

It’s kind of mind-blowing that it is in this space that Corb designed some of those vast concrete megaliths that architectural historians do love so much. That aside, I just love the craft here, and the novel solutions to the problems of everyday living – it puts me in mind to our recent visits to the Black and Einhorn Houses in that respect… But, the minimum dwelling? A model for affordable living? I suspect that it really does need the views that it had originally in order to make this livable rather than soul-destroying, and the lack of kitchen (and consequent reliance on the next door restaurant) isn’t really going to work for the usual low-income earner… and where the heck would you put the widescreen tv, let alone get far enough away to view it all…

Fwiw, Corb spent his last night here (in the cabin in its original location, not at RIBA in london), before drowning on 27 August 1965.

m-d