Architect(s): Le Corbusier
Address: 10 Square du Dr Blanche, PARIS, France
Latitude/Longitude: 48.851826,2.265426
Maison La Roche in Paris is a classic work from Le Corbusier that was built as a home for Raoul La Roche, a Swiss banker and collector of avant-garde art. Among other things, The house was designed to serve as a private gallery to display La Roche’s extensive art collection, among other of its functions. It is located in a courtyard of Paris that is private and has major constraints that the site and its zoning restrictions impose, including a north orientation, existing trees and height and boundary limitations. Inside the building, in order for Le Corbusier to be able to display the art, he made an “architectural promenade”, a theme inspired by Le Corbusier’s visit to the Acropolis in 1911. That theme was strikingly repeated in his Carpenter centre for the Visual Arts nearly forty years later. The promenade goes up and down staircases, leads you through tight spaces, in-between balconies, open surveys, down ramps and into a beautifully lit library. Many modern architects, after Le Corbusier, re-invented this idea of a spatial sequence.
