Fondation Le Corbusier

Tucked away in a private cul-de-sac in the 16th arrondissement, the Fondation Le Corbusier occupies two semi-detached villas that effectively codified the architect’s Purist vision. Designed between 1923 and 1925, Maison La Roche and Maison Jeanneret sit at right angles to one another, forming a single architectural unit. While Maison Jeanneret now houses the foundation’s administrative offices and extensive archives – holding thousands of original drawings and plans – Maison La Roche is the primary site for visitors, preserved as a house-museum that feels less like a residence and more like a manifesto in reinforced concrete. The interior is organized around the “architectural promenade,” a concept that dictates how you move through the building. Rather than revealing the house all at once, the layout forces you to experience the space sequentially. The centerpiece is a curved, two-story gallery where a long interior ramp replaces the traditional staircase, slowing your ascent so you absorb the volume of the room and the angles of sight as you climb. The structure itself ticks off Le Corbusier’s “Five Points of Architecture,” visible in the slender concrete pilotis that lift the mass off the ground, the horizontal ribbon windows, and the accessible roof garden. Inside, the starkness is broken by architectural polychromy – specific blocks of slate grey, blue, and ochre used to define the geometry of the rooms. It is a compact, intense visit, preserving the domestic scale of a home originally built to display a banker’s avant-garde art collection.