Maison Guiette registered by UNESCO

Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, known as Le Corbusier, was a French-Swiss architect who was part of the “Modern Movement”. This trend emerged after the First World War and combined functionality with pure lines and new materials.

One fine example of his work is the Maison Guiette in Antwerp. It was commissioned by the Antwerp-based painter René Guiette and built in 1926.

It includes the five characteristics of Modern architecture: pylons, a roof garden, open plan, long windows and an open façade. The narrow, long shape of the plot of land on which the house stands is typically Belgian. Le Corbusier was forced to place the kitchen and toilets on the street side because the painter wanted to live on the ground floor and have direct access to the garden. The architect also created other specific features such as the roof terrace and the duplex studio.

He himself devised and supervised, from a distance, the arrangement of colours for the interior. The colours of the walls are intended either to reinforce their presence, or to make them disappear and break up the partitioning.

Le Corbusier, deeply rooted in the Modern Movement of which he was part, reduced the building to its function of a “machine for living in” while inviting us on an architectural stroll.