Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life

Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life is open now at the Design Museum, an exhibition covering the life and work of the 20th-century designer.

The French designer came to be one of the most important voices in 20th-century design, creating furniture, interiors, and larger architectural projects. Opening in June at the Design Museum in London, the exhibition ‘Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life’ will take a look at the designer’s life and work through sketches, photographs, scrapbooks, prototypes, and final pieces.

The exhibition falls on the 25th anniversary of the designer’s last major presentation in London, which was held in 1996. As a female pioneer of design, Perriand’s work in the past was sometimes overshadowed by her male collaborators (who included Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Jean Prouvé) but in recent years her work has become as acknowledged as many of her peers.

The Design Museum’s exhibition shines a light on a design talent who believed good design in our lives and homes was something for everyone.

Tickets for the exhibition are available now.

The exhibition uses three sections to explore Perriand’s career: The Machine Age, Nature and the Synthesis of the Arts, and Modular Design for Modern Living.

It begins with the design of her own studio apartment in Saint-Sulpice, Paris, where you can see Perriand’s early mastery of metal furniture and the notebooks in which she developed the tubular steel furniture designed with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, which would go onto define 1920s modernism.

You can also walk through one-to-one room recreations of the Salon d’Automne interior from 1929 and the London branch of the Air France office designed in 1957.

The exhibition also charts Perriand’s shift from the machine aesthetic to wooden natural forms, inspired by collecting and taking photos of objects found in nature, and then moves onto her exploration of modular design, which was created to be more affordable and adaptable, such as her iconic bookcases, originally created for student dormitories but now an instantly recognisable form of modern design. 

As a hiker, skier, and traveller, the exhibition also traces her love of travel and the outdoors and ends with perhaps the biggest architectural project of her career – the Les Arcs ski resort in France. 

Tickets for the exhibition are on sale now.

‘Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life’ runs from 19 June – 5 September 2021 at the Design Museum. Get your tickets now.