Villa Laroche by Le Corbusier

I had a chance today to visit the Villa Laroche by Le Corbusier, a building I hadn’t visited since my first year of architecture school, many years ago. Again, it made a strong impression.

What strikes me most, again, is how superbly it is composed simultaneously in plan and section, creating a marvelous three-dimensional experience that just can’t be captured any other way than through a visit.

The house was completed in 1924, making it a few years earlier than other famous houses by Le Corbusier, like the double house at the Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, the Villa Stein and the Villa Savoye. It marks a heady time in the development of the Modernist aesthetic.

Although all the Purist paintings that were originally in the house are now elsewhere, some replicas of Le Corbusier watercolors have been hung to give more of an impression of how the house was when it was lived in. But I regret that the little study at the top of the ramp is not filled with books, like it was for Raoul Laroche – it is a wonderful little space.

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