Swiss manufacture Girard-Perregaux hosted a very left-bank event in Paris on October 22 to present its latest version of the Girard-Perregaux Vintage 1945 Le Corbusier timepiece in steel with a concrete dial. This new limited edition of 50 pieces marks the 50th anniversary of the death of the celebrated architect and urban designer Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, also known as Le Corbusier.
The exhibition presents a coherent selection of pieces, marked by this concern with things human and this attentiveness to the world. Most of them come from the administrative buildings of Chandigarh, such as the Parliament, the High Court, hospitals, and Punjab University.
Some of the pieces on view in the show are outstanding: one such is the sole model found to date of the “Kangoo” sofa. It rubs shoulders with the impressive and rare “Glass Bookshelves”, made of solid teak, in 1960. An “Illuminating Table” and a “Square Table”, accompanied by a set of seats and armchairs, round off this presentation.
Complementing these pieces, the exhibition presents two emblematic Le Corbusier objects: the three-legged “Tree Trunk” table and, above all, one of the “Concrete lights”, lighting elements with a concrete structure based on the model of those of a Unité d’Habitation in Marseille. These two objects perfectly illustrate Le Corbusier’s ambition: “Architecture is the correct and magnificent shrewd interplay of volumes assembled in light”, as he wrote in 1927, in Vers une architecture. (from the exhibition website)