i doubt if le corbusier needs much of an introduction to many of you. in case you don’t know, there’s an extensive entry in wikipedia, and the website of le fondation le corbusier has a wealth of detail about the life and works of one of, if not the most important modernist architects of the 20^th century. the maison la roche is located near passy in paris in a quiet well-heeled neghbourhood. the house was one of the earliest of the master’s works and was commisioned by the la roche household in 1923. this was the same year that he published his towards an architecture, still one of the super-seminal tracts of architectural modernism, and the source of the famous quotation “une maison est one machine-à-habiter”; a house is a machine for living in.

raoul la roche was a banker, and avid collector of current avant garde art and the house was designed with much of this in mind. it is very much characteristic of le corbusier’s ideas of rationality purity and function which he was developing at the time.

in 1916 the house was designated a UNESCO world heritage site.