Borne Béton Lamp Speaks to Le Corbusier’s Architecture

Le Corbusier , over his five-decade career, put forth a vision of design as an entity defined by strik­ing elemen­tal forms and driven by func­tion. The Swiss-French archi­tect dismissed styles of the past and unnec­es­sary orna­men­ta­tion. He focused his furni­ture designs on inex­pen­sive mate­ri­als that could be mass produced and devel­oped ambi­tious archi­tec­ture and plan­ning projects that promoted new ways of living. Le Corbusier’s point of view helped estab­lish the influ­en­tial Inter­na­tional Style and posi­tioned him as one of the central figures in modern design.

Born in 1887 in Switzer­land as Charles-Édouard Jean­neret-Gris, he first learned about art, archi­tec­ture, and crafts­man­ship when he attended the École des Arts Déco­rat­ifs at La Chaux-de-Fonds. Known for his writ­ings on design, he devel­oped his pseu­do­nym, Le Corbusier, when he began penning arti­cles for L’Esprit Nouveau in Paris in 1920.

He went on to complete notable struc­tures such as the United Nations head­quar­ters in New York City, which Le Corbusier designed along­side Oscar Niemeyer; the Villa Savoye in Poissy, France; and Unite d’Habitation in Marseille, France. The latter project was completed in 1952 in collab­o­ra­tion with Portuguese artist Nadir Afonso as part of an effort to respond to the housing short­ages in post-WWII Europe.

The first iter­a­tion of the Unité d’Habitation referred to as Cité Radieuse, was defined by the perva­sive use of ​“béton brut” — raw concrete. The project was the first of a new housing series for Le Corbusier that focused on commu­nal living, creat­ing a space where the inhab­i­tants could shop, play, live, and come together in a ​“verti­cal garden city.” The roof of the devel­op­ment func­tioned as a garden terrace that had a running track, club, kinder­garten, gym, and pool. Addi­tion­ally, there were shops, medical facil­i­ties, and a small hotel distrib­uted through­out the building.

Consid­ered the origin of the brutal­ist move­ment, the Unité d’Habitation was deco­rated with raw concrete lamps that illu­mi­nated common areas shared by tenants of the complex. Those lights, called Borne Béton, were also used in Le Corbusier’s Bhakra Dam and Sukhna Dam projects in Chandi­garh, India. Reis­sued by NEMO and avail­able here at Context Gallery The lamp is a hand­crafted product; slight differ­ences make each one unique. Avail­able in two sizes — a large floor version and a small table version —the Borne Béton is suited for indoor or outdoor use. Its simple design speaks to the lyri­cism of form and refined func­tion­al­ity that is evident both in the Unité d’Habitation project and Le Corbusier’s oeuvre at large.