Le Corbusier's studio-apartment. How to transmit the cultural values of an architectural palimpsest?

Marino, Giulia [UCL] Graf, Franz

Le Corbusier’s studio-apartment is an iconic object of the twentieth century, combining the indisputable material values of the building with the intangible “sense of place” of an architect’s home. Le Corbusier, who lived there from 1934 until his death in 1965, treated it as a permanent construction site — a unique place of spatial, plastic and constructional experimentation. For conservationists today, the many lives of Le Corbusier’s apartment-studio present major problems for conservation ethics both in terms of appropriate technical measures and theoretical approaches, the two being inseparably linked. Based on a study by the EPFL TSAM, requested by the Fondation Le Corbusier, which wished to undertake the restoration of this emblematic object with the support of in-depth preliminary studies, this paper also proposes to return to the issues raised by the museography of Le Corbusier’s apartment-studio. What educational measures can be adopted to bring the troubled history of this asset of universal value, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016, to a broad public?