World Heritage Corb: the lakeside home Le Corbusier designed for his parents is next up in our series in which we take a closer look at the 17 projects recently added to UNESCO's World Heritage List.
Designed between 1923 and 1924, Villa Le Lac was one of Le Corbusier's first built projects ? and the earliest of the batch of 17 of the architect's projects recently listed by heritage body UNESCO.
Photograph by Oliver Martin-Gambier
The pair drew up plans for the house before hunting for the ideal site, eventually settling on a secluded spot on the eastern shoreline of Lake Geneva in the Swiss municipality of Corseaux.
"I boarded the Paris-Milan express several times, or the Orient Express. In my pocket was the plan of a house. A plan without a site" The plan of a house in search of a plot of ground" Yes!" Le Corbusier wrote in a 1954 book about the project called Une Petit Maison 1923. Photograph by Oliver Martin-Gambier
A panoramic window, which runs the length of the main living space, frames views of the lake and Alps.
Le Corbusier's parents Georges Edouard Jeanneret and Marie Charlotte Amélie Jeanneret-Perret moved into the house after its completion in 1924.
Photograph by Patrick Moser
The house has been modified several times over its lifespan, with an upper annex added to the northwest of the property in 1931. In the same year, the northern facades were covered in sheets of galvanised steel and a new wall was added to separate the north of ...