French designers Marie Cornil and Alexandre Willaume have filled an apartment in Le Corbusier's iconic Cité Radieuse housing block in Marseille with custom furniture, including a leather-and-metal armchair informed by the architect's work.
Marie & Alexandre is the latest design studio to create a scenography within Appartement N°50 after it was restored to its original condition by owners Jean-Marc Drut and Patrick Blauwart.
Marie & Alexandre has taken over Appartement N°50 at La Cité Radieuse
Influenced by the creative salons hosted by the apartment's original occupant ? school teacher Lilette Ripert who lived there from 1952 to 2000 ? Drut and Blauwart invited the likes of Jasper Morrison and Konstantin Grcic to transform the space and opened it up to the public during the summer. The duplex apartment, completed in 1952 and later classified as a historical monument, hosted installations by well-known designers every second year from 2008 to 2018.
The duo created a series of custom furniture for the flat
Now, the programme has returned after a six-year hiatus with an intervention by Marie & Alexandre, who created several bespoke pieces to be exhibited alongside some of their existing works.
The duo is known for their collaborations with artisanal producers, and research into materials and making processes that inform their designs for unique or limited-edition objects.
Among them is a desk formed from stacked glass boxes
"We wanted this exhibition to c...