Charlotte Perriand

French architect and designer. Her work aimed to create functional living spaces in the belief that better design helps in creating a better society. She states “The extension of the art of dwelling is the art of living- living in harmony with man’s deepest drives and with his adopted or fabricated environment”

Perriand worked together with le Corbusier, the Brazilian architect Lucio Costa and the French artist Fernand Leger. In 1940 she travels to Japan as an official advisor but is forced to leave Japan in 1942 labeled ‘an undesirable alien’. On her way back to Europe she is captured and forced into Vietnamese exile because of the war. Nevertheless she studies (woodwork and weaving), marries her second husband and gives birth to a daughter while in exile.

In 1998 she published her memoirs entitled ‘’Une vie de Souvenirs,’’ edited by Odile Jacob. She died October 27, 1999 in Paris.