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.
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.
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.
“We wanted this exhibition to combine our work from the past four years and for the pieces to highlight the numerous workshops and techniques we have worked with recently,” the duo told Dezeen.
The designers met while working at Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s studio in Paris and subsequently began developing their own projects through a series of workshops and residencies.
Since 2022 their work has been exhibited by Galerie Signé, whose founder Maxime Bouzidi helped to facilitate the collaboration with Drut.
One of the pieces created specially for the exhibition is a series of coloured glass boxes developed with help from manufacturing company Glas Italia that responds directly to hues found in the apartment.
The use of glass was inspired by the orientation of apartments within the Unité d’Habitation complex, which receive both morning and afternoon light. Each piece incorporates two coloured strips that create a third colour where they overlap.
Le Corbusier’s ideas about using modular elements to create harmonious proportions informed the design of standard-sized boxes that can be stacked to create totemic shelves or combined with a tabletop to form a desk.
Marie & Alexandre developed further pieces for the exhibition during a residency at the Lycée Jean Monnet academy in Moulins, including a glass table and various furniture items made in wrought iron.
Collaborations with staff and students at the school informed the creation of the rectangular table, which features a rippled surface made from industrial float glass.
During the residency, the designers experimented with metal forging and designed an armchair with a leather sling seat, produced by Cressange metal workshop Flammes de Créations.
The chair’s simple forms reference the furniture designed by Le Corbusier and frequent collaborator Charlotte Perriand. It features a metal framework with three detachable legs and a tensioned seat that responds to the weight of the sitter.
For the kitchen, Marie & Alexandre created a height-adjustable aluminium table to fit the limited space. Made by Atelier BLAM in Nantes, the piece features subtle bumps where the legs attach to the top.
The duo’s experiments with ceramics include a tile collection created in collaboration with the Alain Vagh factory in Salernes, as well as chairs with coloured backs that were produced for the exhibition by ceramicist Jean Marie Foubert.
The designers said they were appreciative of the opportunity to display their work in such an iconic location, adding that they set out “to proceed with the same intention as the previous exhibitions as if visitors were coming to see an inhabited apartment”.
The exhibition will be on display until 15 August before travelling to Paris, where it will be adapted to occupy Galerie Signé from 5 September to 21 October.
Marie & Alexandre follows six other design studios, whose work has been presented at Appartement N°50 following its restoration.
These include Pierre Cardin, who added colourful furniture and artwork to the space, and the Bouroullec brothers whose scenography featured their SteelWood furniture and Clouds wall hangings.
Marie & Alexandre at La Cité Radieuse, Apartement 50 is on show at La Cité Radieuse until 15 August. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.
