Mary McLeod: Le Corbusier, the New Woman, and Domestic Reform

Mary McLeod’s lecture “Le Corbusier, the New Woman, and Domestic Reform” will explore the relationship between Le Corbusier’s architecture and the emergence of the New Woman in France after World War I, examining how changing gender identities and social conditions (such as women working and the so-called servant crisis) affected Le Corbusier’s vision of domestic living in the 1920s. She will address the particular influence of French architect and designer Charlotte Perriand, whose work aimed to create functional living spaces in the belief that better design helps in creating a better society, on the atelier’s designs, as well as the role of an emerging domestic reform movement in Germany and France (especially the writings of Paulette Bernège) on Le Corbusier’s view of modern living. One theme that will be considered is the new importance that the kitchen gained in his work in the late 1920s. The Salon d’Automne apartment of 1929 will be discussed as a pivotal project. As part of her lecture, she will show a short film of 1931, Pierre Chenal’s L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, in which Le Corbusier presents three of his villas from the late 1920s.

Mary McLeod is a professor of architecture at Columbia University, where she teaches architecture history and theory, and occasionally studio. She has also taught at Harvard University, University of Kentucky, University of Miami, and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. She received her B.A., M.Arch., and Ph.D. from Princeton University. Her research and publications have focused on the history of the modern movement and on contemporary architecture theory, examining issues concerning the connections between architecture and ideology. She is co-editor of “Architecture, Criticism, Ideology” and “Architecture Reproduction”, and is the editor of and contributor to the book “Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living” (Abrams, 2003). She also initiated and helped curate the exhibition Charlotte Perriand: Interior Equipment, held at the Urban Center in New York. Most recently, she co-edited a website on pioneering American women architects for the Beverly Willis Architectural Foundation. Her articles have appeared in Assemblage, Oppositions, Art Journal, AA Files, JSAH, Casabella, Art Journal, Harvard Design Magazine, and Lotus, as well as other journals and anthologies, such as “Food and the City”, “Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes”, “Architecture School”, “The Sex of Architecture”, “Architecture in Fashion”, “Architecture of the Everyday”, “Architecture and Feminism”, “The Pragmatist Imagination”, “The State of Architecture”, “Fragments: Architecture and the Unfinished”, “Architecture Theory since 1968”, “Oppositions Reader”, “Le Parole dell’Architettura”, and “Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art”. She has received several fellowships and awards, including a Brunner Award, Fulbright Fellowship, NEH award, and grants from New York Council of the Arts and the Graham Foundation.

The lecture has been supported by the U.S. Embassy Prague.