Charlotte Perriand

Charlotte Perriand

An architect in the mountains

An architect, town planner, and designer, Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) put her visionary genius at the service of mountain construction, from Saint-Nicolas-de-Veroce to Méribel, from the Belleville valley to Les Arcs in Savoie, as well as in China.

By combining her love of the mountains with her professional activity, most of her pre-war architectural projects were related to skiing and mountain climbing. Before the emergence of paid leave, she specialized in prefabricated habitation for leisure, in order to make such accommodation accessible to the many. A pioneer in bioclimatic architecture, she designed vegetated roofs and prefabricated constructions by making use of materials found on site and combining local craftsmanship with a modern approach.

From 1967 to 1989, she devoted her time to the creation of two resorts, Arc 1600 and Arc 1800, in one of the largest skiable domains in France, under the supervision of the developer Roger Godino. It was the first time in the history of architecture that a woman managed a team of architects charged with housing 25,000 people. In addition to the interior architecture of all the habitations, she piloted the town planning for both resorts and most of their buildings' architecture, in collaboration with Gaston Regairaz and Bernard Taillefer for Arc 1800. For over 20 years, she did her utmost to develop this place of leisure for the winter and the summer, sharing her love of the mountains and nature with town-dwellers from all over the world.