Charlotte Perriand: The little-known 20th century designer who could see our homes of the future

London CNN — The story of the late Charlotte Perriand is an inspiring tale of an adventurous designer whose ideas and creations left a lasting mark on homes around the world. Better to spend the day out in the sun, than dusting your useless objects Charlotte Perriand In a series of drawings titled “Travail et Sport,” published in interior design manual “Répertoire du goût moderne” in 1929, Perriand proposed a multifunctional space that could easily transform from a home to an office to a gym. “A lot of her design is really focused around making things accessible and improving people’s lives, and their quality of life, through design,” Hawes said in an interview at the exhibition, “and I think that’s something that a lot of female designers do.” Noting that women in design often have to work harder to establish themselves, Hawes suggested “they feel they really have to use their platform” once they earn it. © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2021 / © AChP According to McGuirk, Perriand had previously been dogmatic in her use of metal and modern materials that were seen as the “language of the future, the language of the Machine Age.” But in Japan, she became “hugely impressed by the quality of craftsmanship,” he said, explaining that she introduced materials like bamboo into her work, and eventually found “an interesting compromise between two contrasting worlds.” She also became enthralled by Japanese homes and their clever use of space, which underscored her belief in what McGuirk described as “flexible emptiness” – the idea that you can live well without lots of furniture, as long as they are highly functional pieces. Felix Speller/The Design Museum The easiest way to understand Perriand’s work – and to put it into context of today – is to look at a very simple design concept: storage.