This month, EVDS welcomes architectural historian Dr. Mary McLeod for a public lecture as part of the Design Matters lecture series: “Le Corbusier, the New Woman, Domestic Reform”. McLeod will be on campus Oct. 15-18 as the Gillmor Visiting Lecturer.
Established in honour of the founding director of the architecture program, Douglas Gillmor, the lectureship features a four-day workshop with EVDS Master of Architecture students, as well as a public lecture.
A professor at New York’s Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, McLeod teaches architecture history and theory, and occasionally studio. Her research and publications have focussed primarily on the history of the modern movement, and on contemporary architecture theory, examining the connections between architecture and ideology.
The Design Matters lecture series challenges the university community to broaden its thinking on myriad issues related to design. McLeod's public lecture, “Le Corbusier, the New Woman, Domestic Reform” will explore the relationship between the works of the master of the modern architecture, and the emergence of the New Woman in France after World War I.
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. In her lecture, McLeod 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.
Further, she will explore the role of an emerging domestic reform movement in Germany and France 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.
Join EVDS from 6:00-7:30pm on Wednesday, October 15, at the Downtown Campus, as McLeod leads the audience on a look back on the social forces that shaped the work of a modern master of architecture. Admission is free for students, $10 for non-students. Public welcome.
Image of Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand courtesy thecharnelhouse.org
In-text image courtesy Mary McLeod