Le Corbusier's Use of Colour for the Factory Claude and Duval in St

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Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Heritage Architecture IX 83

Counterpoints and fugues: Le Corbusier’s use of colour for the Factory Claude and Duval in St. Dié

B. Klinkhammer College of Architecture and Design, University of Tennessee Knoxville, USA

Abstract

The factory Claude and Duval in St. Dié represents one of Le Corbusier’s few remaining buildings where the original colours and paints survived restoration efforts. The colour schemes of the ceilings in the main working area, which for the most part until today haven’t been touched, bear exceptional witness to his postwar architectural polychromy. In Le Corbusier’s own work the factory represents a turning point regarding the application of his colour concept polychromie architecturale. Here, he applied a new colour palette for the first time, which from now on in variations determined the colour schemes of his postwar buildings. Bright, vibrant hues, often used as combinations of primary colours are juxtaposed as colour accents with “the robust character of concrete” and other natural materials. The planning and construction of the factory Claude and Duval in St. Dié coincided with the development of the Modulor, which puts the change in his architectural polychromy in a new context. What role did colour play in the interplay of the architectural elements, which for the first time were precisely controlled through the Modulor? Drawing on primarily unpublished documents, this paper investigates the colour design for the factory in St. Dié and ties it back into the broader context of Le Corbusier’s Polychromie Architecturale. Keywords: Le Corbusier, Polychromie Architecturale, colour, Modulor, architecture, restoration, preservation, architecture in France.

1 Introduction

“A l’occasion de la construction de cette usine, on a pu jouer un jeu d’une subtilité quasi musicale: un contre-point et fugue réglés sur le “Modulor.”

Figure 1: Factory Claude and Duval, St. Dié, France, architect: Le Corbusier, built 1947-51.

After Le Corbusier’s reconstruction plan for the city of St. Dié, which had been destroyed by the Germans, was rejected by the city council in 1945, he received a commission from Jean-Jacques Duval to rebuild Duval’s knitwear factory, which had also been destroyed during the attacks. The two men were bound by a longstanding friendship and an intellectual closeness that lasted until Le Corbusier’s death in 1965. Duval’s interest in art and architecture and his sensitivity and admiration for Le Corbusier’s work explain why today, almost 60 years after its construction, the Claude and Duval Factory is still in its original state, even though it has continued to operate, and has not undergone any significant structural alterations. The colour scheme of the ceilings inside the factory is still virtually unchanged (only several ceiling areas near the gallery have been repainted) and is a unique record of Le Corbusier’s architectural polychromy of the postwar period. The building is also one of the few in which the original colours are still visible at all. For Le Corbusier it represented a turning point in the application of his concept of polychromie architecturale. What is apparent is not only the break with previously established principles but also a revision of the architect’s palette, which then reappeared, with some variations, in all of his postwar structures. Strong colours, often in combinations of primary colours, are placed as accents next to rough exposed concrete and other materials left in their natural state. It seems appropriate to analyze these changes in Le Corbusier’s approach to polychromie architecturale in combination with the “Modulor,” which was being developed at the same time

WIT Transactions on The Built Environment, Vol 83, © 2005 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 (on-line) Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Heritage Architecture IX 85 that the Claude and Duval Factory was being planned and constructed and was published in book form in 1950 as Le Modulor [1]. What role does colour play in the interplay of architectural elements, which for the first time are governed here by a new arrangement of space, precisely controlled by the Modulor, and result in an altered perception of space? Planning for the factory began in January of 1947, and the cornerstone was laid in April of the following year, 1948. The factory was dedicated three years later. After the rejection of his city planning proposal for St. Dié, Le Corbusier returned to his ideas for a “green factory” (usine verte) that were developed in 1944: humanization and enhancement of the workplace and the work environment, proportioning of the building to reflect its function, separate circulation paths for personnel and products, light, and green spaces. The factory in St. Dié remains the only building of Le Corbusier’s based on the ideas of the “usine verte” that was actually constructed.

Figure 2: Reflected ceiling plan, Factory Claude and Duval in St. Dié, colour survey 2002 by the author.

At the same time that he was working on the Claude and Duval Factory, Le Corbusier was planning and constructing one of his most important buildings: the Unité d’habitation in Marseille. Together with the usine verte, it represents his vision for the linear industrial city (cité linéaire industrielle), even though the vision was realized only in part after rejection of the overall plan for St. Dié. In spite of their different functions and end users, the factory in St. Dié and the Unité d’habitation in Marseille (which was built at the same time as the factory but completed later) share many common features and explore principles that appear again in Le Corbusier’s later buildings: concrete skeleton construction with large spans, standardized building elements, consistent application of the Modulor, roof gardens that can serve as usable living spaces, and a polychromy based on a new palette. In comparing the two buildings, Le Corbusier wrote: “The factory at St. Dié was finished before the Unité at Marseille. Both express a rude health [in their “epidermis”], their colour schemes being pushed to a most

WIT Transactions on The Built Environment, Vol 83, © 2005 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 (on-line) 86 Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Heritage Architecture IX powerful intensity.” [2]. The radical departure from the practice of dematerializing materials by applying plaster and paint, which is familiar to us from the buildings of his Purist phase, began in the early 1930s with the construction of the Swiss Pavilion in Paris and the Maison Clarté in Geneva and was heightened in the factory in St. Dié through the obvious nakedness of the materials such as exposed concrete, wood and natural stone. This led to a change in approach as regards the coloured design of the surfaces, which were consequently required to stand up to the forceful plastic expression of the buildings. In the selection of colours for the factory in St. Dié and later for the loggias in the Unité in Marseille, we see not only a greater intensity of colours but also a return to the basic or primary colours – yellow (in St. Dié still in the form of yellowish ochre), red, blue, green in combinations with white and dark brown (ombre naturelle), which intensifies the accent function of the colours that were used.

2 Colour concept

The construction of the factory in St. Dié was a turning point with respect to the quality of paints used in Le Corbusier’s architectural works. Until the mid-1930s, he used only glue-bound or oil-based pigmented paints that were mixed from powder by the painting crew on site. In connection with construction of the Unité d’habitation in Marseille, it was found that the traditional paint-mixing process and the precision of shade that Le Corbusier demanded were impossible due to the size of the project. This problem had occupied him for a long time. In 1931, for example, he wrote the following endorsement for the Swiss company Salubra in connection with the development of his first wallpaper collection: “Salubra is an oil-based coating in roll form. – Instead of applying a number of coats of paint to walls and ceilings in the dust and tumult of the construction site, “mechanical paint in rolls” is applied to the surfaces as the very last operation and is immediately ready for use. … To the architect, who is of course always more or less dependent on the work of the painting crew, Salubra offers the guarantee of uniform good quality and stability in colour and material.“ (As translated from the German text of a Salubra advertisement) [3] However, the wall coverings that Le Corbusier praised as offering a solution to the problem were used only rarely in his own projects since they solved the problem only for the interior and therefore did not guarantee unity between the interior and exterior colours. After the war, Le Corbusier abandoned the use of powdered paints altogether. In 1950 he seemed to have his first contact with the company Peintures Berger de La Courneuve (established in Paris in 1926 as a branch of the English paint manufacturer Lewis Berger & Sons’ Ltd., Homerton, England) and decided to use Berger’s paints for both the factory in St. Dié and the Unité. The paints were industrially manufactured flat paints and thus their colours could be controlled. Le Corbusier selected the two paint products Matroil and Matone, which Berger had formulated, based on an English patent and was marketing in France. Both paints – Berger was marketing Matroil under the slogan “Le mat parfait“ (“the

WIT Transactions on The Built Environment, Vol 83, © 2005 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 (on-line) Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Heritage Architecture IX 87 perfect flat paint”) exhibited the non-glossy surfaces that were essential for Le Corbusier when it came to spatial effect [4].With a few exceptions, Le Corbusier relied on Berger’s two products for almost all his structures built after 1950, in spite of protests from his clients, who objected to the fact that the dull flat surfaces were more vulnerable to dirt [5]. In cooperation with Peintures Berger, which produced “special shades” or “nuances” of existing shades specifically for him, Le Corbusier developed as mentioned in a letter an established series of paints over the next few years that included approximately 40 different shades [6]. Because of the large window areas and open factory interiors, Le Corbusier’s colour concept focused primarily on the ceiling in the large production hall and, at ground level, on the underside of the body shell supported by pilotis, whereas he provided primarily for vertical coloured surfaces for the office floor, which was composed of smaller units. The spatial impression of the large factory interior is dominated by the coloured ceiling (fig. 2), along with the coloured accents provided by the supply lines. The ceiling is in sharp contrast to the exposed concrete used elsewhere and to the rough end wall built of sandstone from the nearby Vosges Mountains. Le Corbusier wrote in this connection: “You should see the intense and powerful colours which, animating the ceiling, have added a heroic touch, breath of the Middle Ages (but careful: the Middle Ages of the mind) to this industrial working place.” [7].

Figure 3: FLC Q3-6-57 to 62, “Couleurs St. Dié”, Le Corbusier, undated document, sketch for factory interior ceiling.

The ceiling of the factory building was the subject of many studies in which Le Corbusier investigated the interaction between the ceiling and the coloured curtains for the large window areas in green and reddish brown. In an interview that I conducted in July 2002, Duval commented that no records existed relating to the colour concept for the Claude and Duval Factory except for a single sketch (the sketch is illustrated in the exhibition catalog Le Corbusier et St. Dié, 14. Oct. – 10. Nov. 1987, Museé Municipal de Saint Dié, in which Duval’s comment is also printed: “Malheureusement, il ne subsiste à la Fondation Le Corbusier

WIT Transactions on The Built Environment, Vol 83, © 2005 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 (on-line) 88 Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Heritage Architecture IX aucune trace des plans de cette grande composiition polychrome qui a certainement fait l’objet d’études très poussées de la part de Le Corbusier. Seul le croquis suivant permet d’en donner une idée“). However, contrary to Duval’s statement, I found several documents during my research at the Fondation Le Corbusier that attest to Le Corbusier’s methodological procedure in planning the colour scheme: FLC Q3-6-141, coloured sketch of the factory building, dated June 10, 1949; FLC Q3-6-57 to 62, Couleurs St. Dié 1950, Le Corbusier’s handwritten notes on the colour scheme for the entire factory, along with numerous coloured sketches, undated; FLC Q3 – 6- 146, -149, - 150, -151 and - 153, plans for the colour concept including coloured ceiling plan for the large factory building. An initial sketch dated June 10, 1949, shows a section of the factory ceiling with colour-accentuated ceiling bays [8]. Along with a multi-coloured ceiling bay, we also find here for the first time a note indicating a red shadow joint in the area of neutral ceiling bays that underlines “the separation of plastered surfaces along the exposed concrete beam.”[9]. Another sketch made on the same day, which Le Corbusier sent to his friend Duval along with a short letter, now shows a multi-coloured red and ochre ceiling bay on the building’s central axis [10]. This ceiling bay will become the pivotal point of the composition when the building is completed. Le Corbusier writes to his friend: “Here is the sketch showing a possible perspective for the polychromy of the interior areas.”[11]. The sketches provide evidence that Le Corbusier was working on the ceiling design for the factory interior, which for him became the central space of the composition (comparable to the gallery of the La Roche house), more than a year before it was actually painted. Painting began in November 1950 and was carried out by the company Etablissement Jean Martin. In a third sketch, which comes closest to the colour scheme that was ultimately used, he balances the initial emphasis on the center of the space by introducing multi-coloured ceiling bays in the lateral areas, fig.3 [12]. We have no clear evidence for the date when the final artistic plan for the colour scheme of the St. Dié factory was completed. The number of sketches and documents indicate that Le Corbusier worked on the ceiling design for the factory building, in particular, over a rather long time period. A note in his calendar – “Corbu aller St.-Dié avant 1er juillet Couleurs“ [“Corbu (short for Le Corbusier) to go to St.-Dié before July 1 Colours”], which was probably written before July 1, 1950, confirms that Le Corbusier himself traveled to St. Dié to make decisions on the colour scheme and did not assign this task to his employee Gardien, who was otherwise entrusted with overseeing construction of the factory [13]. The archives of the Fondation Le Corbusier include undated drawings and elevations for the factory that show detailed colour specifications for the entrance hall and ceiling of the factory building. The coloured view of the ceiling bears Le Corbusier’s handwriting and shows the final ceiling design. The colours were filled in with coloured pencils on a drawing of the ceiling that was produced in the office. It is possible that this coloured drawing was completed by Le Corbusier at the construction site. A photo taken by Duval shows Le Corbusier in the factory building sketching, with a bundle of coloured pencils in

WIT Transactions on The Built Environment, Vol 83, © 2005 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 (on-line) Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Heritage Architecture IX 89 his hand. With regard to this particular day, Duval notes: “Finally, I should add that Le Corbusier spent an entire afternoon choosing and determining the location for four colours, for the selection of which he had had a voluminous range of samples sent to him. The colours were applied to small paddles similar to ping pong paddles so that he could hold them easily with his arms extended.” (Enfin, il faut ajouter que Le Corbusier passa un après midi entier a choisir et a localiser quatre couleurs pour la sélection desquelles il s’était fait envoyer un volumineux échantillonnage. Les couleurs étant appliquées sur des petites palettes analogues à des raquettes de ping-pong afin de pouvoir facilement les tenir a bras tendus. Translation from French to English: B.K.) [14]. This extensive collection of samples (perhaps based on Berger’s paint samples) has unfortunately been lost. This quote indicates, however, Le Corbusier’s method for selecting individual shades. Although he left supervision of the construction site to his employee Gardien as far as possible, the colour scheme remained completely in his hands, which indicates the significance that Le Corbusier attached to this means of artistic and architectural expression. The ceiling design for the large production hall and the wall design in Duval's office show that Le Corbusier was working on a new definition of the principles of his polychromie architecturale after the war. His article “Polychromie architecturale,” which he wrote in 1931 in connection with the launch of his wallpaper collection for Salubra, presents one of the most important principles for the anti-decorative use of colour as an element that modulates space and classifies objects: “I believe in one wall that is enlivened by one colour.“[15]. This requirement that the wall be of one uniform colour is also expressed in an article by Le Corbusier that appeared in 1923: “… il faut que les murs soient des entiers qui entrent comme des unités dans l’équation. “ (“The walls must be totalities that enter into the equation as units”. Translation from French to English: B.K.) [16]. He made a final break with this principle when designing the colour scheme for the factory in St. Dié. It is not just that he put several colours next to one another on a wall or in a ceiling bay (fig. 4). The wall design for the director’s office shows that several colours can be combined with other materials such as concrete and wood in the form of a collage. Both colour schemes must be evaluated as indications of a separation of colour from its relationship of dependence on form. Le Corbusier and Ozenfant had formulated this principle in 1918 in their joint book entitled Après le cubisme: “L’idée de forme précède celle de couleurs. La forme est prééminente. La couleur n’est qu’un de ces accessoires. … La couleur est coordonnée à la forme et la réciproque n’est pas vraie.” (“The idea of form has priority over the idea of colours. Form is preeminent. Colour is nothing more than one of its accessories. Colour is coordinated with form, but the reverse is not true.” Translation from French to English: B.K.) [17]. After the war, we see in Le Corbusier’s projects that the colour scheme of his buildings frees itself from the formal design and becomes an independent element in the interplay of architectural determinants. Le Corbusier’s various projects show that from 1945 on he was in search of a synthesis of findings from mathematics, music, the theory of proportion and the theory of harmony that were relevant to architecture. From a combination and

WIT Transactions on The Built Environment, Vol 83, © 2005 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 (on-line) 90 Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Heritage Architecture IX fusion of these areas of knowledge, he derived the concept of “acoustics of form.” “Architecture as the music of space” became the poetic Leitmotiv of his postwar architecture, and in 1945 he wrote: “Through the plane, man exerts an influence on space. We cross the plane on foot, our eyes see in front of us, perception occurs, one after the other in time. It is a sequence of visual experiences, just as the symphony is a sequence of acoustic experiences; time, duration, uninterrupted continuity – these are the components of architecture. … Plane and section make architecture the sister of music.” [18]. Parallels from music now appear frequently, and Le Corbusier uses concepts such as counterpoint, tempo, fugue, melody, harmony, cadence and rhythm in the figurative sense when talking about architecture. Le Corbusier was familiar with music from early childhood on, and his knowledge of music is deeply rooted in his own family history. In an article by Valero Casali entitled “Le Corbusier, la musica, l’architettura,” there are countless references to the architect’s deep attachment to music. Casali writes that Le Corbusier’s mother, who worked as a piano teacher in order to supplement the family income, introduced him to “classical musical culture.” His brother Albert Jeanneret studied violin at the Conservatory in Geneva and later became a composer [19].

Figure 4: Directors office, use of different colors on one wall, photographic images, concrete (shelf) and wood.

A direct transfer of formal aspects from music to architecture takes place for the first time in the Claude and Duval Factory. Basing his design on the art of counterpoint in music, in which several voices or parts of a composition are carried as independent melodies and yet produce a harmonious whole, Le

Corbusier created a visual counterpart using the number games from the série bleu and série rouge of his Modulor, which he was also working on at the time. Horizontal and vertical planes – sectional view and plan view – are no longer positioned exactly in front of one another but are offset within a basic dimension. Le Corbusier writes the following about this “visual counterpoint”: “The construction of this factory provided the opportunity to play a game of almost musical subtlety: a counterpoint and fugue based on the “Modulor”. There are three masses: the open colonnade of pilotis, the parallelepiped of the factory ateliers, the crowning structure of offices and roof garden. In addition, there are three cadences, different rhythms: a) The spacing of the supporting skeleton of reinforced concrete: pilotis, posts and floor slabs; b) the brise-soleil lettice work (of concrete) on the façade of the ateliers, c) the network of framed glass panes (oak construction) that extends behind the brise-soleils in front of the ateliers and offices.).” [20]. (A l’occasion de la construction de cette usine, on a pu jouer un jeu d’une subtilité quasi musicale: un contre-point et fugue réglés sur le “Modulor“ (dessins à gauche). Il y a trois masses: la colonnade à jour des pilotis ; la parallélépipède des ateliers ; le couronnement des bureaux et toit-jardin. Il y a de plus, trois cadences, rythmes différents :L’écartement de l’ossature portante de béton armé : pilotis, poteaux et planchers;Le grillage (de béton) du brise- soleil de la façade des ateliers;La résille du pan-de-verre (construction en chêne) qui s’étend derrière les brise soleils au devant des ateliers et des bureaux. Translation from French to English: B.K.) Thus we might describe this composition as a three-part contrapuntal movement that Le Corbusier has built as a constructed “acoustic form” in accordance with his own laws of harmony. Iannis Xenakis, a young Greek engineer and composer of radical modern compositions, joined Le Corbusier’s team of employees in 1947 and soon assumed a leading role in a number of projects. In him Le Corbusier found his intellectual counterpart and the sensitivity he was searching for with respect to a symbiosis of architecture, music, mathematics and poetry. These qualities are evident in the composition of the Unité in Marseille, the pans ondulatoires of La Tourette, the Philips Pavilion, Ronchamp and many other buildings. Xenakis’ graphic composition technique is again apparent, as a direct parallel, in the colour treatment of the loggias in Marseille. The colour scheme for the ceiling of the factory interior follows its own melody in the rhythm of the column spacings. It forms the horizontal complement to the melody of the brise-soleils, window frames and concrete skeleton, controlled by the Modulor-based dimensions and resonating in the unique rhythm of the alternating colours. In the transfer of forms from the world of music, multi-coloured bays form chords of colour that reverberate like visual chords through the factory building. It is a subtle visual organ concert in a space that has the magnetism of a medieval cathedral, but a cathedral in which the

WIT Transactions on The Built Environment, Vol 83, © 2005 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509 (on-line) 92 Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Heritage Architecture IX workers dedicate themselves not to daily prayer but to the production of knitwear. Together with the “roughness of the epidermis,” this cathedral-like structure spreads the “breath of the Middle Ages” that Le Corbusier talked about: the ceiling design functions as a modern, painted allegory of the new humanized workplace in an industrialized society. It embodies what Jean Badovici described as peinture spaciale (spatial painting) in his article on Le Corbusier’s wall painting: a complete symbiosis between painting and architecture. Architecture and wall painting merge into a spatial or plastic whole and together become the symbolic bearer of a political message. In 1949, during the same period when the Claude und Duval Factory was being constructed, Le Corbusier wrote a preface to Antoine Fasani’s book, Eléments de peinture murale, pour une technique rationnelle de la peinture [21]. Excerpts from Fasani’s text, which Le Corbusier clearly received after the first sketches for the ceiling design had been made, show Fasani’s intellectual closeness to Le Corbusier. However, they are also an indication that Le Corbusier might have referred to Fasani’s ideas when he revised his sketches for the ceiling design of the factory interior. Here we should mention that it is only the revised sketches of 1950 that show the final design of the ceiling and the different chords of colour. Fasani sent Le Corbusier the following passage from his text: “It is now possible to clearly formulate the requirements of architecture as regards all wall painting. It does not seem that people have been very worried, until now, about the relationships of colours, forms and rhythms that a wall painting must maintain with its inseparable context: the architecture. It is the architect’s duty to demand and the painter’s to desire that the “harmonics” of the constructed volumes be rediscovered on the painted surface, that the painted forms be a “counterpoint” to the base of the architectural forms – the singing base.”(Il est possible actuellement de formuler clairement les exigences de l’architecture vis-à-vis de toutes peinture murale. Il ne semble pas que l’on sois, jusqu’à présent, beaucoup inquiété des relations des couleurs, de formes et de rythmes que doit entretenir une peinture murale avec son inséparable contexte: l’architecture. L’architecte se doit exiger et le peintre doit désirer de retrouver sur la surface peinte les ‘harmoniques’ des volumes bâtis, que les formes peintes soient un ‘contrepoint’ sur la base – ‘la base-chantante’ - des formes architecturales. Translation French to English: B.K.) In his book, Fasani pursues this topic further and dedicates a chapter to “music painting and pictorial algebra in wall painting” (Peinture-musique et algèbre picturale en peinture murale. Translation B.K.). He proposes a coloured rhythm (rythme colouré) in harmony with architecture and writes: “Within a colour grouping, one can assign a form to the transition from one shade to another, define a ‘tempo’ or a speed of modulation, make a ‘staccato’ more or less pronounced or adjust the softness of a ‘glissando’.” (A l’intérieur d’un groupement de couleur, on peut assigner une forme aux passage d’un ton à l’autre, définir un ‘tempo’ ou une vitesse de modulation, durcir plus au moins un ‘staccato,’ ou ajuster la mollesse d’un ‘glissando’. Translation from French to English: B.K.) [22].

3 Conclusion

The colour scheme for the factory interior in St. Dié is one of Le Corbusier’s great artistic masterpieces. In harmony with the architecture and controlled by the mathematical harmonic laws of the Modulor, it becomes a fourth voice in the interplay of the melodic lines that are artistically woven together. The synthesis of architecture, painting, music, mathematics and poetry gives rise to an architectural symphony whose elements provide a new spatial experience in the subtle interaction of contrapuntal elements. In his forward for Fasani’s book Le Corbusier wrote: "Everything is, in reality, caught up in the nascent architectural event, a dominating force, wholly new: the new architecture with its victorious polychromy, its proportions, its quantities, its essential geometry.” (Tous sont, en réalité, happés par événement architectural naissant, dominateur, tout neuf: La nouvelle architecture avec sa polychromie victorieuse, ses proportions, ses quantités, sa géométrie essentielle. Translation from French to English: B.K.) [23]. Le Corbusier’s peinture spatiale in St. Dié is a radical further development of his purist polychromie architecturale. The reduction of colours for St. Dié to primary colours, in combination with neutral colours, and their juxtaposition on one plane, represents a departure from the principles that he established in 1931 in his “Polychromie architecturale” article. Separated from its bond with form, colour becomes an independent element in the complex interplay of architectural elements.

Acknowledgement

Amy Robertson, graduate student at the University of Tennessee who assisted me in surveying the colours of the factory during the summer of 2002.

References

[1] Le Corbusier, Le Modulor, Paris: Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 1950 [2] Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète, Vol. 5, 1946-52, p. 13. [3] As translated from the German text of a Salubra advertisement illustrated in Das Werk 1931, page LV. [4] Fondation Le Corbusier (FLC) O5-10-52, advertising brochure of Peintures Berger with attached reference list. [5] FLC J1-8, 424-425 and FLC J1-8-429 [6] FLC J1-7, 340-342. Letter from Le Corbusier to Jakob Ott, dated July 1, 1957, 1957. “J’ai établi une série d’une quarantaine de couleurs qui constituent la “Série Le Corbusier”…” [7] Le Corbusier, Modulor 2, 1954, English Translation, p. 320. [8] Q3-6- 141, perspective view of the factory interior, dated 10.Juni 1949. [9] Jean Jacques Duval, “L’Usine Claude et Duval”, in exhibition catalogue Le Corbusier et St. Dié, Musée Municipal de St. Dié, 14.Oct. – 10. Nov. 1987, p. 168. [10] Op. cit., footnote 15, p. 167, sketch dated June 10, 1949.

[11] Letter from Le Corbusier to Duval, dated June 10, 1949. Duval, “L’Usine Claude et Duval”, op. cit., p. 168. “Voici le croquis ouvrant perspective possible pour polychromie des locaux intérieurs.“. [12] FLC Q3-6 – 57 to 62, undated, Le Corbusier’s handwritten instructions on the colour scheme for the Claude and Duval Factory in St. Dié. Note on the title page: “Couleurs St. Dié 1950.“ [13] FLC F3-8-9, S. 121, Carnet des notes 16/03/1949-1951. [14] Jean Jacques Duval, “L’Usine Claude et Duval”, in exhibition catalogue Le Corbusier et St. Dié, Musée Municipal de St. Dié, 14.Oct. – 10. Nov. 1987, p. 168. Different from Duval, I counted seven different shades that were used by Le Corbusier for the factory. [15] Le Corbusier. “Polychromie architecturale,” published in German translation in Rüegg, Arthur (ed.), Le Corbusier – Polychromie architecturale. Le Corbusiers Farbenklaviaturen von 1931 und 1959. Basel; Boston; Berlin: Birkhäuser 1997, p. 143. [16] Le Corbusier, “Déductions consécutives troublantes,“ Esprit Nouveau, No. 19, 1923. [17] A. Ozenfant and Ch.-E. Jeanneret. Après le cubisme, Paris 1918, p.55. [18] Le Corbusier in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’ hui, special issue on Le Corbusier, April 1948. Translated here from a German translation in André Wogensky, Le Corbusiers Hände, p.78. [19] Valero Casali, “Le Corbusier, la musica, l’architettura” in Parametro, No. 234, March/June 2001, p. 40-66. [20] Le Corbusier, Œuvre Complète, Vol. 5, 1946-52, p. 14. [21] Fasani, Antoine. Eléments de peinture murale, pour une technique rationnelle de la peinture. Paris : Bordas, 1950. Le Corbusier wrote the preface at Fasani’s request. The FLC archives include not only the manuscript of the preface (FLC U3-06-268 to 271) but also a letter from Fasani to Le Corbusier dated September 30, 1949 (FLC U3-06-275). Apparently a list of excerpts from the book’s text (FLC U3-06-276 and 277) was enclosed with the letter. [22] Fasani, Antoine. Eléments de peinture murale, pour une technique rationnelle de la peinture. With a preface by Le Corbusier. Paris: Bordas 1950, p. 228. [23] FLC U3-6-270.