Wicker bodies, Christian Ragot, 2012

Corps d'osier, a free and poetic interpretation, in wicker and to scale, of Le Corbusier's Voiture minimum/ Production Piacé le Radieux/ Photo © ADAGP *
Private space Extension Espace Bézard - Le Corbusier. Visible only during temporary exhibitions, guided tours or by appointment.

For the 4th edition of the Quinzaine Radieuse, French designer Christian Ragot (b. 1933) takes a look at a project never realised by Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret: the Voiture Minimum imagined in 1936. Le Corbusier drew up the plans for this minimum car as part of a competition launched by the Société des Ingénieurs Automobiles (SIA) in May 1935. The aim of the competition was to revive the French car industry, which was in crisis at the time, and to encourage partnerships between engineers and manufacturers. However, the Jeanneret cousins saw the competition as an opportunity to broaden their thinking about the relationship between man and the city by creating a car for urban and inter-urban use. They used the rules and technical conditions imposed by the SIA - which they did not hesitate to circumvent - to design a "minimalist vehicle with maximum functionality": a sunroof, a passenger seat that could be converted into a bed (because night-time travel was on the increase!)...

Approaching car design as architects, the Jeannerets tried to apply the rational and functional principles of architecture to a car that was no longer just for the elite (the car designer Giorgio Giurgiaro considered that daring to put comfort and affordability before aesthetic beauty was a real feat in the 1930s). The project deviated too much from the SIA guidelines and did not win the competition. Le Corbusier promoted his plans to Fiat and Czech manufacturers, without success, and it wasn't until 1987 and the exhibition L'Aventure Le Corbusier: 1897-1965 organised to mark the centenary of his birth at the Centre Pompidou that a wooden prototype was finally produced by Girogio Giurgiaro for the firm Ital Design.
Following in the footsteps of the car designer, Christian Ragot decided in 2012 to make another 1:1 scale model of the Voiture Minimum and chose a traditional production method: wicker weaving. This technique, widely used in the rural world - from utilitarian basketry to harvest bouquets - establishes a strong link between Le Corbusier's research and the farming world, a clear reminder of the architect's interest in the countryside and his utopian plans for Piacé. By placing crushed Coca Cola cans under the prototype, Christian Ragot creates a strong contrast between the wicker weaving and the brightly coloured metal cans, recalling the existing divide between craftsmanship and industrial production, inevitably linked to the consumer society of which Coca Cola is one of the most striking symbols. The designer also evokes Arman's compressions in this work. Corps d'osier, a project that combines a playful gesture with a poetic remembrance (as evidenced by the play on words in the title), is halfway between design and art, straddling two worlds in the same way that the Voiture Minimum project straddled the line between automotive design and urban planning and architecture.

Corps d'osier: a play on words, a playful gesture, a poetic reminder, a work of memory... a quest for pleasure around this project. This is the gamble that inspired me to take on this 'timeless' work by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. In 1935, despite their international renown, they were unable to get the car industry to collaborate on the sketch of a prototype of the Voiture Minimum! Today, more than seventy-five years later, in a French industrial society that has relocated and lacks the tools of everyday production, where do we stand in terms of our enlightened marginal approaches and our ambitious dreams, announced by Victor Papanek in his book "Design for a better world"? - Ragot 2012

Text by Roma Lambert