VILLA LE LAC - 100 years
Le Corbusier

L – C 1954 : “Four metres from the window is the lake and four metres behind the front door the road. The area to be kept up measures three hundred square meters and offers an unparalleled view, which cannot be spoilt by building, of one of the finest horizons in the world.”

The Villa Le Lac is a residential building designed by Swiss architects and cousins Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret between 1923 and 1924 for Le Corbusier's parents on the shores of Lake Geneva in Corseaux, Switzerland.

The Villa is a little gem of ingenuity and functionalism – an architectural manifesto where one can find the key ideas of the program developed by Le Corbusier during the 1920s for his famous “white houses”. The building makes use of three of Le Corbusier’s Five Points of Architecture: the free plan, the roof terrace, and the horizontally-oriented "ribbon" window. It measures 64 square metres (690 sq. ft) in area, or 4 metres (13 ft) by 16 metres (52 ft), with the longer side following Lake Geneva's coastline.

This “laboratory of modern ideas” is one of the architect's most personal and inventive works. A designated Swiss Cultural Property of National Significance, the Villa was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2016. This year it celebrates its 100th anniversary.