Le Corbusier (1887-1965) is most celebrated as an architect and is one of the defining figures of first-generation modernism. His upbringing in the Swiss city of La Chaux-de-Fonds played an important role in his later work. Located in the Jura mountains, a few kilometres from the French border, La Chaux-de-Fonds is inseparable from the history of watchmaking. The list of watch companies that were founded in, or associated with, the city is extensive and includes such illustrious companies as Girard-Perregaux, TAG Heuer, Movado, Omega and Rolex.
As was the case for the vast majority of the population in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Le Corbusier’s family had worked in the watch industry for generations. While his father and grandfather worked as enamellers, the young Le Corbusier’s own speciality was engraving elaborate designs on the back of watchcases. Intending to follow in his father footsteps, he attended the local art school, and it was there that he was first exposed to architecture. Although Le Corbusier never entered the watch industry this pocket watch design offers tantalizing evidence that the watchmaking industry’s loss was architecture’s gain.
Le Corbusier’s pocket watch engraving, held in the collection of the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, is his only known surviving timepiece design.
