of materiality to otherwise abstract Modernist settings but the skeletal
forms of the furniture items that were included prevented them from
disturbing spatial continuity. A subtle balancing act was needed in the
design of the material and the spatial aspects of those interiors. Import -
antly, also, the materials in question were industrially manufactured
rather than crafted. Like Adam Smith’s identical pins, produced in early
pin factories, one industrially produced tubular steel chair looked, there-
fore, exactly like another.
Le Corbusier’s Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, designed for the 1925
Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes,
combined fitted furniture with a number of anonymous ‘object-types’. The
pavilion itself was a rare instance of a prototype interior designed as a
‘model’ unit that theoretically, at least, could be replicated many times over
in a large apartment block. Le Corbusier chose each item to show his com-
mitment to new materials, industrial production, and standardization.^7 He 153
The interior of Le Corbusier’s ‘Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau’ for the Exposition
Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris, 1925.