In 1928, the Swiss- born French architect Le Corbusier created several experimental furniture designs in partnership with his cousin Peirre Jeanneret and French interior designer Charlotte Perriand. These creations were acknowledge for incorporating the modernist qualities typically attributed to modern architecture, thus creating them one of the primary model of what is now known as modern furniture design. Part of these designs by Le Corbusier is the LC 3 Sofa.

While Le Corbusier was one said to have clever remark that sofas are bourgeois, the LC 3 Sofa. One of a handful of sofa designs by Le Corbusier, the Le Corbusier Sofa or LC3 is a two-seater sofa inspired by Le Corbusier’s earlier Grand Comfort armchair design. The sofa is fundamentally made up of a tough external frame of chrome-plated tubular steel that creates the loose cushions that serve as the sofa’s seat and backrest. Early production runs of the sofa were also fixed with an interior spring mechanism, though this was changed in sofas made after the late 1950’s.

Possibly the numerous prominent attribute of the LC 3 Sofa is that its frame is located on the outside rather than on the inside as traditional sofa designs have. Believing that traditional design is obsolete, Le Corbusier made the frame of the sofa exterior to highlight its magnificent structure to the onlooker. And to balance its tinny frame, the sofa’s polyurethane and natural down cushions are covered with black or white upholstery created from either leather of fabric.

The Le Corbusier No. 3 Sofa is a set of the LC 3 furniture compilation which also includes the LC 3 Meridienne and the LC3 Ottoman. A three-seater version of the LC 3 Sofa was also manufactured, though it is not part of the original collection and was established on several sketches Perriand made at Le Corbusier’s studio.

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