Chareau, Pierre

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Chareau, Pierre (1883–1950). Bordeaux-born French architect and furniture-designer. He came to public notice with his remodelling of an apartment in the Rue St-Germain, Paris (1918–19), which included furniture (some of which featured plywood, metal tubing, and ebony), exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, 1919. He also showed furniture at the 1924–5 Exposition International des Arts-Décoratifs, and in 1928 designed a house in the Rue St-Guillaume, Paris, in which glass blocks were widely employed (pre-dating Le Corbusier's use of them), giving the work its name, Maison de Verre (completed 1932 in collaboration with Bernard Bijvoet (1889–1979), his associate from 1925 to 1935): it also had an exposed steel structure. In 1940 Chareau emigrated to the USA where he built a house for the painter Robert Motherwell at East Hampton, NY.

Bibliography

Chareau (1929);
B. Taylor (1992);
Vellay (1985)