As a major figure in 20th century interior design, Charlotte Perriand was a pioneer who, for sixty creative years, followed a line of political and ethical thinking that culminated in a form of dwelling adapted to modern man. On the strength of her Bar sous le toit (Bar beneath the Roof), which was exhibited to acclaim at the 1927 Salon dʼAutomne, when she was a young 24-year-old graduate straight out of the Union centrale des arts décoratifs, she joined the closed club of the French avant-garde. She became part of the team of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret who entrusted her with the interior furbishment of villas built by the agency.
In 1929 she played an active part in the foundation of the Union des artistes modernes (UAM) chaired by Robert Mallet-Stevens. During the ten years during which she worked with Le Corbusier, she pursued her research into housing and furniture designed for the greatest possible number of people. She was interested in new materials like steel and glass, and in the new functional factors offered by progress to improve well-being in the home. With Fernand Léger she took part in the making of the Agricultural Pavilion at the 1937 World Fair, a showcase that helped her to develop the photomontage technique for getting her political ideas across.
In 1940, she was officially nominated by the Japanese government as Industrial Art Consultant, and went to live in Japan. She was filled with enthusiasm for the modular principles of the local architecture, so akin to her own conceptions and designs. Back in France after World War II, from 1952 onward, she consolidated her ideas about furniture at the Ateliers Jean Prouvé, where she was responsible for the aesthetic improvement of furniture. Lastly, the huge Arcs project in Savoie, where she was in charge of the interior design and furnishing of the apartments, offered her a chance to apply her ideas about mass production. She died in 1999.