Le Sextant, maison de vacances Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret aux Mathes. Cyril Brulé et Christelle Lecoeur

In the interwar period, Le Corbusier's radical ideas were embodied in his "villas blanches", marking the apogee of a purist modernism driven by orders from a wealthy clientele that would be sorely lacking from 1930 onwards, when the world economic crisis broke out.

It was against this backdrop of urban, social and constructive experimentation that Albin Peyron was commissioned. A family man on a tight budget, he asked Le Corbusier to build a simple vacation home on the Atlantic coast near Royan, the ideal pretext for the architect to put into practice his research into low-cost houses for the working class.

The client's insistence on practicality led to an unusual housing concept; the house was to be built by local contractors, as the architect had never visited the site. And so we discover an unexpected Le Corbusier, working with local stone and wood, responding to a program based on hedonism and seaside bathing that resonates with his own sensibility as a lover of beaches and nature. 4 of 8 Very contemporary in its local approach to "happy frugality" ahead of its time, it remains an anchor point for the family, who still visit it several times a year, carefully maintaining it and passing it down through four generations.

This book was supported by the Centre national du livre.