Le Corbusier Posters and Architectural Order

Le Corbusier drew buildings, and his prints carry the same logic. A few lines, one strong shape, a proportion that is doing more work than it appears to. Hanging one is not difficult, but it does reward a strict approach.

Line first, colour second

These prints are read through their line. The drawing is usually a contour, a hand, a totem, a crossed form, and the colour fills the space around it. If the line disappears, the print stops working.

That has one practical consequence. The print needs a wall behind it that does not compete for contour. A plain wall, a pale wall, or a dark wall with nothing else on it. Busy wallpaper is out.

Walls that hold the drawing

White and off-white. Neutral, and the closest to a sheet of paper. The safest choice.
Warm grey and greige. Sits well with the ochre and terracotta palette in several of these prints.
Deep charcoal or navy. Works for the light line drawings, where the line becomes the only bright thing on the wall.

Size in relation to architecture

A Le Corbusier print looks like a plan, and plans are read at arm’s length. At 50 x 70 cm the print is legible from about a metre and a half, which is the distance you stand in a hallway or beside a sideboard.

At 70 x 100 cm it becomes an architectural element of the room itself. That suits a large wall above a low sofa, and it is too much in a small bedroom.

Hang them alone

These prints do not group well. Two or three together start to read as a series of diagrams and the eye stops on the arrangement instead of the drawing.

One print, one wall, centred at 145 to 150 cm from the floor. If a wall feels empty with just one, the answer is a larger format, not a second frame.

The frame should be a line as well

Thin. Twenty to twenty five millimetres, in black, white or natural wood. A wide frame adds a rectangle the architect did not draw, and in a composition built from rectangles that reads immediately as a mistake.

Glass is optional. In a hallway where the print can be brushed against, it is worth it.

Furniture that agrees with them

These prints sit naturally above furniture with straight lines: a low sideboard, a bench, a steel console, a plain wooden shelf. Curves and ornament underneath make the print look like it belongs to a different room.

Keep the objects on the surface low. A single vase, a lamp, a stack of books. Tall objects break the horizontal line that the print depends on.

What you are buying

Our Le Corbusier posters are printed reproductions on matte paper, not originals and not limited editions. The line is sharp in print, but paper and ink cannot reproduce the texture of an original drawing.

See the rest in the artist collection.