Door handles

Le Corbusier’s repertoire also included incidentals such as lighting fixtures, fittings, and door handles. Many of his own designs were used in Zurich. The glass entrance door is opened from the outside by means of an oak handle, and pushed open from inside via a plywood panel sawn into a cloud shape—both symbolically charged solutions that Le Corbusier already tested in 1952 in the Unité d’habitation in Marseille. The same handles can be found on the wooden pivot door leading to the studio. The simple round steel knobs on the ventilation flaps are also borrowed from Marseille, while the “ship’s doors” at the service entrance and the exits to the terrace have fixed bow-shaped handles. The most spectacular of them all is the bronze handle in the form of an hourglass for opening the large pivot door on the south façade—a veritable small sculpture that was developed in 1955 for the main portal of the Ronchamp chapel.