Doncourt-lès-Conflans flying club

In 1951 Le Corbusier received an unusual commission thanks to his friend Philippe Serre, a deputy and Resistance fighter: the clubhouse of the Aéro-club du bassin de Briey, at Doncourt-lès-Conflans. Serre had already commissioned the Centre scientifique de la main-d'œuvre from him in 1938.

The new building was to succeed a youth hostel and popular flying club that Jacques Ogé had built in 1938 and that was destroyed in 1944. In spring 1951 Le Corbusier was put in charge, with the architects Jacques and Bernard Ogé, father and son, and the builder Jean Prouvé, of drawing the plans and seeing the reconstruction through. The project coincided with Prouvé's ousting from his own company, which led to the planned façade of Prouvé panels being dropped.

After years of being forgotten, the building was rediscovered in 1980. Its façades, roofs, load-bearing structures and chimneys have been listed as historic monuments since April 1999. A rehabilitation was carried out in 2011-2013.

Le Corbusier set out principles for Ogé and Prouvé, starting with the Modulor's dimensions. For efficiency he drew on Prouvé's catalogue of serial parts, which he praised warmly.

The building forms two aluminium shells of the "aircraft wing" type, set back to back. They rest on one longitudinal stone wall, which receives the gutter joining them. The double-height shell, wide open to the airfield, is the public space; the other, lower, is reserved for private use. The north and south façades are largely glazed, in wired glass. Instead of the Prouvé panels, large glazed panels in timber frames rest on a transverse metal beam, and the façade no longer provided for the large steel "aeroplane-wing" door of the first scheme. The control office, in front of the main building, is a small structure made entirely of curves.

The interiors had a dormitory with 16 beds, a washroom with showers, sitting rooms, a bedroom, a room for the chief pilot and another for the instructors, the kitchen, the bar and the restaurant. Le Corbusier chose a "terracotta", a dark grey, a light grey, a natural umber and a light blue. Fernand Léger was to design the interiors, but that did not happen.

Privately owned, the building has been given over to rental since its rehabilitation.