🇫🇷France·Private home, not open to visitors

Ozenfant House and Studio

Paris (14th arrondissement)

Sources checked November 2026

“A corner house and studio designed with a vast painter's studio on the second floor, lit by a wide corner window and reached by a spiral staircase.”

Year: 1922-1924
Architect: Le Corbusier
Type: Artist's house and studio
Access: Private property; facades and roofs listed as historic monuments (1975)

Le Corbusier built this house and studio from 1922 to 1924 with the painter Amédée Ozenfant and for him; the two men had developed Purism together. On a narrow corner plot near Parc Montsouris, a reinforced-concrete frame of columns and slabs allows large glazed bays and ribbon windows; originally, glazed sheds also let light in through the roof. The facades and roofs have been listed as historic monuments since 1975.

A private, lived-in home: it is not open to visitors. It is placed without an address, from a public source, at neighbourhood or city level.

In depth ≈ 1 min read

History

Le Corbusier got to know the painter Amédée Ozenfant in 1918; together they worked out Purism, and it was Ozenfant who introduced him to painting. From 1922 to 1924 Le Corbusier built this house and studio with him and for him, on a plot near Parc Montsouris.

Ozenfant moved out and sold the house shortly before the war. In 1946 it was raised: the original roof, which carried two sheds with glazed slopes, gave way to a terrace. The garage door has been removed, the ground-floor windows altered and part of the interior volumes reworked for family life.

An order of 15 January 1975 lists the facades and roofs as historic monuments.

Architecture

The narrow plot, at the corner of two streets, imposed many party-wall constraints: on three sides the walls have no openings. The house is a rectangular volume with a reinforced-concrete frame, whose floor slabs and load-bearing columns allow large glazed bays and ribbon windows. Glazed sheds, placed on the roof as on industrial sites, provided extra light.

An external spiral staircase led to the first-level flat: bedroom, bathroom, dining room, exhibition space and a room for storing works. A second spiral staircase climbed to the second floor: a vast studio lit by the large window, with two mezzanines, one of which served as a library, reached by steel ladders. The ground floor held a garage and the caretaker's lodging.

Paris (14th arrondissement)