Esprit Nouveau Pavilion (1977 replica)

The Esprit Nouveau Pavilion was first a building of 1925. Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret built it for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, on a plot behind the Grand Palais; it was inaugurated on 18 July 1925. The organisers, scandalised by a proposal they found too modernist, had a fence built to hide it partly; Le Corbusier made an appeal to the Ministry of Fine Arts, which ordered the demolition of the fence. Built in five months, the pavilion was destroyed between April and May 1926. It takes its name from the review Le Corbusier had founded in 1920 with the painter Amédée Ozenfant and the poet Paul Dermée.

The Bologna building is a replica, authorised by the Fondation Le Corbusier. In 1977 the review Parametro promoted its reconstruction on the lawn in front of the fairground, when France was the guest nation of the SAIE, the international building trade show. The architects Giuliano and Glauco Gresleri and José Oubrerie carried the project; Giuliano Gresleri (1938-2020), helped by Oubrerie (1932-2024), one of Le Corbusier's last collaborators, redrew the Paris pavilion down to the detail. The artistic direction and high supervision of the works were entrusted to a team of architects and technicians of the Fondation Le Corbusier, and the firm Grandi Lavori built the whole in three months. The pavilion was inaugurated on 6 October 1977. Some details of the original were impossible to document and some materials used in Paris were unobtainable; Le Corbusier himself had had to modify the example built for the exhibition, because of delays and the withdrawal of some suppliers.

The Emilia-Romagna Region and the City of Bologna funded a restoration in 2017. In 2018 the diorama panels showing the two views of the Plan Voisin were renewed. The building belongs to the City of Bologna.

The 1925 pavilion is the full-scale prototype of a standardised dwelling made of mass-produced elements. It reproduces a cell of the Immeuble-Villas, a project on which Le Corbusier had been working since 1922: an L-shaped dwelling cell with an interior terrace, on two levels. The upper level, double-height, forms the main room, both living room and studio. Beside it, a rotunda, the diorama, serves as exhibition space: Le Corbusier displays his urban plans there, the Plan Voisin and the City of Three Million Inhabitants. In Paris, the plot being wooded, the pavilion was built with a tree at its centre, which came out through the roof.

For the interior, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret developed a furniture programme with standard wooden storage units and a table of chromed steel tube with a wooden top, as well as mass-produced pieces, in contrast with the expensive one-off pieces of the other pavilions.

The Bologna replica takes up both parts, the typical cell of the Immeuble-Villas and the diorama rotunda. The changes made to the Paris design aim chiefly at greater stability, habitability and suitability for exhibitions; a few materials and technical solutions differ. The 2017 restoration repainted the whole exterior and most of the interiors, restoring the original colours where they were damaged, including the large "E.N." lettering on the facade. The thin original panes were replaced with laminated safety glass, the metal frames were restored and the triple curtain system of the living room was renewed. The building is protected by the City's planning documents as a building of modern historical and architectural interest.

The pavilion serves as a venue for exhibitions and meetings. It has hosted exhibitions especially at the time of Arte Fiera, which is held in the neighbouring fairground. The City of Bologna has made it a venue for cultural programming, with events, guided tours, meetings and artists' residencies.

The pavilion has no regular opening hours: it is open to the public on the occasion of scheduled exhibitions, temporary events or guided tours, whose calendar the City of Bologna publishes on its Cultura Bologna website.

It stands at Piazza della Costituzione 11, in the park opposite the fairground, a few steps from Kenzo Tange's towers. The guided tours explore the history of the place, its spaces and its furniture designed according to Le Corbusier's ideas.