Ada Lovelace Day is an international blogging event instituted to draw attention to women who excel in the area of technology. Who is Ada Lovelace? From here:

Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

See also the Wikipedia entry, where we discovered Lovelace was also, oddly, the only legitimate child of the poet Byron. On Ada Lovelace Day, bloggers are asked to write about a present-day woman in technology. Since this is a design blog and not a tech blog, I’m going to arbitrarily include architecture and design under technology, since they are technical fields. As in other technical fields, woman have excelled in architecture and design but have had a very tough time gaining recognition thanks to the fact that these fields have been extremely male-dominated. When Charlotte Perriand asked Corbusier for a job, he said “We don’t embroider cushions here.” Perriand convinced him to hire her anyway, and went on to become an important figure in design whose star is now rising long after her death. (By the way there is nothing inferior about embroidering cushions, and the textile arts ought to be angry about that remark.) Recent evidence shows that women need female role models much more than men need male role models, and that is why this blog is jumping into the fray. Please also see previous posts on Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Nanna Ditzel, and many other women designers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Charlotte Perriand:

Eileen Gray:

And finally, I love this recent Annie Liebowitz photo of SANAA architect Kazuyo Sejima holding a model of her New Museum design:

The French designer and architect  Charlotte Perriand (1903 – 1999) produced some very beautiful furniture and buildings, but she is probably not as well known as she should be, even despite the comprehensive retrospective show of her work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2005. Above is a selection of pieces included in that show. Below is her most well-known piece, a bookcase co-designed with Jean Prouve, as well as many other designs. Perriand worked with Corbusier for 10 years, starting at age 24, on both furniture and architecture. How she came to work with him is a fascinating story:

A friend of hers introduced Perriand to the works of the famous French architect Le Corbusier, including L’art Decoratif d’Aujourd’hui (Today’s Decorative Arts). Inspired by his work, Perriand immediately applied for a design position at Le Corbusier’s atelier. She was dismissed with a condescending comment, “we don’t embroider cushions here.”

Undaunted, Perriand tore apart her garret-style apartment and converted one of the largest rooms into a metal and glass bar. Using her home as a canvas, she applied her ideas and continued to create metal tubular furniture out of chrome and aluminum for her “machine age interior.” By 1927, she designed enough work to be exhibited at the Salon D’Automne. Upon seeing her rooftop bar design and its furnishings, architect Le Corbusier changed his mind and decided to hire Perriand as furniture designer.

Perriand’s earlier pieces were often modular and efficient, almost futurist. Her early influences generally seem modernist while her later experiences in Japan introduced a different aesthetic, and you can see that in the red and black interior below, as well as in her use of paper and bamboo for lighting. She deserves to be better known for her buildings, which include the UN’s League of Nations in Geneva and the Les Arcs building in Switzerland, at bottom. The same goes for her furniture, though this may change now that Cassina is reissuing many of her pieces (she originally designed for Thonet).  Philippe Delahautemaison has created a really good Flickr set of photos of her furniture and decor. More on Charlotte Perriand here and you can also read about her life and design at designboom. The Centre Pompidou’s link in French is here.

Above, cabinet by Perriand in 1939

“Bambou” lounge chair, above, 1940

Above, a chalet by Perriand in Savoie, France.

Above, Japanese inspired interior

Above, ‘refuge tonneau’, futuristic chalet

Building in Les Arcs, Switzerland. This is part of a larger project Perriand worked on collaboratively with Corbusier and others.

And see this amazing swing arm lamp at referencelibrary.