The Pavillon Le Corbusier exists thanks to the interior designer, gallery owner and patron Heidi Weber. She convinced Le Corbusier and commissioned him to design this museum building in 1960. She financed the building with her own funds as a single mother, realized it despite many difficulties and officially opened it on 15 July 1967 as the Centre Le Corbusier - Heidi Weber Museum.

Heidi Weber ran the museum as director and curator for 50 years. Under her leadership, numerous exhibitions were held that presented Le Corbusier's work and ideas to a wide audience as a complete work of art.

Since 2019, the building monument has been run by the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich on behalf of the City of Zurich as the Pavillon Le Corbusier. The city and the museum would like to thank Heidi Weber for her great cultural achievement.

Le Corbusier designed the building as an exhibition pavilion from the outset; his aim was nothing less than to build the ideal venue for exhibitions. Art, architecture and life were to merge into a new unity in this building. With the Pavillon designed as an exhibition space, he realized his vision of a "synthesis of the arts". Numerous sketches and plans bear witness to the long development period from the mid-1950s.

The ship-like construction is based on the Modulor proportion system developed by Le Corbusier and demonstrates - as an architectural legacy, so to speak - many of his design principles. These include prefabrication, recurring building elements such as the access ramp or the small roof garden, as well as the "promenade architecturale", the carefully designed route through a building to set the scene for the architecture and make it tangible for the viewer.

The building is the last realized design by the influential architect and his only building made of steel and glass. The colorful, filigree-looking building is known throughout the world as an architectural jewel and, as a walk-in work of art, represents a cultural and tourist highlight for Zurich.

Original version of the film about the creation of the Pavillon Le Corbusier (1965-67)
Authors: Fredi Murer and Jürg Gasser
Production: Heidi Weber with the support of the Federal Office of Culture, 1967

The historical plans of the building application from 1961.

Le Corbusier was probably the most important architect of the 20th century. Find out more about him and his oeuvre.

• Biography and Work
• Le Corbusier, Jews and fascism: setting the record straight