This chaise longue’s arched, tubular-steel frame can be moved on its metal base to accommodate the sitter’s desired position. Architect Le Corbusier hired 24-year-old Charlotte Perriand in 1927 to oversee the firm’s furniture designs, which he tellingly called “domestic equipment. ” Perriand responded to Le Corbusier’s brief for mobile, lightweight, standardized chairs with three prototypes based on careful analysis of modern bodies and movement. Attuned to industry, she and her collaborator, Pierre Jeanneret, found the model for this chair’s lacquered sheet-metal base in the pages of an aviation catalog. Her unconventional use of materials extended to her personal life. Perriand famously wore a necklace strung with ball bearings (see image) and lit her dining room with a car headlamp. Deeply engaged in leftist politics, Perriand left Le Corbusier’s studio in 1937 to pursue a more socially engaged design agenda.