Esprit Nouveau Pavilion

Le Corbusier, Esprit Nouveau Pavilion, Paris France, 1925

Il Pavilion de l'Esprit Nouveau It was a temporary exhibition building designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret for the Exposition International des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris in 1925. In 1977, a faithful replica of the original was built in Bologna.

The Esprit Nouveau Pavilion was a building divided into two parts, consisting of a “standard cell”, a prototype of an “Immeubles Villas” urban housing unit, and a “Diorama”, a “rotunda”, a space dedicated to the exhibition of projects and theoretical statements. The pavilion is a housing module that finds its rationale only in an urban planning perspective: not an isolated single-family home, but a small block that fits into the Immeubles villas that surround the city center left to skyscrapers.

The Pavilion consisted of a white geometric box, crossed in the center by a tree and furnished with industrially produced furniture. The “L” shaped plan encloses a large terrace, to give each inhabitant a house with a large outdoor space, overlooking the greenery of the courtyard. The pavilion was intended as a housing module to be inserted in a renewed urban perspective.
The Diorama was an adjacent structure conceived to display a synthesis of the best projects of the Atelier Le Corbusier between 1920 and 1925, together with two of Le Corbusier's visionary concepts for urban renewal: the “city for three million inhabitants” and the “Plan Voisin de Paris Ville Immeuble”.

The Bologna Pavilion
In 1977, the Esprit Nouveau pavilion was rebuilt in Bologna, a faithful replica in every detail of the building designed by Le Corbusier, a few steps away from Kenzo Tange's Towers, in the green area in front of the entrance to BolognaFiera, and is protected by the Municipality as a "Building of historical and architectural interest of the modern".
The idea of ​​the reconstruction came to the Bolognese architects Giuliano and Glauco Gresleri and to José Oubrerie, one of the collaborators of the Franco-Swiss master, whom they met in 1965, starting the path that would lead to the construction of the pavilion. The construction took place in just 3 months, with the full consent of the Le Corbusier Foundation, despite some choices of materials and technological solutions, which however did not compromise the faithfulness to the prototype.
Used as an exhibition space, it has hosted several exhibitions during Artefiera Bologna, which takes place in the premises opposite the space designed by the illustrious architect.