Metz, Lorraine 57000

Meeting between modernist architecture and the Lorraine horizon, a former aerodrome club-house listed as a historic monument, signed Le Corbusier and Jean Prouvé. As the aerodrome approaches, at the heart of a 3,000 m² grassy parcel, a building imagined by Le Corbusier in the 1950s appears. Former aerodrome club-house where it was erected, it stands out from traditional regional buildings with its façades, which mix a lime-washed masonry in light tones and wide glass joineries, accented by a bright red framing. Natural light floods the interiors, revealing the lines of the architecture and opening views to 180 horizons. The edifice was co-signed by Le Corbusier a major architect and urbanist of the modernist movement, whose work rests on a search for balanced proportions and clarity of volumes and the Lorraine designer-blacksmith Jean Prouvé. He was noted for his work combining steel and aluminum with a particular precision of assembly, which lends the structure an element of functional elegance. The roof, assembled from prefabricated aluminum elements, consists of two back-to-back shells resting on a central gutter, a silhouette evoking two airplane wings poised to take off and giving the whole its architectural identity where technical precision dialogues with aeronautical imagination. The building underwent a restoration in the early 2010s, based on Le Corbusiers original plans to restore stylistic coherence. The edifice is listed as a historic monument for its façades, roofs, load-bearing structures, and chimneys.