One of early Le Corbusier's most unusual projects is the de Beistegui apartment, set on the roof of a building on avenue de l'Observatoire in Paris. Here architecture turns into scenography: a modernist structure of steel and glass sits alongside mirrors, fireplaces, hedges and elements of the theater of the absurd. De Beistegui commissioned works from the Surrealists and dreamed of labyrinths and hidden mechanisms, while Le Corbusier gave the space a pure form. The result is a project on the edge between utopia and eccentric gesture, rarely found in textbooks but certainly memorable.
