When talking about the clever new micro-home he designed for Vitra, architect Renzo Piano cited designer Charlotte Perriand’s Refuge Tonneau as an inspiration. She developed the mass-producable mountain cabin in 1938, in collaboration with architect Charles Jeanneret, but couldn’t secure funds to get it built. Then in 2012 Cassina built a single unit from her original design for display at that year’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile. It’s an impressive contraption, a tin hut with room to sleep six adults, that can be assembled on any stable terrain in four days. The form is clunkily utilitarian, a ten-sided white metal drum with high porthole windows, a ship’s ladder, and a peaked roof a little like the Tin Man’s hat. Inside it’s lined with soft, yellowy pine flooring, panels and furnishings.
Still, I’m more smitten with Perriand’s photo-collage rendering of the Refuge than the actual thing. Look at how she stages the cabin, perched in the Swiss Alps. There’s a gentleman on skis about to step out the door and down the steps, where he’ll greet a lass who’s sunning herself on a stone. The snow looks like a blanket draped over the rock face, with some clumps sprinkled near the structure’s feet like powdered sugar. The Tonneau looks less like a mountain retreat than an Apollo lunar module. The bouquet of mechanical elements at its top, flues to regulate airflow, looks like a newfangled radar tracking device. Perriand’s vision is bold and sweet.