I love this photograph of Charlotte Perriand, French designer and architect who broke the mold as a modernist disciple of Le Corbusier and his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, who was second in command at their studio in Paris where Charlotte brought "the brisk mountain air".

Not enough has been written--except by Perriand herself in her lovely and detailed memoir--about the importance of this relationship in her life. Pierre was her boon companion in the outdoors she so loved. Hiking, backpacking with their tents, Quaker Oats and sardines, collecting rocks and shells together, they forged a relationship that went far beyond the design of the famous lounge chair. In Normandy, in Greece, in the Savoie, they foraged, filled their backpacks with pebbles, lay on the beaches nude in the sun. They communed together with the earth and the sky.

On his boat they went to Yugoslavia. A priest was on board, and she was afraid she couldn't sunbathe nude as was her custom. At a conference of famous architects they escaped and went mountain climbing.

The cousins were very close, but Corbu became jealous of Pierre. He was supremely competitive even though he had been the one to suggest the relationship. Corbu as a matchmaker: it's not something generally put on his CV. Charlotte described Pierre as warmhearted, understanding, modest, self-effacing, like a brother to everyone. Everything that Corbu was not. One Christmas, spending it with Pierre's welcoming family, she borrowed a dress from his sister.

He gave her the wood for her first free form table design. They designed furniture for Knoll together even after their split as a couple. Though Charlotte eventually moved on, she never forgot her old lovers, gathering up people as she gathered up objects, holding them close. She is the kind of guiding spirit we need during Earth Week, one who understood that nature was as important as the built environment and that they must be welded together.

This unique image memorializes the meeting of two great stars of midcentury architecture: Charlotte Perriand and Oscar Niemeyer. The two met up when Perriand visited Brasilia. In her memoir she says she admired the urban plan of Brasilia (Lucio Costa was responsible for this, not Niemeyer) and the architecture (this was Niemeyer) but not the interiors--an area in which she had extensive experience having worked for Le Corbusier and also by the sixties, on many wonderful projects of her own. Perriand admired artisans and had a lifelong commitment to egalitarian politics. She worried about housing, about poverty, about crop yields and even the sexual behavior of weevils, which reminded her of a Picasso painting. Perriand was more bottom up, Niemeyer rather top down and their approaches to clients and projects quite different. For Perriand, there was intense attention to the user: the splay of a seat back, the height of a bureau, the fabric of a cushion. She cared about housewives and wanted to make their lives easier. She would have been right at home in 2020 and perhaps had some solutions for us as we face new architectural challenges created by the Covid pandemic.