Charlotte Perriand was a highly reputed architect and designer. Born in Paris, France on October 24, 1903 she first came to limelight with her “Bar under the Roof” style of furniture. The style basically dealt with furniture that were made using chromed steel and anodized aluminum. These pieces of furniture were first showcased at the Salon d'Automne in 1927 and got rave reviews immediately. Perriand was inspired by a legend in her times, Le Corbusier and found his “Towards An Architecture” particularly inspiring. She studied furniture design at the Ecole de l'Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs.

She applied to join Le Corbusier but was rejected by him after he called her designs, domestic and too feminine. Confident in her ability she left her card with him anyway and then invited him later that year to view her “Bar under the Roof” exhibition. Le Corbusier was suitably impressed by her and invited her to join him in designing furniture and interiors. Perriand was overjoyed by the invitation and took him up on it, joining him in his studio at 35 rue de Sevres. They worked together to come up with designs that merge the furniture's inside with the look the building presented to everybody else. They established a strong partnership that would last their lifetime.

This period also saw the two them combine with Pierre Jeanneret to design a series of armchairs and a lounge. They exhibited this under the title “The Equipment of Habitation: Racks, Seats and Tables”. This furniture was first made by Thonet and most recently reproduced by Cassina. One particular picture of Perriand reclining on the chaise lounge has become very popular leading a lot of the future models to hold the same pose while modeling furniture. Her partnership with Pierre existed for nearly ten years. She also helped design the famous Les Arcs ski resort at Savoie.

At the beginning of the II World War, she teamed up with Pierre and Jean Prouve, whom she met as one of the fellow founding members of the Union des Artistes Modernes to design and build pre-fabricated buildings. She was then sent to Japan as an advisor to the Ministry of Trade and Industry. At the height of the war she had to leave Japan but was forced to stay in Vietnam due to a naval blockade. She married her second husband there with whom she had a daughter, Pernette. On her return to France she again started collaborating with Prouve. She then worked with Ferdinand Leger on the Saint-Louis Hospital project.

Her time spent in Japan heavily influenced her designs after that and she created quite a few designs as examples of a perfect synthesis between the Western and Japanese techniques. One of her greatest efforts was however, the conference rooms of the UN in Geneva. In 1993, as a part of the Japanese Cultural Festival she designed on behalf of UNESCO, a tea pavilion. The Steph Simon Gallery in Paris handled the sale of almost all her designs.