Though overshadowed by his cousin Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret was a visionary of modernist architecture and design. Together, the pair pioneered a new aesthetic vocabulary that placed function and order over embellishment—Jeanneret’s work imbuing the strict geometry of modernism with energetic diagonals and lighter materials like cane and wood. A consistent innovator, he collaborated with Charlotte Perriand on experiments in aluminum and wood, and developed prefabricated housing with Jean Prouvé. In the early 1950s Jeanneret joined his cousin in Chandigarh, India, where they embarked on a massive urban-planning project, laying out the city and designing low-cost buildings and furniture. Though Corbusier abandoned the project halfway through, Jeanneret remained for 15 years as the project’s chief architect. The city remains a masterpiece of the modern vision.

Inspired by avant-garde architects and his idea of design as a moral issue, influential 20th-century designer, architect, engineer, and teacher Jean Prouvé played a major role in the development of systems for mass production in the postwar Modernist period. From his beginnings as a blacksmith's apprentice, he gained an understanding of metal and its limitations, driving him to seek new materials and processes like steel, aluminum, and arc welding, producing prefabricated houses, building components, and furniture for the social sector.