In 1958, at the age of 29, Heidi Weber, the Swiss owner of a furniture gallery in Zürich, decided it was time to bring back Le Corbusier’s consummate but long abandoned 1929 furniture line. It consisted of the LC1 (reclining chair), the LC2 and LC3 (the Grand Confort armchairs, “petit and grand modèle”), and the LC4 (the serpentine-shaped Chaise Longue). These metal and leather “machines for sitting,” as Le Corbusier called them, were modernist masterpieces. The great architect was then 70, but the young gallerist won his trust. They would collaborate until his death, in 1965.

Weber’s 1959 iteration of these four iconic chairs was not only an immense critical and commercial success, it added another dimension to Le Corbusier’s legacy as a deity of modernist design. Following the success of the chair relaunch, Weber then commissioned Le Corbusier to design what would turn out to be his last building—the Heidi Weber Museum–Centre Le Corbusier. Opening to the public in 1967, and later controversially renamed as the Pavillon Le Corbusier after Weber’s 50-year lease on the Lake Zurich site expired, this unique steel-and-glass structure is regarded as a Gesamtkunstwerk that unifies his various artistic identities as architect, designer, painter, and sculptor.

Le Corbusier regarded Weber as his “only true patron.” She believed in his vision unconditionally and also believed that his art, which was just as important to Corb as his architecture, was vastly underappreciated. Consequently, he appointed her as his official representative in charge of marketing and selling his paintings and sculptures.

Weber also came up with the idea of selling lithographs of Le Corbusier’s finest oil paintings; this earned her a considerable fortune apart from the royalties she received from the sales of his furniture.

Weber would later wage an unyielding battle against the family of Charlotte Perriand, an intern hired by Le Corbusier to produce precise drafts for the manufacture of component pieces, over the claim that Perriand deserves shared credit as the author of the four original Le Corbusier chairs.

Today, at age 96, Le Corbusier’s last living collaborator casts light on the relationship between artist and entrepreneur.

HAROLD VON KURSK: How did you first become interested in design

HEIDI WEBER: I was taking evening courses in technical drawing while working in an interior design shop in Zürich. That marked the beginning of my fascination with art, furniture, and design. Then a friend told me about a shop on Zurich’s Neumarkt street that had become available for rent and I decided to open my own furniture gallery, Mezzanin.

H.V.K.: What gave you the idea of relaunching the Le Corbusier furniture line?

H.B.: I was an admirer of his Modernist chair designs and I also had many customers interested in acquiring Le Corbusier chairs, but the only examples I could find were in terrible condition. Thonet Freres had done a very poor job of manufacturing the original 1929 line, which was discontinued in the mid-30s. But I was convinced that Le Corbusier’s reputation as one of the world’s greatest architects would make his chairs very easy to market and would also enhance his public stature, something he was very conscious of. In my view his chairs are the equal of those of Eames or Mies [van der Rohe].

H.V.K.: How did you first contact him?

H.W.: After seeing his paintings at an exhibition in Zürich, I met the Swiss architect Willy Bösiger. He was a friend of Le Corbusier’s who had been working with him at his Paris atelier. I told him that I was interested in buying one of his oil paintings and Bösiger kindly arranged a meeting with Le Corbusier.

I visited him at his cottage in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin [in August 1957], where I paid 10,000 CHF for one of his oil paintings. And because we had such a nice rapport, I felt confident enough to arrange a second meeting to convince him to relaunch his furniture line.

H.V.K.: How did Le Corbusier react to your proposal?

H.W.: At first he was very reluctant. He had long since given up on his furniture and thought that his designs were old and unfashionable. In the end he gave me his original plans and that was the beginning of our collaboration. We worked very hard on improving his original concepts and it took us about a year to complete the new prototypes. I set up a small, artisanal factory where we began producing the new chair series with the help of a team of good craftsmen whom I hired to prepare the leather and tubular steel frames that were the key innovation behind his designs.

H.V.K.: What kinds of modifications did you make to the original line?

H.W.: There were some structural problems with the Chaise Longue and the two Grand Confort models that needed to be corrected. The original 1929 prototypes had been poorly configured. One major improvement I contributed was the introduction of small compartments inside the cushions which would be filled with horse hair. This solved a serious fabrication flaw in the original 1929 Grand Confort models which used foam stuffing that would rapidly deform after one sat down in them.

H.V.K.: As a young entrepreneur, what did you learn in terms of the role that you could play working with a designer and architect of Le Corbusier’s stature?

H.W.: Le Corbusier was a genius who hated to waste time. He paid very little attention to the business or practical side of things. None of that interested him. He was constantly creating, either sketching designs for buildings or spending several hours each day painting.

Even though he was cautious when it came to trusting people, he saw that I was very serious and had the kind of dedication he valued. I had good business sense and that gave him a sense of security. My entrepreneurial spirit and enthusiasm was exactly what he was searching for in a business partner. It was something generally lacking in his life before.

H.V.K.: Following the death of Charlotte Perriand, her family has claimed that she deserves shared credit for his original 1929 chair designs. What did Le Corbusier tell you about her role?

H.W.: He had already spent a year working in his atelier on the designs and the initial prototypes for the chairs before his cousin Pierre Jeanneret hired Perriand to work in his Paris atelier [in October 1927] as a draftsperson. Le Corbusier gave her his original designs and asked her to produce the precise plans necessary to build the prototypes. Do people question that Frank Gehry is the architect of the Bilbao Guggenheim and other buildings because hundreds of draftsmen and engineers also worked on the blueprints? Not once did Perriand claim credit for the chair designs during her lifetime. And it is utter nonsense that she was able to change anything, especially when one knew how Le Corbusier was extremely fussy about every single detail. I know that from my own experience with him.

It is ludicrous for Perriand to be regarded even as a co-author. All you have to do is look at everything she designed after she stopped working at his atelier to realize that her design philosophy was totally different. It’s inconceivable that anyone could think that she influenced the four chair designs. She was an assistant hired to do basic drafting work in order to measure and assemble the prototypes. Point final!

Harold von Kursk is a journalist and screenwriter. He is currently working on a biopic about Leonard Cohen