Paris holds 8 Modernist buildings in the catalogue, with Le Corbusier's presence defining the collection. Five of his Parisian works span from the purist Villa La Roche — white walls, ramps as promenades, pilotis lifting the house above the ground — to the Cité de Refuge, where social housing met Modernist ideology at its most ambitious, and the Swiss Pavilion at the Cité Universitaire, which introduced raw concrete and the modular proportions he would later codify as the Modulor.
Beyond Le Corbusier, Pierre Chareau and Bernard Bijvoet's Maison de Verre offers an alternative Modernist lineage: translucent glass-block walls, exposed steel structure, and mechanical details that anticipate High-tech architecture by half a century. Oscar Niemeyer's French Communist Party Headquarters brings Brazilian Modernism to the Seine. Jean Willerval and Jean Prouvé's fire station and Marcel Breuer, Pier Luigi Nervi and Bernard Zehrfuss' UNESCO headquarters complete a collection that demonstrates Modernism's range from domestic intimacy to institutional scale.
