It’s easy enough to trace Le Corbusier’s influence in new buildings, as the Swiss-French architect is widely considered the “father of modern architecture” and an early pioneer of brutalist design. But his influence spreads far beyond architecture, bleeding into disciplines like fashion or, in Rado’s case, watchmaking. 

The Swiss watchmaker's new timepieces take inspiration from the late architect’s disruptive designs, though less obviously than their stated inspiration may seem.

Instead of exclusively sourcing from established forms, Rado also utilizes a color system that Le Corbusier developed.

Les Couleurs Suisse operates the license for the Polychromie Architecturale, a series of 63 colors created by the architect for his revolutionary buildings. As part of a longstanding collaboration, it gives Rado the keys to these exclusive hues. 

The watchmaker spent years figuring out how to infuse a light ivory shade from Le Corbusier’s 1959 color palette, 4320B, into high-tech ceramic, something never done until now. This 4320B ceramic appears on the case, crown, and bracelet of a new watch inspired by Le Corbusier’s La Cité Radieuse, a 1952 housing estate in Marseille that pioneered the concept of the "vertical village."

That is one part of a three-piece collection, released on Rado’s website, where each watch recreates a different Le Corbusier masterpiece.

The only building Le Corbusier designed in North America, Cambridge’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, is recreated with the moulded concrete facade printed to the dial of an iron grey watch featuring a “Powerful Orange” minute hand (yes, that’s the official color name). Meanwhile, the 1962 Palace of Assembly in Chandigarh, India, is laser-engraved into the face of a third watch. Fitting, since the architect’s father engraved watches for a living, and a young Le Corbusier even trained in watch enameling and engraving.

But this is Rado, a company known for high-tech watchmaking craft, so the laser engraving is considerably more advanced than even those done by Le Corbusier himself.

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