Designed as a birthday gift to his wife Yvonne, and intended to be a low-cost spot to spend their summer holidays as a couple, the cabanon is the most personal of Le Corbusier’s projects. It was located just down the hill from his one-time friend Eileen Gray’s villa E.1027, (the pair fell out when he daubed the interior of Gray’s house with his own murals) and when Le Corbusier died it was while swimming in the coastal waters near the Cabanon. Yet, for all the building’s biographical significance, the15sq m-structure is of interest ultimately because it represents a distillation of the architect’s ideas on minimal living. Le Corbusier completed his original sketches for the structure in 45 minutes on New Year’s Eve, 1951, but they were based on a career’s worth of contemplation.

Next week, the RIBA, supported by Cassina, is marking a season of events and exhibitions dedicated to Le Corbusier by building a 1:1 reconstruction of the Cabanon’s interior at its headquarters in London. To coincide with the occasion, for which Blueprint is media sponsor, we asked today’s leading architects to imagine their own personal retreat. We asked them to consider the same issues that Le Corbusier himself faced: how would they design their own ideal, compact living environment? What would be essential, and what would they leave out? Where would it be placed? How would it be furnished and decorated? And they had to create their sketches, either by hand or computer, in the same 45-minute time limit.

We were overwhelmed by the positive response. The opportunity to express one’s personal thoughts on an ideal retreat, with the added competitive frisson of a time constraint, seemed irresistible and the architects have come up with an astonishing range of ideas. It also gave an imaginative opportunity to escape, perhaps, from the harsher realities of being in practice today. Eva Jiricna, says of the experience creating a cabanon: ‘It’d be so easy to live a life without any technology and responsibilities regarding sustainability… I could probably live in what I put on paper but there is no chance I could afford it!’ Narinder Sagoo, of Foster and Partners, saw it as a pleasurable indulgence. ‘I find it better to gather inspiration from the very first thoughts that come in to one’s mind, so in some ways my cabanon is just a mid-afternoon dream,’ he says.

We present modern-day cabanons here.

We have also created a special postcard so you can design your own retreat and submit it to the RIBA for a chance to win a Cassina LC3 anniversary chair, originally designed by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand. The postcards can be found at the RIBA and at Cassina dealers in London.

Le Corbusier’s Cabanon 1952-2006
The Interior 1:1, and Le Corbusier – Il Maestro: An Exhibition of Furniture from Cassina is at the RIBA 5 March-28 April