Charlotte Perriand was one of the great designers of the twentieth century. Her furniture designs have become enduring classics, but she was much more than a furniture designer. For Perriand, architecture and furniture needed to be considered in unison to create the modern interior.

She called this integrated approach ‘the art of living’. This extensive and beautifully illustrated book charts her long career from the 1920s to the end of the century. It captures a modernist pioneer and hugely influential designer but also reveals Perriand the person: dynamic, sporting, socially minded and collaborative. What was ‘the modern life’? In some senses Perriand helped define it – and certainly lived it.