Everything you need to know about Rado’s new Les Couleurs Le Corbusier collaboration

Launched in Paris last Thursday at the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Rado’s True Square Thinline Les Couleurs Le Corbusier collection features three colours with just 999 pieces available in each, in a new design with blended elements from its popular True Square and True Thinline families.

Rendered in Rado’s high-tech ceramic and sapphire crystal, the collection is a collaboration with the Le Corbusier Foundation, a follow-up to their first collaboration with the master-architects foundation in 2019 which featured a limited edition collection of nine colours.

Le Corbusier is one of the most revered modernist architects of the last century and is to many architects what Picasso is to painters, having revolutionised building and design with his Five Points of Architecture, design principles that formed much of modern design as we know it today such as open plan and long, full-length windows.

But he is also fondly remembered for his transcendent theory of colour which, in time, led to the development of an enduring Architectural Polychromy. Le Corbusier created a palette of 63 shades introduced in 1931 and extended in 1959. The designer identified them as “architectural, naturally harmonious and able to be combined in any way,” designing by his tenant that “colour is an incredibly effective triggering tool. It is a factor of our existence.”

Now, nearly 90 years after he first introduced the colours, three of these colours have been exclusively licensed to Rado for the new line. One is in an iron grey matt high-tech ceramic monobloc case and crown with an iron grey sun-brushed dial with slightly greyed English green printed indexes and hands, along with the Rado logo. It comes in an iron grey matt high-tech ceramic bracelet with mid-links in slightly greyed English green ceramic and a PVD-coated titanium threefold clasp.

The second style is with a grey-brown natural umber matt high-tech monobloc ceramic case, with a grey-brown natural umber sun-brushed dial and grey-brown natural umber and cream white matt high-tech ceramic bracelet with a PVD-coated titanium threefold clasp.

The final colourway is in an ivory black matt high-tech monobloc ceramic case and crown and a tone-on-tone sun-brushed black dial with ivory black printed indexes and the Rado logo. The cases for each of the models are a slim 37 x 43.3 mm and are only 5.0 mm thick. Each caseback comes digitally printed on sapphire crystal with the Le Corbusier colours strips along with the words ‘Le Corbusier signature Polychromie Architecturale and Limited Edition One Of 999, a confirmation of the series size.

There is a Collector’s Box too featuring a new True Square Thinline Les Couleurs Le Corbusier timepiece in black, along with eight round Thinline Les Couleurs Le Corbusier models from the current collection, which is limited to 99 pieces.

True Thinline Square Les Corbusier Sep 2023, €2,372 and €2,546, rado.com