Pierre Chareau was a French architect and designer best known for the groundbreaking Maison de Verre in Paris that he designed with Dutch architect Bernard Bijvoet. However, Chareau's diverse body of work has received hardly any exposure in the U.S. Thanks to a collaboration between Diller Scofidio + Renfro and the Jewish Museum in New York City, Chareau's work made its U.S. debut last Friday in the exhibition, “Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design”.

Pierre Chareau and Bernard Bijvoet, Maison de Verre, 1928-1932.

After Chareau fled Paris from German occupation during World War II, his own designs and his vast art collection were scattered when he sold them, as he tried to rebuild his career in New York. The exhibition attempts to piece together parts of Chareau's life and works during those trying times, while integrating in-vogue media and technology that can appeal to today's broader audience.

The exhibition still dedicates much of itself to Chareau's seminal work, the Maison de Verre, but it also highlights over 180 rarely-seen pieces that the Museum amassed from major public and private collections throughout Europe and the U.S. In designing the exhibition, DS+R employed video projections, VR, digital installations, and overlaid film to create atmospheric scenes that reimagine functional and social contexts for Chareau's works. One section of the exhibition covers Chareau's idiosyncratic furniture pieces.

Pierre Chareau, Office, 1924, pochoir print.

Corbeille sofa (MP169), 1923.

Telephone table (MB152) and Religieuse table lamp, c. 1924.

In another section, visitors put on VR headsets to experience four digitally imagined interior environments: the study in the Chareau's Paris residence, the Farhi Apartment, the Grand Salon and the garden in the Maison de Verre. The final section of the exhibition features a large-scale digital installation of the Maison de Verre that lets visitors explore different spaces of the home, as if they were walking through it.

Renderings of the grand salon of Maison de Verre, as seen through a VR headset.

Installations view of the exhibition.

“This exhibition is a rare opportunity to see so much of Chareau's creative output brought together in one place”, describes Elizabeth Diller of DS+R. “The challenge in undertaking its design was to provide a multi-faceted and imaginative backdrop that would highlight, but not compete with, his exceptional mastery of detailing and assemblage.”

“Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design” is open until March 26, 2017. Check out more photos of Chareau's work below.

Images courtesy of the Jewish Museum and Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

More on Archinect:

The first US exhibition on Pierre Chareau coming to the Jewish Museum

SHL's Shanghai Cloud Pavilion is a stunning glass and steel extrusion of a cartoon cloud

Zaha Hadid's repertoire is a stunning display in Venice's Palazzo Franchetti