I have a list of iconic buildings to visit when I travel, often involving out-of-the-way places. It amazes me how many misconceptions I have based on knowing a building only from photos, the setting, the size, and most recently, the story surrounding a building. I visited France this past year, and my highest priority was seeing Eileen Gray’s E 1027 on the Cote d’Azur, a couple of miles from the Italian border.
Over the years, I’d seen intriguing photos of the 1929 house resembling a modernist ship on a hillside above the Mediterranean. It’s a modest size, 1,400 SF, but the design and ingenious built-ins she designed make it something that deserves days of exploration, but our tour was only two hours. I was traveling with my son, who has a film degree from NYU and is as much of an architecture fanatic as I am. He is a fan of Le Corbusier, but his admiration–and mine–was tempered by a story I had heard at a conference by a well-known academic and circulated in publications about how Corbusier had harassed Eileen Gray at E 1027 over the years. Visiting the house made us question that story.
The story was that Corbusier was obsessed with Gray, built a cabin above her house where he could spy on her, broke into the house while she was gone, and painted murals over her murals. Plus, there were photos of him painting them in the nude. It would have been a violation if this had been true, but our visit made us question it.
Our tour (through Cap Moderne) included Gray’s E 1027 and Corbusier’s buildings—a cabin, a small building of holiday cottages, and a hut–just up the hill. The tour started with Corbusier’s hut, where he worked and supposedly surveilled Gray, and the first thing I did was look out the window to recreate the crime. The only problem was you couldn’t see E 1027; it wasn’t due to mature landscaping. It was because it was too far South. Our guide explained that Gray had built her own house in the hills of Menton in 1934 (E 1027 was designed with, and for, her friend Jean Badovici), and Corbusier did not visit E 1027 until 1937.
Corbusier was also a friend of Badovici and who invited him to paint two murals. The following year, Badovici asked him to paint five more. Corbusier did not break in and paint them as an act that was frequently described as a “rape” of Gray. Should he have declined to paint murals all over a house that he described admiringly as “delicious” in letters to his mother? Yes. Was she upset by them? Very, and said the house’s charm had been changed and did not return. After years of severe neglect, the house was restored with the Corbusier murals in place. Not sure I agree with that decision.
And what about painting the murals in the nude? Bad look, and added fuel to the fire, but there are other photos of Corbusier working in his skivvies while in his hut, and frankly, it was so hot and humid while I was there that I understood why.
What about E 1027? Knowing all this, I could appreciate Eileen Gray’s masterwork without seeing it through the lens of anger on her behalf. The villa was more than I imagined regarding the space and how it opens up to the sea. Seeing her clever operable cabinets that pulled out, flipped down, and rotated was awe-inspiring. Reading her witty stenciled signs throughout the house–“DÉFENSE DE RIRE” (no laughing)–gave a glimpse into the personality behind her creativity.