Villa Savoye Gardener's House has opened to the public after the completion of a restoration that has recovered its original polychromy. This small house of 36,9 sqm is the only example of minimal housing built by Le Corbusier before World War II.

On September 19th the Gardener's House of Villa Savoye opened to the public after completion of a rehabilitation. The building is located at the entrance of the estate, in the French town of Poissy. The re-opening coincides with the European Heritage Days in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Le Corbusier (1965). Usually overlooked in favor of the manor house, the Gardener's House is a valuable architecture example of the iconic architect: his only minimum housing building previous to World War II (1931).

This minimum detached house is only 36,9 sqm big, of which 9,50 sqm are occupied with a boiler and storage room. The archetype of minimum housing that the Swiss architect proposes follows the same formal guidelines that the villa benefits from, obviously adapted to a smaller scale, reflecting Le Corbusier's intention of creating a universal architecture without social differences. An example of the use of common design guidelines used in both buildings are the use of pillars and continuous windows. The plant layout is divided into four small rooms surrounded by a common space.

The estate has been owned from the 1960s by the French state organization Centre des Monuments Nationaux. Their recent rehabilitation of the Gardener's House has recovered the original appearance of the house, including polychromy, woodwork, sanitary appliances and furniture. The visit, which can be done ion weekend mornings, allows the stakeholders to discover a key example of Le Corbusier's architecture.

CREDITS.-

Location.- 82 Rue de Villiers, 78300 Poissy, France.
Visiting hours.- Saturday and Sunday at 11.00 (French), Friday at 11:00 (English).
Entrance fees.- 7,50 € (rate base entrance).

 

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Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland on October 6th, 1887. He is best known as Le Corbusier, one of the most important architects of the XX Century that together with Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright rise up as the fathers of Modern Architecture. In his long career, he worked in France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Argentina, India and Japan.

Jeanneret was admitted to the Art School of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1902. He knew Charles l’Éplattenier, his first teacher, and he became interested in architecture. He built his first house, Villa Fallet, in 1906, and one year later he set out on his first great journey to Italy. From 1908-1909 he worked in Perret Bother’s Studio, where he focussed on the employment of the concrete, and from 1910-1911 he coincided with Mies van der Rohe in this studio in Berlin.

In 1917, Charles Édouard Jeanneret set up finally in Paris. The next year he met the painter Amedée Ozenfant and he displayed his first paintings and wrote his first book, Après le Cubismo. In 1919 he founded the magazine l´Esprit nouveau, where he published unnumbered articles, signing with the pseudonym Le Corbusier for the first time.

He opened his own Studio in 1922, in the number 35 of the rue de Sèvres. In this decade when his laboratory epoch started he carried out a great number of activities as a painter, essayist, and writer. But also as an architect, he planned some of the most recognizable icons of modern architecture and developed the principles of the free plan. Some of these works are the Villa Roche-Jeanneret, the Villa Savoye in Poissy, and the Siedlungweissenhof’s houses built in Stuttgart in 1927. It should be pointed out that at the same time; he set out the “five points” of the architecture.

Le Corbusier projected “The contemporary three million population city” in 1922 and in 1925 put forward the Voisin plan of Paris, which is one of his most important urban proposals. Three years later, in 1928, through his initiative, the CIAM was created and in 1929 he published his first edition of the Oeuvre Complète.

In the 30s, he collaborated with the magazine Plans and Prélude, where he became enthusiastic about urbanism and he started, in 1930, to elaborate the drawings of the “Radiant City” as a result of the “Green City” planned for Moscu, his project would be summarized in the “Radiant Villa”, which was enclosed with the projects for Amberes, Stockholm, and Paris. By 1931 he presented Argel, a proposal that composed the Obus Plan. And in 1933 the 4th CIAM passed and there he edited the Athens Document.

Le Corbusier, in 1943, developed the “Three Human Establishments Doctrine” and founded the Constructors Assembly for Architectural Renovation (ASCORAL). He made the project the Unite d´habitation of Marsella in 1952, which was the first one of a series of similar buildings. At the same time, the works of Chandigarh in India began, where he planned the main governmental buildings. Nevertheless, in the same decade, he worked in France too, in the Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp, in the convent of La Tourette in Éveux, Jaoul’s houses in Neuilly and the Unites d´habitation of Rézé-lès-Nantes, Briey-en-Forêt and Firminy.

He wrote and published his worldwide known study of the Modulor in 1948 followed by a second part in 1953. Meanwhile the next Le Corbusier’s books had a more autobiographic nature, among them the Le poème de l'angle droit (1955), l'Atelier de la recherche patiente (1960) and Mise aupoint (1966) stand out.

Le Corbusier, at the end of his life, created many projects that would not be built, for example, a calculus center for Olivetti in Rho, Milan; a congress in Strasbourg, the France embassy in Brasilia and a new hospital in Venice.

He died drowned on the 27th of August of 1965 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

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