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Published: November 14th 2006
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Le Corbusier: Villa Savoy, Poisssy, 1931
Corb’s Five Points of Architecture: Lift the structure off the ground with pilotis supports, free façade, open floor plan, ribbon windows, and a roof garden (resorative). Villa Savoye By Le Corbusier, 1929
Typical tourists are lucky just to see the most recognizable sites in a major city. I’m never just satisfied with the easy and convenient sites. I’m known for going to out of the way places by difficult and inconvenient means just to satisfy a hankering. I’m a sucker for architecture the good, bad and the plain ugly. If I’ve read an article on a place, seen a photo of a structure, or been told that I must/mustn’t see an architect’s work I’ll be very tempted to cross sea and climb mountains to reach it just to say I’ve been there.
Today I visited one of the most recognizable works of the International Style, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. This little voyage was probably the second most difficult trek I’ve made to see an architecturally significant home (the most difficult was Villa Rotunda by Andrea Palladio in Vicenza Italy).
The villa was miles outside of Paris in a suburb like the typical sprawled communities of the states. There were no maps of the area that I could find and the Persians that I asked directions from were clueless on the location. I blindly caught
a commuter train to the sleepy community of Poissy hoping that once I arrived at the station I would find better directions. No such luck. The only map (in French) of the area that I could find was on a kiosk outside the station. After scanning the map for five minutes I found a small point flagged as the villa. I took a napkin and sketched out the approximate route with street and place names. I took my bearings and headed off in what I thought was the right direction. Gradually I passed streets and landmarks that I’d noted on the napkin. After forty minutes of hiking I reached a rise with a treed drive to the right and a gatehouse that seemed architecturally out of place for the typically drab suburban homes. I knew that I’d reached my destination.
Corb’s home was always a problem for the owners. Their biggest complaint - the ceilings (flat roof) consistently leaked. If memory serves me a line in a letter from the owner’s wife to Corb complained that “ there is a waterfall in my bathroom.” Corb never seemed to get his mind around the demands of typical homeowners, who cares
if the roof leaks; you have a home that follows my five principles. He even quipped that the owners should put a guestbook at their entry to record the names of influential people that would come to visit their home. He saw this not as home but rather an ideal. Corb never had to fix the problems, the Nazis moved in and that was the end of that. The home went into decline and it was only recently that it’s been restored and rehabilitated.
Far more intelligent lines have been written to describe the villa so I will end my analysis (did I ever start?). I was and still am so very pleased that I took the opportunity to visit.
I backtracked the forty minutes to the train and basked in the afterglow of the experience.
Anyone up to seeing Renzo Piano’s Beyeler Foundation Art Museum in Basel, Switzerland? The museums been on my to do/see list for nearly six years.
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