French Govt. buys E1027
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The following is an article by NYC-based architect Susanna Sirefman in January’s Architecture magazine.
French Government Purchases E.1027
After nearly six months of hard work by preservationists in the U.S. and abroad, French government officials have raised the funds to purchase E.1027, the seaside villa in Roquebrune, Cap Martin, France, designed by Eileen Gray with Romanian architect Jean Badovici (1929). The house, one of three designed by Gray, had been left to rot several years ago after the murder of its last owner. A young French architect, Renaud Barres, will restore the villa under the supervision of France’s chief architect in charge of historic monuments.
As E.1027 sits adjacent a small cabin and hostel built by Le Corbusier, Roquebrune hopes to merge the two sites to create a modern architecture research centre. Peter Adam, author of Eileen Gray Architect/Designer (1987), hopes to donate his private collection of Gray’s work, 19 furniture prototypes and a large archive of original drawings, for display in the restored house. The fate of eight Corb-painted wall murals (1937-1939) inside E.1027 has not been decided. Done without Gray’s consent, Adam contends that “Eileen hated them.†He and Barres feel quite strongly that the murals should be removed and displayed elsewhere, returning the house to its original state.
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Lou Perou is absolutely right about the Gray furniture, there is’nt a huge amount of original stuff surviving. That said, my own view would be that if sufficient original furniture can be assembled either in this country or elsewhere that whatever is suitable or needed should go into the original house itself, perhaps in the form of a permanent loan to the French people, it might be possible then for this country to have some involvement in the overall house project.
Speaking of the Corbusier murals, the enmity between Corbusier and Gray was notorious. He apparently, tried to gain control of the house under some very dodgy legal footwork after Badovici’s demise. Gray found it extremely hard to fight this (particularly as she was living in a somewhat ‘reduced’ state and the battel to eject Corbusier and his claim was somewhat fraught. Interestingly, Corbusier was pretty scathing of Grays work yet obviously felt it good enough to get into a very silly row with Gray over possession of the house – not a very nice man I’m afraid!! – albeit a brilliant one.
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