Eileen Gray's masterpieces fully restored

The villa, a pearl of modernist architecture and interior conceived by the Irish designer, gains back its originary splendour.

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It is one of the most interesting icons of modernism villas of all time: for its architecture, for the events related to its creator and for the design pieces that have furnished it. Pieces that today return to furnish it, re-edited. E-1027, the seaside house designed by the Irish designer Eileen Gray in 1926, a jewel of modernist architecture nestled in the hills of Roquebrune Cap-Martin on the French Riviera, has recently been restored and can be visited thanks to the intervention of the non-profit association Cap Moderne.

Eileen Gray conceived this refuge as an orderly space seasoned with a pinch of playfulness, by optimizing the fairly small space through fixed and flexible custom furniture, flanked by the most famous furnishings that the designer created, such as the Non-conformist chair, the Bibendum armchair or the E-1027 coffee table, just to name a few.

The villa, at the center of the disputes between Eileen Gray and the architect Le Corbusier (a frequent visitor of the villa), is part of a small circuit of elements that can be visited: on the nearby land, Thomas Rebutato built a hut to spend the weekends in 1947, which in 1949 it became the "L'Etoile de mer" tavern. A strong friendship was born with Le Corbusier, who created two murals and a painting that cover the prefabricated building in wood and fiber cement slabs.

In 1951, Le Corbusier asked his friend to give him a piece of his land to build a holiday home right next to the restaurant. The Cabanon that he built here, testimony of Le Corbusier's reflections on the minimum habitat and standardized production, is the third element of the nucleus today curated by the association. To know more about it, listen to our podcast!

 

 

 


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