Villa E.1027

Born in Ireland in1878, the artist, architect and designer Eileen Gray was one of the leading lights of the modernist movement in the 20s. With that being said, the equal footing that this statement indicates is not reflected in the history of modern architecture as Gray was largely overlooked for decades. In that male-dominated field of design, she is less important than other architects such as Le Corbusier or Gerrit Rietveld, even if she did great achievements which are comparable to that of the male designers. 

Her most iconic work, the Roquebrune house, or E1027, was the first architectural work of Gray and it was built for herself and her lover, Jean Badovici. The basic form of the house is a simple cuboid tha raised on pillars, but side she created a series of layers that filter the progress from land to sea, and from shadows to light. Gray talked of creating “a dwelling as a living organism” serving “people actually living in them”. Adopting and working within the framework of certain modern spatial devices, such as Le Corbusier's "five points of a new architecture," Gray sought to overcome the reductive dehumanizing qualities associated with abstraction by prioritizing the subjective qualities of experience. She explained : "External architecture seems to have absorbed avant-garde architects at the expense of the interior. As if a house should be conceived for the pleasure of the eye more than for the well-being of its inhabitants."

She created numerous pieces of loose and built-in furniture for the house and installed others that she had previously designed, always paying close attention to their interaction with the senses and the human body. The overall structure of the house is based on her study of the wind and sun, and on its position on a steep slope descending to the sea. The exterior of the building is mostly white, and the interior is decorated with light pink or lilac planes, or night blue or black. These colours are maritime, but they are subtle like what you see in deep water, inside a seashell or after sunset. Gray said, “evokes distant voyages and gives rise to reverie”. Despite the efforts that Gray had paid to design the house, Jean Badovici was often credited as the architect of E1027. After Eileen Gray moved out of the house, Le Corbusier painted eight large murals on the walls, as if to declare that it was his. Gray called this “an act of vandalism.” and never returned. The mural questions Gray’s bisexuality and projects a retraced image of Gray’s sexuality as a fetish on the wall. The woman becomes an object used as he pleases.