The Paris Review - Beyond the Narrative Arc - The Paris Review
In 1926, an Irish designer named Eileen Gray built a shiplike villa on the south coast of France that drove the famed architect Le Corbusier wild. Corbu had declared that a house was “a machine to live in,” but Gray thought, No: a house is a person’s shell, a skin, and should respond to how she lives. To start designing, she studied how she and her housekeeper moved through the day and made diagrams of their motions and those of the sun to reveal natural patterns—loops in the kitchen, deep lines by the windows, meanders through the living room. The house she then built on rocks by the sea expressed this organic choreography. A mouthlike entry pulled you in; screens and mirrors unfolded from walls; windows and shutters opened in all directions for the right air, light, or view. On plans she drew lines showing how you could move, look, and live in this house: natural pathways transformed to design. I love how Gray made this house, and really love how much it maddened bombastic Corbu. Gra
Explore this link on the map →