E-1027
Eileen Gray’s summer house on the Mediterranean is one of the gems of modernism, designed by a woman who was a designer rather than a trained architect. The house is white, with terraces and shutters facing the sea. Everything is conceived around how the body moves and rests.
The Irish designer Eileen Gray lived in Paris and had become known for her lacquer work and furniture. She built the house in 1926–1929 together with the architect Jean Badovici, with whom she had a relationship. The name is a code: E for Eileen, 10 for Jean, 2 for Badovici and 7 for Gray, after the letters’ positions in the alphabet. The house stands on a rock above the sea and can be reached only on foot.
The house is white and has an open plan with a large living room and bedrooms. It stands partly on pilotis and has ribbon windows, terraces and a flat roof, in keeping with the principles of modernism. But Gray also criticised a modernism that was purely technical. She thought about how people move and rest and made furniture, shutters, cupboards and screens part of the architecture. Many pieces of furniture can be folded out or swivelled to suit different situations.
Le Corbusier visited the house and in 1938–1939 painted several murals there without Gray’s permission, which she regarded as an intrusion. He later built a small cabin right next to it. The house fell into decay after several changes of ownership but was acquired by public bodies in 1999 and has been restored. Today it can be visited together with Le Corbusier’s cabin. E-1027 has attracted ever greater attention and has made Eileen Gray a central figure in the history of modernism.