« Designers Summer »

D.R.

Summer … the moment everyone has been waiting for. Time to disconnect and return to basics.
The designers of the Galerie Downtown have been keen to develop some of their creations around the world of holidays. Architectures near the water, summer houses and soothing interior decoration, all in an idyllic atmosphere.

Upper left: Archives Charlotte Perriand/ADAGP
Upper right: Archives Charlotte Perriand/ADAGP
Other photos: D.R.

Archives Charlotte Perriand/ADAGP
Upper left: photo Jacques Martin
Bottom left: Photo Pierre Jeanneret
Bottom right: Photo Pernette Perriand-Barsac

C. Perriand: “Until the age of three, I lived this life filled with freedom, air, light, scents and affection. I have won the love of nature in harmony with the seasons, my head close to the stars, and respect for all the peasants of the world, the most anchored in the earth”.

Charlotte Perriand develops a love of nature which translates into a constant concern for the integration of constructions into the sites and always thinks of limiting their impact. She will design architecture by promoting the contemplation of nature from the living cell.

Perriand will develop a project in 1934, where she imagines an economical holiday home, “the House at the Edge of the Water”, easy to build for the greatest number. 80 years later at ArtBasel Miami, Louis Vuitton is carrying out this project.

Photos: courtesy of Louis Vuitton.

This project is designed for a competition to design inexpensive holiday accommodation, by the French architecture magazine: L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. Perriand will win the second prize, but the original house was never built. 80 years later, it sits in the beachside garden of Miami’s Hotel Raleigh South Beach.

The house is raised on wooden parallelepipeds above the sand and accessed by a ramp at the back. Two wings face each other with sliding glass doors that are connected by a semi-enclosed hallway at the back, creating a U-shaped plan. The bedrooms with beds designed by Perriand are located on one side, with the bathroom. The kitchen, dining and living areas are housed in the opposite wing. Wood dresses the walls and the floor and is also used for the majority of furniture. The central platform is sheltered by a stretched sail allowing rainwater to be collected in a flowerpot.

Photos: courtesy of Louis Vuitton.

The world of holidays is also found with the furniture of Charlotte Perriand, here her straw chairs, photographed at the edge of the water.

© Christie’s images limited

In the landscape of the island of Bréhat, two lots signed Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret for another House at the edge of the water from the 50’s.
Left: Pair of armchairs n. 21 says “Paillés”.
Right: Pair of so-called “Bauche” stools.

Archives Charlotte Perriand/ADAGP

D.R. – ©Art Sept – Atelier Cinéma

A film about the architect on vacation. During the summer of 1936, with a small 16mm camera, he produced long photographic sequences. These images provide an insight into his creative activity as a painter and his passion for natural forms.

“Le Corbusier’s Holidays”.
Documentary directed by Frédéric Lamasse.
France, 2016. Duration: 48 minutes

One of Le Corbusier’s flagship projects will be the Cité Radieuse in Marseille. An important architecture located in a seaside town by the water.
It is a residence built between 1947 and 1952. Le Corbusier is trying to create a new form of city, a “vertical village” called “Unité d’habitation”.
The residence has 337 apartments of 23 different types separated by “inner streets” (the standard apartment is a duplex) and a hotel with 21 rooms. A shopping mall exists at Third Street with various businesses accessible to the public all year round.
The site is listed, along with sixteen other architectural works by Le Corbusier, on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2016.

La cité radieuse – ©DR.

D.R.

Summer and more broadly the holidays are the time of creation and rest. These designers even spend time together.

Fernand Léger, Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, Albert Jeanneret, Pierre Jeanneret, Matila Ghyka. CIAM of Athens, 1933. © AChP

Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret on the Piquey beach, 1933. ©DR.

Portrait of Isamu Noguchi, circa 1935. Photograph by George Platt Lynes. © Estate of George Platt Lynes

This artist will be known internationally for his Akari lamps made of washi paper from the mulberry tree. They are imagined by Noguchi from the lanterns suspended from boats for fishing fish, characteristics of the region of Kyoto in Japan.

Keisai Eisen

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D.R.

Luis Barragan is the great Mexican architect of the 20th century! It transforms the view of modern architecture in Mexico, drawing on the European sources of the Bauhaus, the modern architecture of Le Corbusier and also in art deco! To this he adds the Mexican colors of traditional architecture, the design of spaces which then give birth to exceptional houses. Color, spaces but also water appear in many of his creations!

His houses by the water are very bright and often on cliffs. D.R.

The Villa Noailles by Robert Mallet Stevens was built in 1923 in Hyères, in the department of War and is located at 4km from the sea, in collaboration with the local architect Léon David. Commissioned in the Roaring Twenties by the Viscount of Noailles and his wife Marie-Laure de Noailles, patrons and friends of the big names in Modern Art. The villa is one of the first French constructions of the modernist type.
The sponsor is looking for an infinitely practical and simple house, where everything would be combined from the sole point of view of utility.

“I want the morning sun in the bedrooms and the afternoon sun in the living room, because it is to have the sun that I will go to this house” (1925).

D.R.

To discover other architectures anchored in the spirit of the holidays, go to the next issue on the South American houses of Barragan, Caldas and many others…