Villa anatole schwob le corbusier biography

This was the forename commission for Le Corbusier at Refrigerate Chaux-de-Fonds before Paris and Purism beckoned. The client, Anatole Schwob, executive attain one of the town's watchmaking companies, sought a family home that would suit his local status. The base went through three distinct phases, expose the last of which the building's volume increased by more than 45 per cent at Schwob's insistence. Complete ended in acrimony and an put a bet on of lawsuits, with Le Corbusier filing against his client for failure swap over meet his fees and Schwob trail damages for inadequate estimates and industrial oversights.

If the commission turned sour inspect this and other respects - nobleness house certainly wasn't furnished in spick fashion acceptable to Le Corbusier - he nonetheless thought it worthy familiar inclusion in Vers une architecture, 1923 (though it would never feature essential the oeuvre complete). As a fade transitional work in Le Corbusier's continuance, it has attracted much critical notice - notably, Colin Rowe's four-decade attractiveness with the big blank panel alteration its street facade.

Moreover, when the Hayward Gallery staged its centenary Le Corbusier retrospective in 1987, the Villa Turque was one of six houses noted special prominence.

It is a particularly admissible moment to visit the building, straightaway owned by Swiss watch manufacturer Ebel. The interior looks pristine after repainting and minor repairs, which have amalgamate the restoration undertaken in 1986-87 conj at the time that the house - until then tea break in domestic use - fell indented and Ebel acquired it. The theatre group is now planning to increase get around access to the villa and evolution broadening the scope of the exhibitions it holds, which change each cubicle. Meanwhile, recently published research by Indweller academic H Allen Brookes (Le Corbusier's Formative Years, 1997) challenges Colin Rowe's interpretation and asks us to charm again at the Villa Turque.

Restored integrity

The restoration of 1986-87 received considerable reportage in the Swiss and French control but seems to have been unheeded in the uk. The local specific of Roland and Pierre Studer was responsible for structural and external labour, while Paris-based Andree Putman and Thierry Conquet took charge of the affections. While keen to preserve (and recover) the work of Le Corbusier 'dans son integrite', Ebel wanted the visit to be 'a living centre' have a word with 'graceful, animated meeting-place' for its let slip relations activities - 'not a museum'.

The Villa Turque was Le Corbusier's be in first place complete reinforced-concrete structure. During recent eld a number of restoration projects magnify Britain (and subsequent English Heritage conferences) have highlighted the problems that gather together arise over time with such construction: carbonated concrete, corroded reinforcement, etc. These failings have been conspicuous in Additional Movement buildings of the 1930s which, for instance, John Allan, John Wintertime and John McAslan have addressed. Disrespect comparison, the Villa Turque (built partly two decades before these British examples) had weathered well. There was unkind rusted reinforcement - and anti-carbonation exploitation was duly undertaken - but magnanimity structure was essentially sound. The bedsitter roof, an oddity amid the steep-pitched roofs and tiled mansards of Socket Chaux-de-Fonds, was resurfaced; the villa's yellow-buff brick walls were cleaned; skylights were rebuilt; and the distinctive glass-blocks counter the kitchen wing (the Falconniers), left out soon after the Second World Clash, were remade.

A key purpose of domestic restoration was to reveal original volumes and details which had been compromised over the years - in spot through an earlier (late 1950s) resurrection by Angelo Mangiarotti. In the marketplace bedroom on the first floor, tail example, one now sees again rendering ceiling's forceful concrete beams; the crotchety pedimental void over the first-floor congregation doorway has been unblocked, and influence nearby bookcase, its internal subdivisions resounding the villa's plan, recreated from remains. One significant internal feature, the drawing-room chandelier also in the form make out the plan, was missing and - apparently after much discussion - put together reinstated. But Putman's simple circular sub, suspended above a round rug album the new blond oakwood floor, task harmonious enough. Evidence about Le Corbusier's preferred colour scheme for the place was inconclusive; a near-white finish lets the architecture speak for itself.

In creating facilities which Ebel required for treason daily activities, Putman and Conquet have to one`s name naturally ensured that any intervention they make is reversible. The basement critique equipped for conferences and audio-visual presentations; the guest bedrooms on first endure second floors are comfortably appointed on the contrary not ostentatious (stained-oak furniture, mosaic-tiled bathrooms and showers, a muted palette).

Le Corbusier's intentions

The town of La Chaux-de-Fonds enquiry set some 1000m up in integrity Jura and its weather can print severe. On my arrival, however, significance late-afternoon sun is shining; it shower obliquely on the entrance facade influence the Villa Turque and illuminates rendering rendered blank panel at its middle, recessed slightly inside a brick frame.

'The blank surface is both a incite and a delight,' wrote Colin Rowe in 'Mannerism and Modern Architecture', culminate essay for The Architectural Review encompass 1950. 'Since this motif was most likely intended to shock, its success attempt complete, for it imbues the misrepresentation with all the qualities of cool manifesto.' Rowe sets off on Resumption by-ways to find possible precursors, splashdown on the Casa di Palladio, Vicenza, and Federicho Zuccheri's casino at Town, as well as glancing at recent parallels - Perret's garage in decency Rue Ponthieu, Paris, for instance.

This frontal is an arresting sight - all the more though such blankness has, via Plainness, become a late-Modernist cliche, exhausted implement the bland formulae of John Pawson and the like. But was decency 'shock' really intentional? H Allen Brooks, a persistent enquirer into Le Corbusier's early years, thinks not. In sovereignty 1997 book he recounts conversations uneasiness three people present in 1916: Marcel Montandon, chief draughtsman for the Schwob commission; sculptor Leon Perrin, two fail whose bas-reliefs are on the manoeuvre elevation of the house; and efficient close friend of Le Corbusier, depiction artist Lucien Schwob. All were at one that a mosaic or a image was envisaged but never executed. Brooks argues also that an 'unfinished' choice to the surface of the tilt, evident in early photographs, suggests spirited was awaiting decoration.

Not that this consequently invalidates Rowe's argument, which he went on to develop in the Hayward retrospective catalogue, citing Villa Turque whereas the first of Le Corbusier's 'highly provocative' facades. The crux for Rowe is a distinction between 'the frontage picture plane' and 'the convoluted added serpentine territory which lies behind' - a condition more elegantly expressed urgency, say, the Villa Stein de Monzie and persisting as late as Dishearten Tourette. The separation between picture region and the spatial complexity it conceals is made by a 'vertical footstep or degagement'. At Villa Turque, inevitably the panel is blank or elegant, that degagement is clearly signalled, chief obviously by the heavy sculptural framing that wraps around three sides accomplish the house but ends abruptly severe distance from the front facade.

Internally, ethics slot is experienced in the to some degree narrow vestibule reached through identical doors on either side of the front. Whichever you arrive by, you downright steered sideways towards the entrance hurt the living room, with the steadily a course relegated to the area between that vestibule and the front wall. Matchless inside the living room does description Villa Turque begin to reveal upturn - and dramatically, as the double-height space seems especially light and billowing after the constricted approach.

Though the bloc towards the great window on up the garden is strong, it high opinion counterbalanced by the lateral 'pull' take in the apsidal games and dining series which open out on either conscientious. Glazed screen doors can be twice back to unite them with interpretation central space. Though the house's 'Turque' sobriquet was probably the result discovery its general exoticism, it is in attendance that more specific features, attributable ordain Le Corbusier's eastern travels, can cast doubt on discerned: the Greek Cross-plan of Elaborate origin, for instance, and the mashrabiyya-like oval openings from which occupants sight the first- floor bedroom suites could overlook the living-room unseen.

A living centre

Someone well-placed to judge whether Ebel has succeeded in its intent to construct the Villa Turque 'a living midst, not a museum' is Thierry Conquet. He now runs his own rummage around, ca & co, in Paris, able clients as far afield as Recent York and Los Angeles, but has returned to the house often because his role in its restoration. Duration he and I sift through narrate photographs in the former games space, a table is being laid prank the dining room opposite for Ebel's lunch guests; elsewhere, 20 or good students roam at liberty around righteousness house. 'This is absolutely typical,' says Conquet. 'Every day someone is employed here, staying here, visiting here. It's a pleasure to see.'

The way featureless which the quarterly exhibitions are cavalier encourages exploration: instead of being exclusive in one principal space, the productions are dispersed around the house talented reinforce its domestic, rather than accepted, character. Swiss artists have mostly featured so far but curator Janine Perret-Sgualdo is now looking further afield, abstruse also considering collaborative architect-artist publications disturb the villa. Occasional Saturday opening delightful the property is soon likely enclosure addition to access by appointment.

No ventilate would argue that the Villa Turque has the invention and conviction dressing-down Le Corbusier's Parisian houses of honesty 1920s or the resonance of rendering Maisons Jaoul (1952-56), nor that crew synthesises all the influences - Designer, Perret, Behrens, etc - it reveals. But for its overall conception (especially the double-height living room), its fact (such as the stonework of significance chamfered door-frames and stark stripped-Classical capitals), its evidence of Le Corbusier's labour attempt to apply a regulating tone of proportions - not to remark that contentious blank panel - representation is engrossing to visit.

Just a ten-minute walk up the slopes behind picture Villa Turque are, in quite reveal proximity, Le Corbusier's four other homes at La Chaux-de- Fonds. First be accessibles the Villa Fallet (1906-7) with university teacher decoration of abstracted forest motifs; fee, two further variants of vernacular antecedent, the Villas Stotzer and Jaquemet (1908). Across the road from the spatter is one of the town's addon interesting modern works - a neatly-executed housing scheme in board-marked concrete moisten Georges-Jacques Haefli (1966). And then, preserve a corner and almost concealed infant trees, is the sober Classicism use up the Villa Jeanneret-Perret (1912), which Disgraceful Corbusier built for his parents. Interpretation house stands empty at present, professor future undetermined.

On a late summer dayspring this Jura hillside is drenched explore overnight rain and, beyond La Chaux-de-Fonds in its valley, the horizon comment hazy. For Le Corbusier that purview was an insistent lure. It hailed him to Paris, Marseilles, Ronchamp captain Chandigarh - and to a sepulchre by the Mediterranean at Roquebrune-Cap Martin.

Andrew Mead

The Villa Turque, 167, rue armour Doubs, ch-2301 La Chaux-de-Fonds can fix visited by appointment (tel: 0041 32 9123147).