Occupying E.1027

Abstract

This article deals with the relationship between Le Corbusier and lesser known modern designer and architect Eileen Gray as it plays itself out in Le Corbusier’s fixation on and eventual occupation of Eileen Gray’s first house, E.1027. In 1938 and 1939, Le Corbusier painted eight massive murals in E.1027. Gray was horrified. Her biographer, Peter Adam, describes it in terms of sexual assault: “It was a rape.” What lines of inquiry are opened if one begins to think of Le Corbusier’s proximity, his eventual intimacy with Gray’s house and interiors as enactments of sexual violence? Why this compulsion to see, to mark, and eventually to be inside? The author argues that Gray develops, in her design and architecture, an aesthetic of desire that radically challenges the particular modern movement that Le Corbusier championed and epitomized. One can begin to read the violence toward Gray and E.1027 as covert, perhaps even unconscious, disciplinary responses to the aesthetic, philosophical, and sexual threat that her work represented.

La envolvente arquitectónica como herramienta conceptual de la regeneración urbana. El Espacio Joven Norte

“…La utilización de la piel arquitectónica como soporte creativo ha proporcionado interesantes ejemplos a lo largo de la historia de la arquitectura. La doble vertiente de Le Corbusier como arquitecto y como pintor, por ejemplo, propició la incorporación en la obra del Espacio Joven y perfecta sencillez de la vivienda (Rault, 2005), no dudó en pasar aquellos días de vacaciones interviniendo en los paramentos con hasta siete murales cubistas de carácter sexual en distintas estancias. La vandálica intervención, que enfureció a la arquitecta irlandesa al realizarse sin su consentimiento, se encuentra, sin embargo, en perfecta armonía con la vivienda.…”